Crossposted from European Tribune.

It is always wise to start with the beginning:

A brief history of Kosovo. Part I: 1189-1989.

1989 On St. Vitus Day, June 28 1989 — the 600th anniversary of the mythologized battle — Slobodan Milošević returned to Kosovo Polje as president-elect of the Serbian Republic. Also back for the occasion was Prince Lazar, whose holy remains had toured the Orthodox monasteries of Yugoslavia for two years, rousing Serbian nationalism. As many as a million pilgrims convened at the plains, waving “Slobo’s” picture alongside that of his illustrious predecessor.

However, Milošević’s actual address on that day has been misrepresented on a scale almost comparable to the events which it commemorated. Though it did, ominously enough, suggest that armed struggle “should not be excluded yet,” it was hardly a “stirringly virulent nationalist speech” (The Economist, June 05, 1999, US edition) that “whipped a million Serbs into a nationalist frenzy” (Time International, July 9, 2001). On the contrary, it touted the peaceful coexistence of ethnic groups within common borders. Why the shift in rhetoric?

This declaration provides a clue: “Serbia of today is united and equal to other republics.” Milošević, in other words, had already achieved one of his key objectives and was seeking to consolidate his position at the helm of an undivided Yugoslavia.

There are rival accounts of how this came to be. The following is that of the the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia:

This version of what happened on March 23 1989 was, it must be emphasized, vigorously disputed by witnesses for Milošević at The Hague. What is clear is that Kosovo’s autonomy was downgraded to pre-1974 levels at Milošević’ behest. The Serbian Parliament followed up by passing a number of discriminatory laws, including one that barred Albanians from selling real estate without permission from Serbian authorities.

In July 1990 a majority of Albanian delegates in the Assembly of Kosovo responded by unofficially declaring Kosovo an “equal and independent” republic of SFRY, complete with a shadow government. Greg Campbell, in his book The Road to Kosovo, sums up what happened next:

By September 1990, a US National Intelligence Estimate warned that “the Yugoslav experiment has failed, that the country will break up” and that “this is likely to be accomplished by ethnic violence and unrest which could lead to civil war.” Yet like most close observers, it predicted that the first region engulfed by war would be Kosovo itself. Instead the Kosovo conflict set off a chain reaction through Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia that not before 1998 completed the circle and blew up the detonator.

The Serbian crackdown in Kosovo induced Slovenians to vote overwhelmingly for independence in a December 1990 plebiscite. As this left Serbia too dominant for their liking, it moved Croatia, Bosnia, and Macedonia to secede as well. The ensuing war in Bosnia left at least 100,000 dead and created 3 million refugees. The international community could do little to halt the carnage, and did even less.

How did the powder keg of Kosovo avoid war in the early 1990s? One factor is that, despite voting overwhelmingly for independence in an unofficial referendum of September 1991, Albanians lacked the military and political muscle to force secession, while Belgrade was kept in check by the outside world, notably the US. According to a former US ambassador to Croatia, the Bush sr. administration was more concerned about potential war in Kosovo and its destabilizing effects than about Bosnia. In its “Christmas Threat” of late 1992 — since reiterated by President Clinton — it threatened military action if Milošević were to deploy in Kosovo.

Another factor is the pacifism of the late Ibrahim Rugova; a silk-scarfed, Sorbonne-educated academic who in May 1992 was voted President of the “Republic of Kosova” in clandestine elections. Rugova and his party, the Democratic League of Kosova (DLK), favored passive resistance, establishing an underground state of diaspora-financed parallel institutions to which Serbian police saw fit to turn a blind eye. The strategy of the DLK was quietly to await Western support for independence. However, the US and the EU were by now preoccupied with Bosnia. Thus, when the 1995 Dayton Accords recognized Serbia and Montenegro as the new Yugoslavia and the sanctions were lifted, this was not made conditional even upon restored autonomy for the troubled province.

While understandable given the urgency of ending the Bosnian bloodbath, the neglect of the Kosovo question left ethnic Albanians — now on their own with the Serbs and Montenegrins — worse off than in the old SFRY. In result, many DLK adherents gave up on the non-violent approach and switched to the Kosova Liberation Army (KLA): a clan-based rag-tag militia which by 1993 had evolved from emigré separatist groups in Western Europe, comprising refugees from the 1980 crackdown. Faithful to the 19th century nationalist ideal of a polity coextensive with the ethnicity, it revived the old pipedream of uniting the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Albania itself in a Greater Albania. This grandiose irredentist project, harking back to the League of Prizren of 1878, was the long-term ambition. The KLA’s immediate end was independence.

As to the means it was prepared to use, indisputably part of its funding derived from organized crime, possibly including participation in the infamous Balkan Route of heroin to Western Europe. There have also been reports of ties with jihadi groups. Most likely, both accusations contain elements of truth — the former perhaps more than the latter — but have been exaggerated in pro-Serb propaganda. The KLA was not the armed wing of Albanian organized crime, nor did its agenda and leadership have much to do with political Islam.

KLA fighters.

In early 1996 the KLA launched a low-intensity insurgency, ambushing security forces and assailing “collaborators.” Its existence was long only rumored, but by early 1997 it began to claim responsibility.
Stocking up on cheap Kalashnikovs from the looted armories of Albania, then in a state of anarchy after the collapse of nation-wide pyramid financing schemes, the KLA escalated operations throughout the year. On the night to September 11 it performed a series of ten coordinated attacks as much as 150 km apart. On November 28 — a date commemorated as a national day among Kosovo Albanians — a KLA member appeared in public as such for the very first time.

At this point the guerrilla began to target civilian Serbs. The master strategy was a kind of martial judo familiar from terrorist campaigns: turning the enemy’s strength against him. Pinprick operations aimed to provoke disproportionate reprisals which would rally Kosovo Albanians around its cause and, with any luck, elicit Western intervention. Perhaps aware of this risk in the light of Clinton’s threats, and having experience with provocation tactics himself, Milošević shied away from deploying the army.

He eventually changed his mind. On some accounts, this happened when on February 23 1998, US special envoy Robert Gelbard imprudently, if not inaccurately, called the KLA “without any question a terrorist group” which the US condemned “very strongly.” Within a week, Serbian special forces backed by helicopter gunships and armoured personnel carriers performed a brutal crackdown in the western Drenica region, flattening entire towns that served as strongholds for leading KLA (and mafia) clans. To go by Kosovo Albanian sources, this involved summary executions, even outright massacres. Albanian media reported a hundred thousand attending the funerals.

The sweep continued into March, notably at the village of Prekaz in central Kosovo, where fifty-three members of the Jeshari clan allegedly were slaughtered. The KLA made the most of this, posting photos of the corpses on the Internet as soon as available. A massive uprising followed, swelling the ranks of the KLA. Meanwhile, up to 400,000 Kosovo Albanians were forced to flee their homes, some at gunpoint and many over the mountains to Albania.

This humanitarian disaster led to the UN Security Council to impose economic sanctions and an arms embargo on Yugoslavia, threatening “additional measures” if it failed to withdraw. To underline the point, 85 NATO aircraft overflew Albania and Macedonia; the US Sixth Fleet, put on battle alert, cruised into the Adriatic in a show of force. Finally, in late September the Clinton administration opened the door for air strikes; in October, NATO authorized such in the case of non-compliance with “the repeated political and humanitarian demands of the UN Security Council in regards to Kosovo.”

Belgrade had no choice but to fold. In the so-called Holbrooke-Milošević agreement of October 12, it agreed to restore Kosovo’s autonomy and pull out the army and police in return for a lifting of the UN sanctions. A multinational corps of 750 civilian monitors, under the auspices of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), moved in to supervise the implementation.

By all accounts, the some 130 strong US contribution to this Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM) was heavily spy-infested. (There are unverified allegations that the KVM head, US diplomat William Walker — an old Latin America hand with stints in El Salvador and Honduras — was himself CIA.) According to the Sunday Times, the Americans operated on “completely different terms” than the Europeans, providing advice and combat manuals to the KLA.

The latter for its part was neither party to nor content with the ceasefire. It surged forth into the power vacuum, seizing half the province and extending a makeshift administrative structure as it went along. As reported in the BBC2 documentary Moral Combat, Walker confidentially told NATO’s governing body that the guerrilla was now “the main initiator of the violence,” apparently engaging in “a deliberate campaign of provocation.”

On January 15 1999, another massacre occurred in the town of Racak, a KLA stronghold in southern Kosovo, where some 45 Albanians were murdered in cold blood after attacks on Serbian police. Or so, at any rate, William Walker assured a press conference, describing in gory detail the aftermath of an “unspeakable atrocity” and a “crime against humanity.” The charge would be central to the case against Milošević in The Hague, where Walker testified for the prosecution about the heaps of dead bodies he had seen on that day.

Bodies at Racak — combatants or civilians?

Yet doubts immediately arose about this incident. There are indications that it was a hoax staged by the KLA to trigger NATO intervention. Frustratingly, there are also persuasive counter-arguments. In a sense it hardly even matters, inasmuch as neither side was morally above what it stood accused of by the other side. What is clear is that, if it was indeed a KLA hoax, it succeeded.

News of the Racak incident broke within hours of a National Security Council meeting in which US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who had for nearly a year favored putting military pressure on Milošević, argued in vain for “decisive steps.” Albright later called Racak “a galvanizing incident,” meaning that it galvanized will to contemplate the use of force.

She was right, both in terms of the Clinton administration and international opinion. For the German Foreign Minister Joschka Fisher, for instance, “Racak became the turning point”: “If people are being massacred, you cannot mutter about having no [UN Security Council] mandate. You must act.” Within two weeks, NATO announced its readiness to intervene, France and Britain vowed to send in ground troops if needed, and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan stateed that Bosnia had proven “the need to use force, when all other means have failed.”

Finally, the so-called Contact Group of Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Russia and the US summoned the parties, on pains of NATO airstrikes, to the Château de Rambouillet outside Paris. Talks began on February 6 amidst intermittent clashes, torched villages, and a Serbian presence some six times heavier than allowed by the ceasefire. What transpired at Rambouillet has been, it is fair to say, misrepresented widely in US and European media to this day.

It was announced that, merely by taking part, the parties implicitly accepted 26 principles which the British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook had stated on January 30. These non-negotiable principles were culled from the January 27 version of an ‘Interim Agreement’ drafted by the US envoy, Holbrooke’s deputy Christopher Hill.

This framework mandated an immediate truce and disarmament followed by restored self-government for Kosovo within the FRY. Upon free elections supervised by the OSCE, the province would enjoy its own parliament, president, judicial system and police; the cultural rights of all ethnic groups would be respected; all political prisoners would be released; and a final settlement would be reached after three years. A new version of the agreement, presented to the parties upon arrival, specified that the latter would occur through a “mechanism” determined by an “international meeting” on the basis of “the will of the people” and various “opinions” and “efforts.” Albright gave the parties one week to endorse this fait accompli and hash out the details, otherwise “appropriate conclusions” would be drawn. In case of Yugoslav refusal, that meant air strikes; in case of Albanian ditto, abandonment to the Serbs.

According to French journalist Paul-Marie De La Gorce writing in Le Monde Diplomatique, the Yugoslavian delegation accepted the proposal. However, the KLA did not: preferring status quo to “mere” autonomy, it demanded a clause guaranteeing eventual independence. This situation — Serbian acceptance cum Albanian refusal — was the opposite of what the US State Department had expected. Albright arrived on February 20 to persuade the KLA’s delegation leader, Hasim Thaci, to sign.

In a letter to Thaci dated 22nd February, she provided an interpretation of the aforementioned “mechanism”:

The next day, negotiations were adjourned, the KLA delegation heading off to Macedonia to consult with its leaders; the US sent down Senator Bob Dole to continue the lobbying. In addition to Albright’s concession, three novel elements were now introduced to further sugar the pill: elections would be held ASAP; the disarmament would not extend to “private weapons”; and last but not least, NATO forces would ensure Yugoslavian compliance.

On March 15, talks resumed in Paris and the KLA announced its readiness to sign the deal unilaterally.

And unilateral the signing would be, for the deal had evolved into something completely unacceptable to Belgrade. It is unclear whether Milošević knew of Albright’s letter; if so, that alone explains his refusal to sign. Having arguably lost three wars in the former Yugoslavia, he could ill afford to lose Kosovo, which he had personally touted as the Serb nation’s ancestral home and the embodiment of its historical martyrdom. Neither his government nor the equally nationalist opposition, nor indeed the disaffected Serbian populace, would condone secession.

The other novelties were also inedible to Belgrade. The revised ‘Interrim Agreement for Peace and Self-Government in Kosovo’ required Serbian security forces to withdraw to at least 5 km from the border. A NATO force with no upward cap or oversight by the the UN Security Council would move in and assume full control, including over the airspace. As if this were not enough, Appendix B on the ‘Status of Multi-National Military Implementation Force’ effectively authorizes NATO occupation of the entire Former Republic of Yugoslavia:

There is an under-appreciated irony in the Czech-born Albright informing reporters that “Munich is my mindset” while trying to coerce a sovereign state into accepting loss of territory on terms such as these. The pro-Serbian side of the continuing debate (or shouting match) argues that said terms both explain and justify Milošević’s rejection of the Rambouillet Accord. Pro-NATO pundits counter that they were lifted from the Dayton Accords, wherein Croatia agreed to the equivalent, and that they were anyway negotiable had the Serbs engaged in negotiation, which they did not.

The latter claim is flatly denied by De La Gorce. According to him, Belgrade’s prime representative at Rambouillet — the President of Serbia, Milan Milutinović — suggested an “international presence” in Kosovo independent of NATO and comprising forces from Russia, Greece, and Western Europe.

Some commentators go as far as to suggest that the US deliberately provoked Belgrade’s rejection to clear the way for war. A more plausible analysis is that it gambled and lost. Faced with the likelihood that no possible agreement would be acceptable to both the parties, its strategy was to secure a KLA signature with all necessary concessions and then make Milošević an offer he could not refuse. Such inequitable use of stick and carrot proved a grave miscalculation on March 18, as the KLA delegates signed while their Yugoslav counterparts refused.

Later that day, Clinton declared that “the treshold had been crossed” in regard to triggering NATO intervention. On the following day, “winter live fire exercises” commenced in Kosovo, prompting evacuation of KVM personnel; again according to the Sunday Times, CIA elements handed over advanced communications equipment to the KLA before leaving.

A major diplomatic crisis ensued. Russia had informally condoned the threat against Yugoslavia but stressed that it could never tolerate its actual implementation. China, preoccupied with sovereignty, was also opposed. Thus, though it cited several UN Security Council resolutions, the first war in NATO’s history lacked an explicit UNSC authorization. Within NATO, Greece and Italy objected.

But the resistance was brushed aside, in part, no doubt, owing to another miscalculation: the US and NATO believed that a brief, token bombing campaign would compel Milošević to sign. This belief also helps account for Clinton’s cavalier vow, in his March 24 address to the nation, that no ground troops would be deployed.

Moreover, the strategic error sheds light on the absence of planning characterizing Operation Allied Force from its beginning later on that day. A recent PhD dissertation by Captain Dag Henriksen at the Norwegian Air Force Academy documents that the NATO targeting cell at the air operations center CAOC Vicenza was asked to find arbitrary targets for a campaign of 2-3 days with no guidance as to strategic objectives. The personnel found the situation so amateurish that they assumed a political deal had already been struck with Milošević. When by a week later nothing had changed, the targeters decided to improvise a strategy of their own.

Based upon interviews with most central actors of Allied Force including the SACEUR, General Wesley Clark, Henriksen also brings out another, and quite remarkable, reason for the neglect of NATO strategy: unbeknown to its allies, the US unilaterally ran a bombing campaign of its own, hitting targets without NATO control. Consequently these targets were sometimes hit twice. European chiefs of staff reacted with fury to discovering this.

To the extent that key allies were kept out of the dark, it happened in a “Black Committee” comprising the US, the UK, and France. The democratic institutions of NATO were creatively bypassed to evade political control with the escalation of target categories as the campaign stagnated.

As other analysts have shown, there was conflict even between Clark and his principal US subordinate, Lt Gen Michael Short of the US Air Force. Clark ordered Short to target air defenses and military units in Kosovo while the latter wanted, as he put it, to “strike at the head of the snake” — Belgrade. Despite threatening to resign, he got permission for shock and awe tactics only by the end of May, by which time sorties had multiplied from 400 to 900 a day and there was still no resolution in sight, much to Washington’s despair. The target list was expanded to include infrastructure like bridges (more than half of those over the Danube were hit); oil refineries and power plants (causing nation-wide power blackouts); government facilities; factories owned by allies of Milošević; the state broadcasting service RTS (at the cost of 16-17 civilian lives); and infamously, the Chinese embassy.

Bombed bridge at Novi-Sad

Meanwhile, things had been taking a dramatic turn on the ground. True to form, and far from any idea of surrender, the cynical Milošević had taken the opportunity to launch the most extensive campaign of forced deportation since World War II, resulting in hundreds of thousands fleeing to Macedonia and Albania within the end of March. This ethnic cleansing was precisely the kind of atrocity the air strikes were supposed to prevent: a true humanitarian disaster on an epic scale. Adding insult to injury, Belgrade was able to argue that the refugees were running from NATO bombs.

Nor did the air strikes weaken Milošević’s popular standing, as naïvely anticipated. On the contrary, the Serbs rallied around him against the superior foreign enemy in what the propanganda could paint as a 20th century Kosovo Battle. To punctuate the symbolism, units of the Yugoslav army exercized on the myth-imbued plains as they trained to confront the NATO ground invasion that could not be excluded — especially not after British PM Tony Blair began to publically advocate it in April. Washington shut him up, but the option was now on the table and increasingly pushed by others, including Clark.

What ultimately swayed Milošević was probably less the strategic bombing than this prospect of ground troops, combined with the unwelcome news that Russia would stay passive in such a scenario.

By the end of April, NATO woke up to the necessity of dealing with Russia, so far humiliated and left to impotent rage as a fellow orthodox nation was attacked (Russian PM Yevgeny Primakov turned his Washington-bound plane around in mid-flight at the war’s beginning). By May, Russia and Germany had opened a secret back channel wherein a Swedish financier, Peter Castenfelt, was smuggled into Belgrade. He communicated to Milošević that not only President Yeltsin but the Russian security establishment would hang him out to dry if he failed to exit. This had the virtue of being true: Yeltsin, moved by the urgency of ending a war that sent his approval ratings nose-diving, had somehow bought off the military, which otherwise might have rebelled. All this according to the aforementioned BBC2 documentary, Moral Combat.

On May 31, Belgrade announced its consent to the Rambouillet Accord. The Serbian Parliament gave it the nod three days later, Milošević reportedly voting in favor. A withdrawal agreement was finalized on May 9, followed on May 10 by pullout; ratification of the Accord by the UNSC; preparations for the ongoing KFOR peacekeeping mission; and suspension of Operation Allied Force 11 weeks after it began.

NATO had launched a total of 38,004 combat sorties, of which 10,484 were strikes against targets in the FRY (Serbia, Kosovo, and Montenegro), and 18,439 were aerial tanker and airlift sorties. The Alliance’s first war properly so-called was also the first in history without a single combat fatality for the victor. As to civilians, Human Rights Watch confirms that at least 500 Yugoslav such were killed in 90 separate incidents over 78 days of bombing, a number considerably smaller than Yugoslav public estimates of up to 5,000 civilian casualties.

On the other hand, the 2000 report noted that:

The report also found that NATO on several occasions broke international humanitarian law, and criticized the use of cluster bombs in civilian areas. Another controversial issue has been the use of DU-tipped munitions, whose detrimental health effects, according to some authorities, are seen in the cancer statistics today.

But what of the campaign’s overarching strategic goals for Kosovo — were these achieved? That is hard to say, not least because these were so ill-defined in the first place. Asked by Captain Dag Henriksen to which extent the operational planning focused on what Kosovo would look like when the strongest military alliance in history had prevailed, then deputy SACEUR General Rupert Smith replied: “Oh, it wasn’t in focus at all.”

Such myopia, especially on the political level, had consequences. Upon the end of hostilities in June, Kosovo Albanian refugees started to return; but at the same time, Serbs fled or were chased out by Albanians in equally large numbers. By July 20, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimated that 150,000 Serbs were flooding into Serbia, which already harbored half a million refugees from the other ex-Yugoslavian wars. The total number of refugees from Kosovo rose to some 230,000, most of them Serbs. Of these, over 200,000 remain Internally Displaced Persons in what is Europe’s biggest refugee problem. A hundred thousand Serbs stayed put among approximately 1.8 million ethnic Albanians, among whom little love was lost on Serbs.

This minority now dwell in KFOR-guarded enclaves, with limited freedom of movement and high unemployment even by the standards of a dysfunctional UN protectorate where only the black economy flowers. The Serbian apartheid state has effectively been inverted. More than 4,000 Serbs worked at the public electricity service in 1999; today around 30 do so, out of 8,000 employees. Meanwhile, barbed wire and armed KFOR troops protect those medieval monasteries that remain recognizably intact.

Independence is, however, finally in the offing, mostly because the Western powers acknowledge once again that the majority would never settle for less. Serbia, impoverished and demoralized, is unable to do more than strut and fret at the impending loss of its “historical heartland.”

For now. Anyone doubting that ancient history lives in the Balkans should bear in mind quite a recent incident. On May 24, 1999, Slobodan Milosevic had become the first sitting head of state to be charged with war crimes in the midst of a war, the charges including murder and deportation in Kosovo. A little more than two years later, he was himself deported to the cell at the Hague that would be his final home.

The date chosen for his extradition just happened to be St. Vitus Day, June 28.

In this informative op-ed (kronikk) from the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet, two researchers at the Christian Michelsen Institute for human rights studies explain why the situation in Afghanistan is no better than that in Iraq. They also offer constructive proposals for the Pentagon to blithely ignore.

THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY has since November 2001 engaged in two distinct and partly contradictory processes in Afghanistan. On the one hand is a diverse peace building project involving economic reconstruction, political elections, reform of the state administration and the courts, and support for human rights; on the other hand, warfare.

The war has primarily been prosecuted by US forces against al-Qaeda elements and the Taliban. Since 2003 the US has switched to a classic counter-insurgency strategy whereby the enemy is to be crushed militarily while the population is won over with economic assistance, humanitarian aid, and political initiatives.

Yet innocent lives are often claimed. In May, some 35 civilians (women, children, and elderly men) were killed in a US airstrike against a village in the Kandahar province. Such incidents have occurred several times before. Every time, President Karzai expresses regret and asks the Americans to wage war without harming the civil population. Every time, tempers rise as it becomes clear that Karzai’s pleas are unheeded. When even mosques are bombed — as recently in Kandahar — the conflict is further intensified.

WAGING WAR against a locally entrenched guerrilla force without harming the civilian population is exceedingly difficult in the first place. Nor is Washington interested in advice from the Afghan government, and it has therefore not signed a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), as standard protocol between sovereign states demands.

When Karzai traveled to Kandahar to convey his regrets for the incident, the inhabitants of the local village requested that foreign forces be pulled out. The coalition forces do not contribute to people’s highest priority: enhanced protection against “everyday violence” at the hands of local strongmen. The international troops are waging a war in Afghanistan that at best does not concern the village and at worst affects it directly and adversely.

US forces have also adopted a mode of operation that provokes counter-reactions almost whereever they go. In Kabul they disregard every traffic rule for their own security. When a lot of such minor issues add to a deeper sense of anger and frustration, things may turn explosive — as recently in Kabul.

THE MAJOR GRIEVANCES are related to much of what has been done in the names of both warfare and peacebuilding. The ambitious program for economic reconstruction and the visions of modernization, democracy, and human rights have created expectations as well as fear. Many were hoping for peace and progress in terms of a restored house, a job, and security. Every poll shows that most Afghans still consider lack of work and security the biggest problems. Meanwhile, others have quite visibly become staggeringly rich; largely, it is assumed, on corruption, smuggling, and drug trade. Similarly, one person’s hopes for greater freedom is another person’s threat against fundamental religious and traditional social values. This conflict plays out both in the public sphere and the interface to the private sphere, as when a female TV host, known for her liberated demeanor on camera, was murdered.

Development invariably fosters contrast and conflict, but the Afghan case is unique. The development is programme-bound to be extensive and swift, and is mainly to be financed by means of development aid. Only some 8 percent of the national budget stems from domestic taxes. Foreigners are conspicuous both in Kabul and on the countryside as advisers, development managers, and so on. This makes the reconstruction — which effectively has become an extensive modernization project — appear to be promoted and owned by foreigners.

When in addition foreign forces wage war in a way that harms ordinary people and militants alike, there is fertile ground for broad mobilization against foreigners, the regime, and those who have gained most from the peace. The Kabul riots targeted them all.

IS THERE A WAY OUT OF this misfortune? Previous attempts to swiftly develop Afghanistan under King Amanullah in the 1920s and President Daoud in the 1970s misfired. When Afghan communists backed by Soviet forces set out to modernize the country while waging war, they failed even worse. There may be a lesson here.

One could likely diminish the antagonism toward the peacebuilding by slowing down the reform programme, putting more weight on basic needs like jobs and security from everyday violence, and lowering the profile of foreigners.

As to the warfare, it does not appear feasible to crush the Taliban guerrilla militarily, nor by letting the military forces assume more humanitarian tasks. In fact the militants have multiplied in proportion to the growing number of foreign troops since November 2001. ISAF and the coalition forces now count some 32,000 combined (USA 23,000, NATO 9,000). Yet the security (as measured by the numbers of military or civilian casualties, or the number of combat incidents) has been weakened, especially since 2003.

Blaming Pakistan — where the Taliban is openly mobilizing — serves to obscure how complex the opposition to the international presence is. Schools for girls are torched in areas where the Taliban never had a foothold, such as the areas where Norwegian troops were attacked, and drugs are cultivated all across the country. Besides, Pakistan’s role must be understood in a regional context and in terms of the fear of being “surrounded” by India, which has now forcefully entered Afghanistan and enhanced its relations with Washington. Political innovation and agility are called for here.

Those are also needed on the military front. The planned US force reduction gave NATO an opportunity to rethink ISAF’s role. Instead, it decided to follow in the coalition’s footsteps by branching out to the south and east and operating with a more offensive mandate. The Brits are going to wage war on the drug smugglers of Helmand; another war they are unlikely to win. The Canadians in Kandahar have already launched offensive operations. This makes not only them, but probably all foreign forces, magnets and targets for the militants.

ONE ALTERNATIVE is actually to deescalate the offensive warfare in the south and east, and lower the profile of foreign forces by concentrating them in a few urban settlements. If such a strategy of stabilization is tied to a more active diplomacy of reconciliation with respect to the Taliban, it needs not spawn garrison towns in a negative sense.

The Afghans have ancient traditions for negotiating as well as fighting. Karzai is a skilled negotiator in this game, as e.g. his selection of governors shows. He has long stressed the necessity of a political solution. To send in Canadian troops or American A-10 aircraft can only clutter up this strategy and bring out the drawback of deploying military force when what is needed is the will to innovative thinking and political solutions.

I might add that another compatriot of mine, the legendary anthropologist Fredrik Barth, is making the same argument. According to Barth, what is characteristic of Afghanistan is the ever changing alliances. By continuing to bomb the Taliban one has effectively solidified it outside the power-sharing cabal instead of coopting it. — Sirocco

Crossposted from European Tribune.

It’s that time again. Today the International Whaling Commission (IWC) opens its annual session on St. Kitts. Among the close to 70 member states whose delegates fill the halls, only 3 — Norway, Iceland, and Japan — have whalers in their ranks. Yet the so-called pro-whaling wing will for the first time in decades match the anti-whaling wing this year; the English-language press has for weeks been fretting about the prospect of a narrow pro-whaling majority. The Washington Post recently intoned under the stirring headline ‘Save the Whales’:

A couple of facts about this “ban” might be helpful right off the bat. First, the IWC passed the “ban” without the recommendation of its own Scientific Committee, which did not consider it necessary. Second, said “ban” was a temporary moratorium, to be reviewed in 1990 “at the latest” with an eye to fixing new, sustainable quotas. The treaty document states:

This “comprehensive assessment” has been stubbornly blocked by the anti-whalers, even though, as the Economist noted in a well-balanced article of 2003:

The IWC’s actual mandate is not to suppress the hunt. It is to implement the 1946 International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, whose “explicit objectives were, and remain, to provide for the proper conservation of whale stocks and the orderly development of the whaling industry.” Source: the IWC.

Iceland, taking this at face value, was lured into accepting the moratorium; when it got the wiser, it left the IWC in 1992. Ten years hence it rejoined with an objection to the moratorium, exempting it from the latter under the Convention. Japan and Norway both reserved themselves at the outset by filing objections and so were entitled to commercial whaling seasons.

For Norway’s part this remains the case. It nonetheless voluntarily suspended hunting until 1993, when it was clear that the anti-whaling majority would not allow the overdue assessment to take place. (From a legal point of view it can, in fact, be argued that the moratorium expired wholesale in 1990, but let’s leave that aside.) Norway’s whaling season is openly commercial — though by no means industrial or large-scale — so it is incorrect when the Observer, in a not exactly unbiased article entitled ‘The shadow of slaughter hangs over whales’, accuses Norway of hiding behind a scientific pretext.

Japan, on the other hand, withdrew its reservation under US pressure. The Japanese side of this story deserves a hearing:

It’s a fair guess that this sense of having been double-crossed helps explain Japan’s insistence on exploiting a loophole permitting whaling for research.

Returning to the WaPo:

Norway and Iceland never stopped hunting? For Norway’s case, see above. As to Iceland, it suspended activity from 1989 to 1993, when it reintroduced a scientific quoata of 38 minke in order to “have a better understanding of all the factors that might impact fish stocks - including whales.”

As to the meeting in St. Kitts, the WaPo is concerned:

Not so fast. First, noone is ‘flouting the ban’. The hunting carried out today is unquestionably legal, however else one feels about it, and implying otherwise is simply dishonest. It is not, however, uncommon: Reuters claims that Norway “openly defies the ban.” The Independent called Norway’s hunt ‘illegal’ on June 11, demonstrating that it’s not above a “noble” lie, much like veracity-challenged organizations such as Greenpeace.

Second, Japan has indeed been recruiting allies, even using foreign aid as an incentive. However, the strategy of involving countries with no horse in the race is one that leading anti-whaling members have pursued for a generation. The IWC was established in 1946 by the world’s 14 main whaling nations. Between 1979 and 1982, 19 new countries joined; ten attended their first IWC-meeting in 1982. Thus, for instance, landlocked Switzerland helped pass the moratorium. This April, Israel, which has hitherto had bigger fish to fry than whaling, saw fit to join. Since when has one the few countries rejecting the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty favored multilateral regimes? According to the Haaretz, since the US ambassador made a personal appeal to the Israeli Foreign Minister on the matter.

Third, the pro-whaling High North Alliance notes that the theoretical pro-whaling majority may not manifest itself in votes in the chaotic bargaining circus that is an IWC session. In any case, the pro-whalers will not be able to raise the 3/4 majority required to scrap the moratorium. The “considerable boost,” which the Independent decries as a “Great Betrayal,” is unlikely to amount to much in practice.

But the bullying of the anti-whaling countries, spurred by organizations like Greenpeace for which the issue is an effective fundraiser, isn’t doing so either. If anything, the Economist notes, this Ahab-like zeal is prone to backfire:

Can someone please explain this to, say, the ambassadors from 12 countries who recently, in an unusual diplomatic move reminiscent of the Muhammed madness, saw fit to impugn the integrity of Norway’s marine researchers? These researchers are independent, leading in their field, and applying the method devised by the IWC Scientific Committee to set sustainable catch quotas for the North Atlantic minke whale.

And what will it take to make anti-whaling governments realize that, if they doubt the resource management of whaling nations, they should let the IWC itself perform that role in accordance with its mandate?

If demand for whale meat is indeed dwindling in the whaling countries, as they claim, then surely that is the way to let the whaling business die a natural death, while in the meantime making whaling nations more receptive to legitimate questions of animal welfare?

Or is the endless whaling brouhaha just too convenient as a diversion from truly grave environmental challenges like global warming, the depletion of fish stocks, and the pollution of the seas?

For more on the facts and ethics of Norwegian minke whale hunting, see my previous post, Why I had whale steak for dinner today.

The World Waterfall Database rates Langfossen in my county, Hordaland, the most beautiful in the world, with an aesthetic score of 100/100.

Its height is over 2000 feet. Legend has it that its water is an aphrodisiac.

Here are a few more numbers:

President George W Bush asked for federal spending cuts in Medicare, education, environmental programs, NOAA, Department of the Interior, agriculture, and transportation funding for fiscal year 2007. The White House will submit spending increases for key military advancement initiatives in Iraq and for Afghanistan, according to a Pentagon leaked memo.

During the week ahead President George W Bush will seek $129 billion in additional financing for ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The new spending request covers expenses for calendar year 2006. The additional request is the third interim request for dollars following the United States’ invasion of Iraq in March 2003, which is not included in fiscal budget requests.

In addition to military maintenance costs, President Bush will request additional money to finance long-term operations in the Middle East; figures of which cover contractor labor and Halliburton-subsidiary KBR Inc.’s maintenance expenses. Those figures have not yet been disclosed, however Halliburton reported $2 billion in profits for fiscal year 2005 — a triple recovery from its more than $1 billion reported loss for 2004.

President Bush plans to propose a 5 percent across the board increase for defense spending for the 2007 fiscal year. The White House plans to submit a $439.3 billion spending bill.

Dulce et decorum est pro Halliburton, Bechtel, General Dynamics, Skylink, and Lockheed-Martin mori.

In “news” from the failed state of Sri Lanka, a certain H. L. D. Mahindapala at an “online newspaper” known as the Asian Tribune bleats:

The Asian Tribune, which I refuse to dignify with a link, is perhaps the most dishonest online publication I’ve yet encountered in twelve years on the Internet. Basically a shrill propaganda outlet for Sinhala extremism of the absolutely crudest kind, it has shied away from nothing to undermine the peace process by constant bitching about Norway being “biased” toward the LTTE. Not content with accusing the peace broker of ulterior motives too lame to repeat, it has insinuated that the Norwegian peace envoys have masterminded terrorist attacks to boost their importance.

The evidence? “Analysts state,” “analysts agree,” “analysts note.” These are the Asian Tribune’s euphemisms for “we have pulled this out of our rectums, aren’t we great?”

No, you are shameless hacks. If the “pilot” has indeeed left the “plane” — and at this point I only wish that were the case — rest assured that Asian Tribune helped push him out. Now, as the aircraft is tailspinning to the ground, it scolds him for having been so ejected.

Oy, that’s rich.

PS. The aforementioned H. L. D. Mahindapala won’t be affected by the civil war. He’s an expat in Australia.

The New York Times reports on a geopolitical image problem:

A memory from high school in the 90s: One morning as I come to class, a strange heavy-set dork wearing a baseball cap is seated at my desk. He returns my quizzical look with a hostile stare; I find another desk. It turns out he’s an American student visiting a girl in my class on an exchange program of sorts. He has accomplished this by bragging of his outstanding cooking skills and way of ruling the dance floor, both of which are fictional; his hobby is to slack on the couch laughing uncontrollably at sitcoms. A sample of his interaction with the locals:

Fat American Dork is not a typical US citizen. He is emblematic of how a big proportion of earthlings perceive the US as a member of the world society. If nations were to be imagined as individuals, I suspect that something like Fat American Dork is how many would visualize the US.

For some of us, Fat American Dork has advanced in age — though hardly in maturity — and traded a few pounds for a monstrous mustache. In defiance of Congress’ wishes, he is now the US emissary to the world; a psychotic Captain Kangaroo who alienates everyone, most recently Oxford students, and who goes by the name of John Bolton.

Here’s Bolton’s MO as ambassador to the United Nations, as described by Sebastian Mallaby in the Washington Post:

As every last one of those allies know, the UN was devised by Stalin to transform all Americans into cross-dressing, tree-hugging Muslims riding pink bycycles to work while degenerate bureaucrats steal them blind. It’s essential that they never forget this; if the UN were to actually be reformed, they conceivably might.

Guess what? The world is beginning to want its desk back.

When I heard of the “act of war” by Gitmo prisoners, it vaguely reminded me of something. But for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what it was.

Well, it just hit me:

The suicide squad in Monty Python’s Life of Brian!

Is satire obsolete, or what?

Digby posts this photo of a cat — yes, a cat — chasing a bear up a tree:

Let the bear be the US, the cat be Osama bin Laden, and the tree be Iraq. Voilá, you have the story of the last five years.

Crossposted from Daily Kos.

Who would have thought that a Tunisian scholar who perished 600 years ago developed a theory of the US Democratic netroots in the early 21st century? Right. And I will grant, off the cuff, that he didn’t. Yet his model of political history lends itself strikingly to what is being duly celebrated in Las Vegas.

The New York Times remarks on Yearly Kos:

For me, that passage brought to mind ‘Abd-ar-Rahmân Abû Zayd ibn Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Khaldûn al-Hadramî, or as he is also known, Abû Zayd ‘Abd-ar-Rahmân ibn Muhammad ibn Khaldûn al-Hadrami al-Ishbilî; or with merciful simplicity: Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406).

Please let me explain this strange association.

The background for Khaldun’s work was the intellectual stagnation and political disintegration of the Islamic civilization since about 1000 A.D., when the Abbasid dynasty in Baghdad began to unravel. The Mongol hordes had dismantled the Caliphate and the Ottomans not yet established a new one. Across North Africa and the Middle East, Berber, Bedouin, and Tartar tribes washed over the urban settlements in successive waves of invasion. Khaldun, whose biography is extremely colorful, had first-hand experience with this: in 1401, he was lowered down the walls of besieged Damascus to negotiate with Tamerlane, Chinggiz Khan’s odious successor, who liked to build pyramids of his enemies’ skulls.

These turbulent times inspired his Muqaddimah (Prolegomena), which the great British historian Arnold J. Toynbee called “undoubtedly the greatest work of its kind that has ever yet been created by any mind in any time or place.” Others have compared it to the work of Hegel, Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Marx, and Durkheim. Founding a discipline that five centuries later would be called ‘Sociology’, the Muqaddimah highlights how environmental, social, and economic factors produce the ebb and flow of civilization (al-’Umraan).

Khaldun memorably defined the state as an institution that prevents injustice other than such as it inflicts itself. Yet “a thousand years of tyranny,” he affirmed in a classic aphorism, “is preferable to one day of anarchy.” Then again, the political order cannot be based upon brute subjugation. After all, who is to do the subjugation if not some armed group acting of free will? Essential, therefore, is cohesion or group-feeling (al-’Asabiyya); a social glue only prone to arise in the absence of subjugation that can be found in the hinterland of mountain, steppe, or desert.

Here self-governing clans and tribes roam free, protected by their mobility and environment from the emir’s or sultan’s control. Typically egalitarian communities where every man is a warrior, they hone their fighting skills by internal feuds, disdaining the unfree yet lax and decadent life of the city. At the same time they may, however, come to desire the resources and power of the urban rulers. Occasionally — rallied around a feisty leader — they may put their differences aside and ride on the alluring city in the distance.

The philosopher and anthropologist Ernest Gellner summarized Khaldun’s general account as follows:

Within such a cycle of a few generations, a successful urban ruling dynasty goes through five stages of power, theorized Ibn Khaldun:

1) the stage of success (tawr az-zafar).
2) that of establishing a monopoly on organized violence, or complete authority (tawr al-istibdaad).
3) that of leisure and tranquility (tawr al-faraj wa-d-dicah).
4) that of contentment and peacefulness (tawr al-qunuuc wa-l-musaalamah), and
5) that of waste and squandering (tawr al-israaf wa-l-tabdhiir).

It is at the fifth stage that the state is most in need of an infusion of fresh blood if it is not to be overrun by an enemy state. Fortunately, that is also the stage where it is most vulnerable to invasion by the free-roaming, fierce, egalitarian, and honor-craving hordes that, with any luck, will be crashing the gates.

I trust, fellow barbarians, that the analogy does not need to be spelled out further.

Update: I regret and retract the above praise of Daily Kos, whose owner, Markos Moulitsas, is a coward without the balls to speak up with a single word against the US-sponsored destruction of Lebanon.

Squaak! Zarqawi wants a bisquit!

Marwaan said: “We asked `Abdullaah Ibn Mas’ood, may Allaah be pleased with him, about the following verse: (which translates as): “And never think of those who have been killed in the cause of Allaah as dead. Rather, they are alive with their Lord, receiving provision.” (Aal-`Imraan: 169).’ He, may Allaah be pleased with him, replied: “We asked the Prophet sallallaahu `alaihi wa sallam about this verse and he replied: “Their (i.e., the martyrs’ souls) will live inside green birds that dwell in designated lamps which hang on the throne of Allaah, they will roam freely in Paradise as they please, then return to these lamps”” (Muslim).

Osama Khayyaat: The Virtues of Martyrdom (1478).

As to the 72 delectable ‘virgins’, they turn out to be, well, white grapes.

Of course, this is the best-case scenario.

In the Sri Lanka conflict, Norway’s angelic patience is wearing thin:

I never thought I would feel this way, but here I am: Just ditch these lying fools and let them slug it out. It’s what they want and what they do best.

A characteristic example of Greenpeace integrity:

Rove should hire these types. Their minds work the same way as his — and differences of view have been settled before.

The belated offing of al-Zarqawi is worth a toast in itself, but its strategic significance for the war is another matter.

For it is primarily not Jihadi Salafists (or as they prefer to call themselves, ‘mujahideen’) that blow stuff up in Iraq. It is more prosaic-minded Iraqi Sunnis, often associated with the former Baathist elite, that just resent the Shia government and the de facto occupation.

Indeed, the so-called Iraqi branch of al-Qaeda, which Zarqawi is supposed to have led at least until recently, is a weak and tattered organization with a terrible image. A document captured by commandos of the Task Force 145 in an April 16 raid laments its deep inferiority vis-a-vis its enemies in Baghdad. There is a massive deficit of organization, supplies, men, media savvy, and workable plan, according to Centcom’s purported translation of the memorandum.

As to Zarqawi himself, he must have been a real pain in the behind for his uneasy allies like al-Zawihiri, who — still according to the Coalition — sent him an admonishing letter of instruction last July. The note complains that Zarqawi’s all-consuming hatred of Shias and outlandish savagery only serve to alienate Iraqis, and other Muslims, from the mujahideen. In April, Huthayfah Azzam, son of the legendary jihadi Abdullah Azzam, claimed that Zarqawi had been relieved of his command as chief of operations after his disastrous suicide bombing campaign in Amman.

Whether that be the case or not, I concur with Spencer Ackerman in The New Republic: the biggest beneficiary of Zarqawi’s death may very well be al-Qaeda.

Since there is a five-minutes recess in the threat-making against Iran, the fulminating fascist John Bolton gets off by threatening the United Nations, FOX News reports:

[US ambassador to the UN John] Bolton called Tuesday’s speech by Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown a “very, very grave mistake” that could undermine Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s efforts to push through an ambitious agenda at the world body.

[snip]

“To have the deputy secretary-general criticize the United States in such a manner can only do grave harm to the United Nations,” Bolton said. “Even though the target of the speech was the United States, the victim, I fear, will be the United Nations.”

Uh-oh. Is another tall building in NY about to turn into debris? Or merely lose ten stories? Clearly something earth-shattering has occurred:

The. Worst. Mistake. By a senior UN official. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall! In other words, a very very very grave mistake — worse than the Oil-for-Food scandal, and the surrender of Srebrenica to General Mladic, and the failure to investigate the sexual abuse by UN Peacekeepers of impoverished Congolese kids.

That must have been some speech.

So what dynamite did it contain? An unconditional endorsement of bin Laden? A call to assassinate Bush? Or perhaps it was personal; say, an unfavorable comparison of Bolton’s moustache to Nietzsche’s, or of his harassment skills to those of his old buddy Clarence Thomas?

No. No, it was something else:

And the absolute lowest blow, we are told, was this:

A reference to ‘Middle America’ was a graver mistake than Srebrenica and puts the future of the UN at risk.

I am sure this makes perfect sense — if you just happen to be psychotic like, say, John Bolton.

A cri du coeur from a despairing Freeper soul:

Sometimes — actually, often — you have to laugh.

Stalking Horse-Face, otherwise known as Ann Coulter the Soulless Ghoul, mocks the 9/11 widows on NBC:

For her part, Coulter has become rich by saying precisely such despicable things (Muslims should be converted to Christianity at gunpoint; the New York Times building should be bombed with its staff inside; liberals should be handled with baseball bats; a Supreme Court justice she disapproves of should be poisoned, and so on). The American right, while benefitting from this moving of the goalposts, never denounces her. Actually I suspect that Coulter is only in it for the money and that the less openly histrionic “conservatives” are more likely to agree with her maniacal ramblings than she is. Her latest ones are no exception, I am sure. Quoting Coulter:

For the right, 9/11 was never about human agony. This is what it is for.

From Free Press International via the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet:

Google Earth reveals this interesting structure at the US Navy Base Coronado, California.

Reportedly used by the Navy Seals, the building was constructed in 1943. Alas, half a century hence, its shape has finally become more appropriate.

Crossposted from Daily Kos.

Citing “serious and systematic” abuse of human and labor rights, Norway’s Finance Ministry today banned Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer and employer, from the $250 bn Norwegian Government Pension Fund - Global.
This investment fund, where much of Norway’s soaring petroleum revenue is stashed away for future generations, is one of the largest in the world. In addition to a policy of ethical corporate governance, its investments are subject to ethical guidelines issued by Parliament and applied by the Finance Ministry based on advice from an independent Ethics Council. For instance, companies can be blacklisted for environmental offenses or involvement in the production or maintenance of landmines, cluster bombs, or nuclear weapons.

In Wal-Mart’s case, the Ethics Council found “an extensive body of material” suggesting it had employed minors against international rules, condoned dangerous working conditions among its suppliers, and suppressed unions. Norway’s Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen (picture) of the Socialist Left Party explained:

When given a chance to answer these charges, Wal-Mart responded with silence, she added.

Where Wal-Mart does choose to be vocal is in its support of the GOP. It is known for its major campaign contributions, 85 percent of which have gone to Republicans. During the 2004 campaign cycle, wherein Wal-Mart was the #2 donor, Dick Cheney lavished glowing praise upon the corporation:

For once, there is no reason to doubt his sincerity.

Clinton ended a major civil war; George Walker Bush has spawned one. Iraq’s main morgue is now receiving more corpses than at any time since modern Iraq was established in the 1920s:

The ‘reconstruction’ should be called, Operation Iraqi Freedom from these Mortal Coils.

But let’s not just focus on the bad news. There also is an upside.