Colombia’s indigenous people: Facing the clash of local, national and global interests

Posted by Nina Bernardo / 25th September 2014 / Categories: Analysis, Polis / Tags: Colombia, Ecopetrol, ELN, FARC, Indigenous Peoples, Multinationals, Oil, U'wa / -

The U’wa people of Colombia have been struggling, through peaceful protests, to keep their territory free of multinational companies. This has cost the Colombian state over $136 million in oil revenues. When addressing the situation, Bogotá needs to find a way to consolidate the U’wa’s interests while considering options to compensate for Colombia’s economic losses.

Unfortunately, the continuation of the armed forces’ attacks on oil pipelines only further complicates any possible solution. In the midst of these attacks, the government is pursuing peace talks with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Popular Liberation Army (ELN). The only sustainable solution is one in which each of the involved parties has more to gain from peace and cooperation than from continuing their fight.

Background

The United Nations reports that the U’wa is one of over 40 Colombian indigenous groups in danger of extinction due mainly to mining and armed conflict. Multinational Monitor writes how the various projects result in “ecocide, genocide and ethnocide” for their people as they deal with contamination of land and water, demolished homes, and internal displacement. The Colombian government has yet to abide by the constitutional indigenous laws, while the U’wa do not want oil to be drilled because it is considered to be the blood of Mother Earth.

The U’wa have had some success in their campaign: their 2002 strategy to implement an international solidarity campaign caused the California-based Occidental Petroleum (Oxy) to pull its project from Colombia. The Goldman Prize website explains how an extensive media campaign — including a front page on Wall Street Journal and targeting one of Oxy’s top shareholders, Fidelity Investments — influenced Fidelity to sell $400 million in Oxy shares. Despite this feat, the eventual outcome was less impressive: Ecopetrol quickly occupied the space Oxy had left behind. Since then, efforts by the Colombian government to protect the U’wa have been lackluster.

The external factor of armed forces further complicates the situation. In 1999, the FARC, the largest guerrilla group in Colombia, kidnapped and killed three American environmentalist coalition members, who were organizing with the U’wa. The FARC showed no tolerance for people assisting the U’wa. On the other side of the equation, the ELN, Colombia’s second-largest rebel group, declared war on the multinationals and oil companies for “plundering” the country’s natural resources. After this ELN statement in November 2013, the ELN attacked the Caño Limón-Coveñas Pipeline twice. On June 27, 2014, the U’wa wrote an official letter to President Santos about the occurrence on March 25, 2014 when the ELN attacked a section in the municipality of Samore within the collective territory of the U’wa. Shortly thereafter, on May 1, the ELN attacked again in the hamlet of La Blanquita.

In the letter, the U’wa and 27 groups demanded from President Santos, among other things, recognition of their resguardo (indigenous reserve), according to their colonial land titles and the cancellation of the Magallanes gas exploration project and the rest of the mining/energy concessions in their ancestral territories, including the dismantling of the infrastructure located in the Gibraltar well.

The struggle for a long-term solution

In order for a solution to be reached, all sides will need to accommodate each other’s interests. Economic damages have been real, with significant impact on the country as a whole. The U’wa’s blockage of the Caño Limón-Coveñas oil pipeline resulted in the loss of over $136 million in oil revenues to date. This pipeline carries nearly 80,000 barrels of oil per day to the Caribbean coast. In addition to pipelines, rebels attack trailer trucks, which transport the crude. Because of the paralysis of the Caño Limón-Coveñas oil pipeline, it was the main reason why the Colombian economy failed to meet its target of producing a million barrels a day in March and April. President Santos started holding peace talks with FARC rebels in late 2012 and the ELN began to seek an official peace process with the administration of President Santos. Yet, in 2013, a Reuters report reveals how Colombian leftist rebels continue to attacked oil pipelines for at least 259 times, even if oil companies managed to fix the damage within a few days and avoided major disruptions.

There is a serious risk of indigenous groups disappearing because of mining operations, but the Colombian government’s options for development decreases if they choose to support the U’wa. It would be irresponsible to simply forego such significant sources of state revenue. After decades of internal conflict for identity, territory, and autonomy between guerillas, militias, paramilitary, etc., the country is in desperate need of stability, both political and economical. The Colombian population, even if sympathetic to the U’wa plight, has shown little willingness to forego sources of revenue as important as the ones at stake. Politicians, companies and global actors even less so.

Colombia has lived through troubling times, but it is changing positively and overcoming past obstacles. After the breakdown of the Medellín Cartel and the death of Pablo Escobar, Medellín, a once violence-riddent city, has come a long way to be named “Innovative City of the Year” by Citi and the Marketing Services Department of the Wall Street Journal in 2012. With breakthroughs such as this in Colombia, President Santos’ strategy to discuss peace with leftist guerrillas has taken Colombia to a markedly improved situation. As a result, the ushering of Colombia’s new image might force Colombian officials to prioritize the strengthening of her economy. This would likely go against U’was interests, with the current national recovery being too fragile to risk for lofty principles.

Global forces do not seem to support the U’wa either. The United States, a fundamental player in Colombian politics, is looking to cash in on the improved situation within its long-term ally. Washington seeks to diversify its energy supply away from instable Middle Eastern sources, and is leaning heavily on Bogotá to further develop its natural resource potential. Moreover, multinationals are looking past the Oxy experience and focus on economic partnerships with Colombian actors. Even if there do exist active advocacy initiatives on behalf of indigenous groups, and the UN has come out in support on various occasions, the winds are clearly not blowing in U’wa’s favor.

Local vs. national vs. global

The case of the U’wa people is one that exemplifies the difficulty of negotiating the complexity of clashing interests between types of actors. Local actors clinging on to their way of life in the face of outside threats; national actors who seek to spread natural wealth among the entire population; and global actors looking to cash in on new found stability and prosperity in an important strategic region. Any type of sustainable solution will need to balance these three distinct- but interrelated- dynamics. A start would be to build on the stability domestic peace with internal groups such as the FARC and ELN brings. All three- indigenous, state and global players- share a common interest in long-term stability that accompanies peace. Within that scenario, recognition for the rights of indigenous people, acceptance of economic sharing with other parts of the country and a tolerance for outside actors could lead to the right mix for mutual recognition, if perhaps not mutual enthusiasm. Finding the right compromise will require strong political leadership and possibly outside mediation. The first step, however, is to identify a common ground. Strengthening the current roots of peace and potential prosperity seems as good a start as any.

The Islamic State and the West: the dangers of having a “non – strategy”

Posted by Isadora Loreto / 22nd September 2014 / Categories: Analysis / Tags: Iraq, Islamic State, Syria, United States / -

On Friday 19 September, France launched its first air strikes on the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq. The latest advances of IS have led many Western governments to change policy with respect to the Middle-East. Some governments have delivered weapons to the Peshmergas, others announced their willingness to back Syrian rebels, while aerial strikes continue in Iraq and might start in Syria as well. This lack of direction, or “non – strategy”, of the international community in the Middle East is likely to have deeply harmful regional as well as international consequences in the long-run.

Since 2013, the Islamic State is fighting for the establishment of an Islamic Caliphate. Formed in April 2013, IS has become one of the main jihadist groups fighting government forces in Syria and Iraq. Following IS successes, the United Nations Security Council has adopted a resolution in August strongly condemning its acts. This resolution was aimed at weakening the organisation by blacklisting six people, including the group’s spokesman, and threatening sanctions against its financiers and weapons suppliers. And the tools of the United Nations are not the only weapons countries are using in their battle against IS.

Although the United States (U.S.) has been launching air strikes against IS in Iraq since the beginning of August, the beheading of the American journalist James Fooley in August appears to have reinforced the will of the international community to defeat the organisation. Since then, many countries are considering all possible means to overthrow the jihadist group. According to the states involved in the fight, the legitimacy of fighting IS lays in the atrocity of the crimes committed by the organisation, on the one hand, and in the threat it could pose to the whole region and to Western countries, on the other. Unfortunately, this reaction is without considering the long-term consequences it might have in the region. Once again, the international community seems to be only “reacting” rather than thinking about actions included in a real strategy.

Many governments (U.S., Germany, France, Canada, Australia) have provided – or will provide – Peshmergas weapons to fight IS. Delivering Kurdish fighters weapons to combat the organisation can have positive short consequences, i.e. containing IS and yet, it will also most likely destabilise the region in the longer term by empowering Peshmergas, which aims to establish a Kurdish sovereign state. These issues are not sufficiently raised, however essential they are. To reflect on the possible impact that the delivery of weapons to Kurdish fighters could have in longer term is an obvious necessity for any responsible policy.

Arming the Peshmergas is not the only concern the “fight against IS” raises. On Thursday 18 August, U.S. Congress gave final approval to President Barack Obama’s plan for training and arming moderate Syrian rebels to battle the joint enemy, as part of the U.S military plan to “degrade and destroy IS”. The White House – in collaboration with Saudi Arabia – believes that backing the Syrian rebels will be effective in doing so. But Washington and Ryiadh should not forget that rebel groups, by definition, do not answer to authority: they cannot be used as a “low (human) cost – army”. Indeed, if Syrian rebels and the U.S. have a common interest in defeating IS, Syrian rebels will continue to pursue their own goals while working with them. Yet, such a back up could lead to destabilising the region even further: with more than fifty rebel groups operating in Syria and in Iraq, the backing of some and not the others might reinforce the lack of unity, and disorganisation and animosity between them.

While some governments are backing the Peshmergas and the Syrian rebels, the U.S. and France are conducting air strikes in Iraq within the framework of the so-called “broad” international coalition. So far only those two countries are military involved, and is led by Washington. Here again, there is no global strategy, no real view of long-term consequences in the region as well as in the involved countries. Just a common goal shared by some countries: “destroying IS”. Each player is moving his pawns according to its own strategy. For those involved, the thinking seems to be that air strikes do not require a plan, and no global or regional strategy. In reality, however, air strikes do mean the country is involved in a specific armed conflict much in the same way it is engaged with ground forces: with many of the same risks and consequences, including revenge and retaliation.

Last but not least in this disorganised reaction come the future potential air strikes on IS in Syria. In august, the US began surveillance flights over rebel-controlled parts of Syria after presidential authorisation and on 11 September; Barack Obama announced for the first time that air strikes would be extended into Syria. The Syrian government declared it was ready to work with the West to fight IS but will not allow air strikes on its territory without its consent. Supporting Syria, Russia warned the U.S. that any such unilateral action in Syria would be “an act of aggression”. And so the U.S. is facing a dilemma: it clearly wants to “destroy IS”, but it does not want to collaborate with Assad because it has been condemning the regime since the very beginning of the conflict. The Pentagon said it has everything it needs to strike targets in Syria but is still waiting on Obama’s signoff. Obama deciding to launch air strikes in Syria without collaborating with Assad will be in breach of international law. More importantly, it might lead the U.S. to a broader conflict by fighting both enemies: IS on the one hand, and Assad’s regime and its allies on the other.

Even if the short-term consequences can be foreseen, the international community needs to be aware of the longer-term outcomes that its fight against IS might have in the Middle East as well as in the countries involved in the fight: empowering Peshmergas, strengthening disorganisation with the Syrian opposition, facing retaliation and revenge and broadening the conflict. A viable strategy in defeating IS cannot exclude acting within a long-term strategy. IS will surely be weakened by the international community reaction in the short-term, but the region and the countries involved are likely to suffer from this “non – strategy”.

UN Sanctions on Guinea-Bissau: Waiting For a Coup to Happen

Posted by Thomas Kruiper / 3rd September 2014 / Categories: Analysis / Tags: Coup d'Etat, Drug-Trafficking, Guinea-Bissau, International Institutions, Sanctions / -

In April 2012, eleven military leaders involved in the coup d´état in Guinea-Bissau were subjected to a UN travel ban. Although neatly in line with United Nations (UN) sanctions policy regarding sovereignty, in reality the sanctions were a painstakingly late reaction to the uprising of Guinea-Bissau as Africa´s first “narco-state”, which had been corroding politics and society for almost a decade. While institutions kept the Sanctions Committee hostage, the kingpins in Guinea-Bissau had plenty of time to ruin its governance structures. This analysis suggests that Guinea-Bissau only became a target of UN sanctions when it had made its way on the map as the first African “narco-state”. Unfortunately, the coup that justified UN agency to do something about it came almost a decade too late.

On the first of April 2012, just a few days before the second round of a presidential election, a military coup led by Admiral Bubo Na Chuto and Deputy Chief of Staff or the army Antonio Indjai triggered the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to impose travel sanctions on 11 military leaders involved in the coup.

If reversing the coup were the most important objective, the sanctions could probably be called a success. In May 2014, albeit after several delays, a new president (Jose Mario Vaz) was indeed elected in Guinea-Bissau. Also the committee recognised only one violation of the travel ban (the army chief of staff travelled to Cote d´Ivoire and Senegal on one occasion). For the moment the country enjoys relative political stability, although it still suffers from a range of structural threats such as extreme poverty and high corruption levels.

In any way, the coup d´état is largely irrelevant to the story, as the case of sanctions on Guinea-Bissau can hardly be explained as a genuine reaction to it. Guinea-Bissau has been the stage of many coups over the past decades (as have several other African states), and no one ever really bothered.

The coups of Bissau and the Rise of Africa´s first “Narco-State”

Since its Independence from Portugal in 1974, Guinea-Bissau has been the stage of four coup d´état´s and at least 6 other attempts. However, being an insignificant West African country home to less than 2 million inhabitants and with no strategic interest to the rest of the world, it was never important enough to make international headlines.

In 1980 Joao Bernardo Vieira staged the first coup, ousting the country´s first president Luis Cabral and allowing him to rule for the next 19 years. In 1998 another coup attempt split the government forces (supported by neighbouring countries) and coup leaders, who controlled large parts of the army. After 11 months of civil conflict and thousands of deaths, president Vieira was toppled and replaced. The next president, Kumba Yala, lasted for three years before he too was overthrown in 2003 in a military coup. After some tumultuous years, ex-president Vieira made a comeback from being exiled in Portugal and manages to win the 2005 elections. In 2009 he was assassinated by renegade soldiers. None of these events however ignited the urge to install a sanctions regime.

So for the last decades the coups in Guinea-Bissau went largely unnoticed, just as in many other countries that have lived through coup d´états without being targeted by UN sanctions. As long as coup d´états do not turn into bloody civil wars those who stage them tend to stay out of trouble.

So what made the international community change its mind? Since the mid-2000s media coverage on Guinea-Bissau, although still meagre, has become dominated by the issue of drug trafficking. As a small state with weak political infrastructure, high levels of poverty and corruption, and a favourable geography, Guinea-Bissau has turned out to be a perfect place for trafficking drugs from Latin America destined for the European market. The country´s Atlantic coastline is dotted with two dozen little islands that have proven comfortable smuggling havens for Colombian, Ecuadorian, Peruvian, Brazilian and Venezuelan drug cartels that smuggle cocaine into Europe.

In 2008 a report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) recognised Guinea-Bissau as a new hub for cocaine trafficking in West Africa. Between 2005 and 2007 a total of 33 tons of cocaine were intercepted in West Africa on route to Europe, compared to a mere 1 ton prior to 2005. With the drug trafficking increasingly penetrating into Guinean society and politics, the peace building and democratisation efforts of the UN peace-building mission in Guinea-Bissau (UNIOGBIS) were largely undermined. The trafficking business negatively affected public security, respect for the rule of law, and public health (because of increased local consumption). Politics became increasingly corrupted, with politicians and military leaders being involved.

As the situation worsened in 2010 and 2011, donors retrieved and the European Union (EU) decided to stop training Guinean security forces and suspends part of its aid. The United States froze the assets of two drug-traffickers, and the UNODC and Interpol helped Guinea-Bissau set up a Transnational Crimes Unit. In the meantime the two alleged drug kingpins subjected to US asset freezes were promoted to Army Chief (Antonio Indjai) and head of the Navy (Jose Americo Bubo Na Tchuto). Tchuto was arrested by the American Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) in international waters on 4 April 2012 (8 days before the coup) and is currently on trial. Indjai has also been indicted by the United States but still walks free in Bissau. On 12 April 2012, when the military toppled the interim government, Indjai was placed on the UN travel ban list along with 10 other military officials.

How institutions strangle effective sanctions policy

Guinea-Bissau´s timeline shows a variety of coup d´états and attempted coups, none of which seemed important enough to arouse real attention. When the country increasingly turned into a cocaine transfer-port and a weak state, it became clear something had to be done in order to protect the interests of those suffering from this trade. However, imposing UN sanctions on a sovereign state in reaction to smuggling activities was not a policy option. So the only option was to wait for a ´legitimate´ excuse, such as a civil war, a terrorist attack, or indeed a military coup.

Coup d´états have been an accepted imperative for UN sanctions since the early 1990s and the sanctions regime on Haiti to reinstall President Aristide, who was ousted in a military coup in 1991. In the late 1990s the UN Sanctions Committee also increased the technical and legal capacity to impose targeted sanctions on individuals. Since 1999 the UN has imposed and implemented asset freezes and travel sanctions on individuals and groups in over a dozen conflicts, with mixed success. However, when it comes to reversing coup d´états, the case of Guinea-Bissau is the first one since that of Haiti in the early 1990s.

During the coups of 1999 and 2003 and the assassination of Vieira in 2009, the UN Security Council and the Sanctions Committee had all the technical capacity and institutional consensus to interfere with the internal politics of Guinea-Bissau. However, apparently the coup d´états in an insignificant country such as Guinea-Bissau were not important enough to arouse sufficient attention in the UNSC. With the 2012 coup the UNSC finally had a legal excuse to impose sanctions on the individuals implicated in the drug trafficking. However, by then Guinea-Bissau had already become fully integrated in the drug-cartel; the damage had already been done.

The case of Guinea-Bissau shows that the reality of UN sanctions as an institution is one of restrictions and obstacles rather than one about values and norms. The sanctions were clearly a reaction to the drug trafficking that had been undermining Bissau-Guinean politics and society since 2005 or longer. However, in order to impose sanctions they first needed a coup d´état to take place. Unfortunately that coup didn´t come until 2012, when Guinea-Bissau´s transformation to “narco-state” had already been completed and had thoroughly disrupted and corrupted governance.

Would things have turned out different if the UN had imposed sanctions earlier? Perhaps not; UN travel bans are not almighty tools of political coercion. However, the case of Guinea-Bissau does show how institutionalised rules regarding sanctions policy can delay and distort effective decision-making. If those actors interested in pursuing drug-kingpins (US, EU) just transparently put forward their interests and security concerns, rather than waiting for a coup d´état to take place to justify their actions, it would be much easier for analysts to keep oversight and for actors to take timely action.

Western media and Ukraine: global ideology versus local realities

Posted by Ricardo Lenoir-Grand Pons / 23rd July 2014 / Categories: Analysis, Polis / Tags: Europe, Media, Putin, Ukraine / -

With past week’s tragedy still dominating headlines across the world, the differences between local and Western press in how the conflict in Ukraine is viewed are starker than ever. This is a recurring phenomenon in our globalised world, with local and global media offering completely different interpretations of the same events as long as victims can be abstracted at a global level. Now that victims of the Ukrainian conflict include Western toursists, global and local perspectives will begin to converge. In the case of Ukraine, the difference between local and global perspectives goes back to the very beginning of the open conflict. The initial phase was seen as one of a clash between the West and Russia, in which the former considered it a struggle between the defenders of freedom against those who want to resuscitate authoritarian practices of the past; a conflict between those who are fighting for democracy against those who violate international law. Local media, on the other hand, focused more on cultural and geopolitical concerns, with Ukraine divided along ethnic lines and torn between spheres of influence.

Western mass media celebrated the fall of Yanukovich’s regime as a step towards the consolidation of democracy in the country, pushing it away from Russia and towards Western society. The actual local actors behind the two camps were overlooked in the process, at least by global media. Local media did pay attention to the fact that political parties had nationalist profiles with hints of clear xenophobia, but not so much in the West press: there, the victory of democracy facing the authoritarian oppression represented by the threat of Russia was the dominant narrative. Parties such as UNA-UNSO (Ukrainian National Assembly – Ukrainian People’s Self- Defense), Svodoba (Freedom), Batkisvshchyna (Freedom) have been supported by the international community as well as by media without much regard for their actual local agendas or suspect ideologies.

The context in which these events took place matters. When the suspension of Russian as a co-official language was approved in Congress, the delay caused a direct confrontation with Russia. The fact that Russian is the most spoken language in the eastern part of Ukraine- used by half of the population, and even more so in Crimea- showed how much this was a local issue, rather than an ideological clash for freedom. Yet this was mostly ignored by Western media despite being such an important factor in triggering the crisis.

Reviewing past newspaper editorials, there is no surprise to find out that the perceived enemy of European and Western democracy was lurking large in the interpretation of the local conflict: Vladimir Putin has been raised to the status of the greatest threat to Western stability, and therefore also seen as the main agitator opposing Ukrainian freedom. This perspective has been present throughout the crisis, and since the MH17 crash is a dominant factor in any Western analysis once again. The Russian president’s actions are thoroughly analyzed whilst those of other involved parties are not. The European energy situation and its clear dependence on Russia- causing a blatant clash between words and actions on behalf of European governments- are barely discussed. Authoritarian attitudes are criticized while simultaneously a remarkable dependence on that very same antagonist is created. The analysis of the Ukraine and last week’s disaster is framed within a moralistic discourse, while behind the scenes the same practical ambiguity continues. European realpolitik supported by helpful media choosing to ignore any moral complexity about responsibility of their own leaders and societies.

At a local level, things are different. Ukrainian media extensively covered the crash, of course, but did so from a perspective of a long conflict that has caused victims throughout: Ukraine’s dilemma is one of sustained violence, not one isolated incident. And yet, the local consequences of the MH17 crash may be greater than any of the violence that has occurred before or after, as it brings Western victims into the fray. The dichotomy of Western media discourse on the one hand, and ambiguous policies on the other, is no longer sustainable now. Local and global may join the same reality now, with both types of media covering the practical situation rather indulging in ideological judgments.

It is understandable that the idea of the conflict changes depending on the source of the given information. It is also comprehensible that the information provided is influenced by national matters, depending on how the particular country could be affected. But, as the current situation shows, the intention of giving global coverage cannot be done without starting from a local perspective. In this particular case, the actions taken by Europe to expand its borders to the East, or the ones taken by the NATO in the same direction, together with some deficiencies of these institutions, must be included in the analysis. The responsibility for local suffering cannot be projected solely onto the dictatorial face of Vladimir Putin. It is shared by many, including the free European press.

The Future of Offical Development Assistance

Posted by Joanna Klever / 3rd July 2014 / Categories: Analysis, Polis / Tags: Aid Effectiveness, Guatemala, IFI, Nicaragua, ODA / -

Official Development Assistance has failed. Donor and recipient activities in the past decades have shown little success, and ongoing practices and ideas are subject of continuous criticism. What are the lessons learned and is the criticism valid? This article elaborates on those questions by shedding light on two cases from the 1990s in which the World Bank implemented reform programs in Guatemala and Nicaragua. Their successes were negligible.

Why ODA is controversial

“Aid” in itself has been divided in many subcategories and types, representing a multitude of different targets and aims. Humanitarian and relief aid serve immediate needs while structural adjustment programs and the millennium development goals are set out for the longer term. They aim to sustainably improve people’s livelihoods. So far there is little evidence to suggest that the billions of dollars circulating have actually had a positive effect. On the contrary, it is increasingly argued that development aid fails to achieve its proposed effects, and in some cases it even worsens the situation. Often this happens through increased government accountability to donors instead of the electorate, resulting in the deterioration of stability and decreased focus on local needs and progress.

Quantitative analysis found that countries receiving ODA over the course of decades are more likely to show decreasing quality of governance and democracy. Furthermore, it seems that ODA is primarily given to countries that are able to present some minimum level of good governance already. Consequently, those countries that are most in need of support systems are less likely to receive aid. Certainly, it is understandable that donor organizations and governments refrain from giving aid to countries that are incapable of processing aid money. However, these countries should be given more attention and care.

The role of influential International Financial Institutions (IFIs) such as the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund is controversial. Their neoliberal political agenda is imposed on recipient nations through money lending programs, which condemn recipient governments to follow the specific requirements, posed by the IFIs disregarding any national attempts to develop towards a different political and economic model. The most prominent example is conditionality based lending, where recipient states are forced to implement certain conditions in order to receive financial support. Most often these conditions are related to changes in governance and increased democratization.

Originally conditions were designed to ensure that recipient states would be equipped and prepared to receive and process the incoming financial support. However, contrary to initial expectations, many recipient countries felt that the conditions were defined by the IFIs following their neoliberal development perspectives rather than national and local interests. As a result most conditionality-based programs are described as failures today.

Conditionality-based lending was most prominent in the 1980s and 1990s, a period in which many countries emerged from civil wars or dictatorships and were seeking to establish democratic nation states. It would be beyond the scope of this article to elaborate on the ‘West’s’ interests in this process. However, it needs to be clear that industrialized nations, especially the United States had and continues to have strong interests in many countries, especially in Latin America and the Middle East. This resulted in strong tendencies towards neoliberal development.

The Case of Guatemala and Nicaragua

Nicaragua and Guatemala are two examples of countries that have been subject to lending programs in the 80s and 90s after having emerged from civil conflict just recently before.

Nicaragua looks back at a violent past of a decade long kleptocracy by the Somoza family in the 1970s, followed by the guerilla dictatorship of the Sandinistas between 1979 and 1990. In first free public elections political and social change was introduced under the leadership of elected President Chamorro. The country entered a phase of reconciliation, reintegration and de-politicization of armed security forces. As part of the reform process decentralization and increased local accountability away from Nicaragua’s capital Managua were initiated. While the process was hampered by a lack of coordination among state actors and failure to bridge gaps between local and national interests, the international donor community entered the debate. Its considerable financial support effectively dominated the political dialogue and steered decisions towards its own interest.

In this situation the World Bank introduced an institutional reform program in 1995. It was designed to reform twenty ministries, reduce personnel costs and bureaucracy while increasing wages and technological advancement. In total US$ 33 million was invested. The reform was designed to run over five years, envisioning that each year five ministries would successfully reform their organizational structure, redesign its human resource sector and be fully equipped with new technology.

In the World Bank’s 2002 evaluation report, the results are rather moderate. Instead of twenty, only seven ministries underwent any parts of the reform. The other ministries decided to continue evolving on their own pace and agenda. Furthermore, the leadership and execution of the reform, which was supposed to be managed by a Nicaraguan government agency, was hampered by high fluctuation of personnel and unsatisfactory commitment. As a result, the evaluation report assesses the result of the reform as ‘likely’ sustainable. Given the minimal outcome and lack of compliance by Nicaragua’s government, this assessment is highly optimistic and far from reality.

The project had a relevant objective. However, in its entirety it appears to be detached from the political reality of Nicaragua at entry time as well as during its execution. It failed to acknowledge that Nicaragua was a country in transition with a lack of many democratic features; effectively leading to deterioration of people’s trust in democracy. The World Bank’s project contributed to the decrease in trust and lack of government effectiveness, through mistaking its own priorities with the country’s needs. Therefore, its millions spent failed to reach any of the project’s long-term goals.

A similar situation occurred in Guatemala, which was subject of a World Bank reform program some years before Nicaragua. Similar to Nicaragua, Guatemala suffered under a civil war up to the 1980s. In 1985 a new constitution was approved in order to secure peace and democracy. It took ten more years to put an end to the civil war, with yearlong peace talks between governing parties, UN representatives and foreign mediators. The peace treaty involved the establishment of a human rights accord, a demilitarization treaty and an accord on the rights of indigenous people as well as one on socio-economic advancement, centered on poverty alleviation.

Given the political developments, the World Bank’s involvement clearly shows the absurdity surrounding some ODA programs: In 1988 already it introduced a municipal development project that was designed to reform the municipality’s organizational structure, reorganize urban planning and thereby reduce urban poverty. Over the set out timeframe of ten years, the project constituted ten percent of all ODA received by the Guatemalan government.

From the outset, the reform was doomed to fail, as the initial loan disbursement was withheld: Guatemala’s creditworthiness could not be guaranteed. Later, in 1993 the loan disbursements were stopped entirely due to the lack of Guatemalan counterpart commitment. Furthermore, the government issued new laws that rendered the further implementation of the reform infeasible. As a result the main goals of the project were never achieved. Nonetheless, the results report describes the entire project as “satisfactory with likely sustainability”.

After 1995 the Guatemalan government implemented various reforms with similar aims as the ones stated in the World Bank reform program. However, they did so following their own agenda.

In the two cases presented the World Bank failed to acknowledge that the governments were not prepared to take the burden of intrusive structural reform and were incapable to implement it. As a result millions are lost with little measureable future effect. The political environment in both countries continues to be instable.

Where to steer in the future

Two contradictory directions for future involvement have been suggested: Firstly, donors argue that not enough money has been spent yet and once aid flows cross a certain threshold, their desired effects will be observed. In other words, more money is needed. Secondly, the development sector is becoming increasingly aware that its foreign involvement may have been more harmful than supportive, at least on a large scale.

The evidence so far clearly favors the second perspective. ODA has been more harmful than fruitful. ODA’s intrusive conditions force recipient governments to accurately follow IFI agendas, disregarding national political characteristics that might ask for different approaches to development. However, ODA must not be condemned it its entirety. If IFIs decide loosen their conditions and allow for more national ownership, the future of ODA could be bright. As the two case studies show, strictly prescribed ODA does not help. On the contrary, it may be misallocated and push for a development that is not supported within the recipient government. Seeing that the government of Guatemala did implement municipal reforms some years after the World Bank project, it is clear that the need for change is recognized locally, but it needs to follow its natural pace. ODA needs to become more flexible, allowing for recipient countries to choose who to collaborate with and which reforms to implement. Once the IFIs let go of their agendas, ODAs worst critics might be silenced and the road towards success could be revealed.

Run-off Election in Afghanistan: International vs Local Media

Posted by Raquel Noguiera / 14th June 2014 / Categories: Analysis / Tags: Afghanistan, Democracy, Media / -

Despite the violence break-outs and the many Taliban threats all around the country, on April 5th Afghans went to the polls and voted in massive and unprecedented numbers. According to the Independent Election Commission (IEC) around 7 million people, 36% of them women, went to the ballot box in order to choose the future president of the republic. Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai turned out to be the leading presidential candidates, but, according to the constitution, the percentage of votes each of them won (45% and 31.56% respectively) are not sufficient enough to proclaim a winner. Therefore, the next step is the run-off election, held today, on June 14th. Will Afghans further support the political process? Will the Taliban threat become deadlier? Will local population and the candidates themselves accept the results? How will the results affect the American withdrawal? How do international media perceive it all? And, local media? Those last two questions have distinctly different answers. The way that the international media understands the democratic process in Afghanistan stands in sharp contrast with what local media understands about Afghan’s interests and expectations.

International media vs. local media: differing view on the same situation

Many international voices have argued that a run-off election between the two head candidates is not the ideal path forward for the democratic process in Afghanistan. Since the country is divided by ethnic groups and both, Abdullah and Ghani, represent different parts of the population, many Western journalists have toyed with the idea of creating a coalition government between the two of them. While Ghani represents the Pashtun ethnicity in Afghanistan and the Uzbeks back him too, Abdullah is more closely identified with the Tajiks of the north who fought against the Pashtun-led Taliban, -even though his father was a Pashtun-, and many Hazarat have recognized they feel represented by Abdullah. Hence, for many, a hybrid government, which reunites the majority of ethnicities within two candidates, is preferable. If the “purpose of the election was to allow Afghans to choose a legitimate successor to Karzai” then we could say that “if Ghani endorses Abdullah, together they can claim the support of 75% of voters, far more than any sole candidate will ever obtain”.

However, ethnicity is not the only argument in favour of a coalition administration. The threat of Taliban attacks during the run-off have increased since the Taliban Spring has already begun and they feel ashamed because their bloodshed campaign during the first round of the election failed. This time they could be deadlier than before due to the fact the Taliban have to prove they can defeat the government and national security forces. This argument was underscored by the latest attempt of attacking the front-runner candidate Abdullah, who recently escaped a car bombing.

There is no doubt that the international community has applauded the Afghan effort of carrying out a rather peaceful and successful first round, but many concerns about security and electoral fraud have been raised for the run-off as well as the possibility of having warlords working extremely close to the new government-to-be. As Massoumeh Torfeh explains in her article “Afghanistan: Time for New Blood”, international circles have criticized both Abdullah and Ghani for choosing their political alliances within human rights abusers and alleged warlords when the majority of Afghans are demanding the end of the realm of strongmen and cronies and the persecution of past crimes committed by senior politicians and current candidates. Nevertheless, and even though the constitution bans “any individuals convicted of crimes against humanity, a criminal act or deprivation of civil rights by court from running for elected office”, the candidates could be accompanied to government by a minimum of four to five warlords. On the other hand, there is also a sense that a new generation of young men and women, working to change the old system of nepotism and cronies, are increasingly relevant. They were born and grew up amidst violent conflict, and they understand the needs and wants of their society beyond ethnicity and gender. Abdullah and Ghani are under increasing pressure to pay attention to such newcomers.

As Ms. Torfeh concludes her article “the second round of elections is a historical opportunity for the next president of Afghanistan to rise up to the challenge of making alliances with this new generation of activists and, at the same time, reducing the number of “warlords” in the cabinet. The presence of more strongmen in government would mean the continuation of most of Afghanistan’s acute problems including disregard for the rule of law, increased corruption, perpetuation of the narco-economy and the impossibility of keeping a check on good governance”.

In opposition to the aforementioned international idea of a coalition or hybrid government, the local media prefers to focus on respect for the constitution. In order to win the democratic battle, their argument goes, Afghanistan has to carry out a new round of the presidential elections, because that is what the constitution demands. In “Let the Afghan Voters Finish The Job” the local news agency Pajhwok Afghan News states that it is rather difficult to believe that there are some “behind the scene” conversations to create a coalition government since “the election has gone remarkably well so far” despite of some complaints of fraud and irregularities –already investigated by the Electoral Complaints Commission- and little violence. Even if some local voices claim that a possible coalition government between Abdullah and Ghani should be considered in order to –as international media has also said – let all major ethnic groups play a part and promote political stability, this is not the mainstream way of thinking among local analysts. Even national senators have encouraged Abdullah and Ghani to honor the constitution and to not ignore the votes of seven million men and women who want democracy to succeed.

Afghan media sees the pre-election campaigning as a successful mobilization of voters and a way of re-legitimization of the constitutional order. Just like the international media, local media applauded the first round. This does not mean, however, that the perceived success of the first round of the election is an indication of trust or support in the candidates, something that is much clearer at a local level than to observers around the world.

Security or democracy?

Security concerns are growing once again in the country. Since the recent attack against Abdullah, local media are questioning the stability surrounding the fragile political process, with the Taliban threat on the rise. The attacks have shifted from targeting the Independent Election Commission and its staff to attacking the candidates. If one of the front-runners gets killed, the constitution claims that a new election should be conducted, starting from scratch once again. Nevertheless, the Taliban threat might not be the real dilemma Afghans face: whereas local media do focus on these security issues, international media’s concerns with warlords becoming part of the government and wider political processes seems to be shared by the local population at large.

All of this said, a last minute deal between Abdullah and Ghani, which is unlikely to happen- could lead to a hybrid government undermining the constitution, hence favouring political expedience over democratic principles. It is ironic that Western media- representing democratic nations- seem less concerned about that than Afghanistan’s own media. Further taking into consideration the current alliances both candidates have, any new government would be formed by a dubious sources of political and military support. This, or so the argument goes, makes respect for constitutional fundamentals even more important. From a local media focus, the challenge Afghanistan is facing is the ability (or inability) of the nation to beat the Taliban threats and being able to achieve a rather peaceful political transition. The internal debate on the endemic trend of questionable alliances and more nuanced democratic challenges in government will have to wait.

« First ‹ Previous 2 345 6 Next ›Last »

All posts in Analysis