Archive for December, 2009

Towards a two-pronged peace mission in Afghanistan

Posted on: December 10th, 2009 by Ernie Regehr

Canadian churches “encourage Canada to mount a peace mission and to accord it the same level of political energy and commitment, along with requisite material support, as has been accorded the military mission to date.”

The Canadian Council of Churches has issued a new brief[i] calling on “Canada to mount a new peace mission in Afghanistan that focuses on two priorities: 1) support Afghans in implementing participatory reconciliation programs and responsive governance at district and local levels; 2) urge the international community to pursue diplomatic efforts to end the war.” The following is the executive summary.”[ii]

Studies consistently show that the conflict in Afghanistan has multiple and diverse sources, including: conflict over land and water; family and tribal grievances; the presence of Taliban, warlords and criminal elements; international forces; corrupt Afghan security forces and government officials. National-level diplomacy that does not reach into communities and address these grievances will not be successful.

Accordingly, while we welcome Canada’s efforts to facilitate Afghan-led reconciliation, it is clear that these require attention to sub-national conflict analysis and reconciliation possibilities.

Reconciliation and improved governance require inclusive dialogue with Afghans, as well as a shift from the primacy of anti-terrorism to a collective international and Afghan mission framed around human security for the people of Afghanistan. Such a mission requires both reaching beyond centralized institutions and a long-term commitment. And given the international community’s limited understanding of Afghan cultures and traditional authority structures, we urge Canadian support for detailed Afghan-led research and engagement at the community level.

There is a serious requirement for an enriched understanding of the needs and challenges of reconciliation, and thus these research efforts can themselves enhance understanding and function as additional mechanisms to advance renewed peacebuilding processes.

The long-term investment and maintenance that sub-national reconciliation activities will require has significant implications for Canada as it considers the scope of its future responsibilities in Afghanistan. The cessation of a military mission in 2011 should be followed by persistent support for an appropriate Canadian presence in reconciliation and sub-national governance efforts. Consultation with the Government of Afghanistan, its partners in Afghanistan, and organizations and personnel with a track record in sub-national and tribal outreach, as well as plenty of tea, will be essential going forward.

Furthermore, for local reconciliation and conflict mitigation efforts to endure, they ultimately must have the benefit of a stable national context. Ending the war is obviously foundational to that stability; hence, the second element of this appeal from the churches is for Canada to mount a serious effort to promote diplomacy and negotiations aimed at ending the war.

Steadily deteriorating security conditions speak to the now widely accepted judgement, shared by the Prime Minister and confirmed by counterinsurgency experience, that the war will not be resolved by means of a military victory by Afghan and international forces. And there are equally persuasive assessments that the insurgents also will not win – they will be unable to overthrow the Government in Kabul and re-establish a Taliban regime. While insurgents currently have the capacity to hold sway over the countryside in some regions, they do not have the capacity to capture and control the major urban areas. Some reports indicate that some insurgents increasingly recognize that there will be no military victory for them and that continuing war promises only “more futile bloodshed.”

In other words, Afghanistan can be said to be in a hurting stalemate. It is a situation in need of high-level diplomacy in pursuit of the kind of comprehensive and inclusive peace settlement that the Bonn Accords of 2001 and 2002 did not produce. The churches have repeatedly noted the importance of renewed political/diplomatic and civilian efforts to rebuild a basic national consensus in support of public institutions. Instead, the operational focus of the international community has been on militarily defeating those who feel themselves excluded and outside the Bonn consensus – but the war to defeat those outside the national consensus is failing.

In counseling Canadian promotion of Afghan reconciliation efforts, we affirm the fundamental principle that reconciliation, both at the sub-state level and in pursuit of a high-level political settlement, be Afghan-owned and led. But we do not assume Afghan-led to mean led by the Government of Afghanistan. The Afghan Government and its supporting international forces have been drawn into an entrenched civil war. The Government of Afghanistan must therefore be part of reconciliation efforts, but not the manager or custodian of the process. Part of the responsibility of the international community is to work with Afghans in and beyond the government to develop a trusted process through which reconciliation and negotiation efforts can begin.

Summary Recommendations:

We call on Canada, beginning now and continuing beyond 2011, to support outreach, research and pilot projects that are part of, and designed to further, the development of dynamic new local reconciliation efforts. Such activities should include appropriate dialogue with the Government of Afghanistan, collaboration with organizations with a demonstrated Afghan record of support for local governance and peacebuilding activity, and openness to work with traditional and informal authorities at local and district levels.

We further call for a Canadian diplomatic surge to persuade the international community to encourage and support Afghans in intensified and persistent dialogue or engagement efforts towards a military ceasefire and a sustainable political settlement.

In short, we encourage Canada to mount a peace mission and to accord it the same level of political energy and commitment, along with requisite material support, as has been accorded the military mission to date.

eregehr@ploughshares.ca

Notes

[i] The full brief is available at: http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/Statements/CCCAfghanDec2009.pdf.

[ii] The brief was prepared on behalf of the Council by Peter Noteboom (CCC Associate Secretary for Justice and Peace), Mike Hogeterp (Christian Reformed Church in North America – Canada),  Remmelt Hummelen, John Lewis (KAIROS: Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives), and Ernie Regehr (Project Ploughshares). The CCC is the broadest ecumenical body in Canada, now representing 22 churches of Anglican, Evangelical, Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, Protestant and Roman Catholic traditions; together the Canadian Council of Churches represents 85 per cent of the Christians in Canada.

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Logic and illogic at the Korean DMZ

Posted on: December 8th, 2009 by Ernie Regehr

In meetings last week with civil society representatives in South Korea there was little mistaking where they think responsibility for the current nuclear standoff with North Korea rests – and it’s not primarily with Kim Jong-il.

A visit to the Hwacheon district and a “World Peace Bell Park” and newly-constructed conference centre on the edge of the demilitarized zone (DMZ) north of Seoul did little to lessen pessimism about the short-term prospects for a positive breakthrough in the nuclear stand-off. At the same time, there was much in what civil society representatives were saying to build optimism about the long-term. A Korean peninsula verifiably free of nuclear weapons and a bomb-making infrastructure is not only possible, but would almost be inevitable, they seemed to be saying, if the international community would make diplomacy and engagement their central and uncompromising approach.

The basis for diplomacy, said the South Koreans, must be a much better understanding of how North Korean authorities perceive their own plight. Bereft of foreign exchange, in a perpetual energy crisis, buffeted by natural disasters, and under a constant security threat, North Korea reached first for nuclear energy and then, when it concluded that promises of help would not be kept, the regime made the “logical” step from nuclear energy to nuclear weapons.

The notion that Kim Jong-il’s regime is irrational[i] and thus unlikely to respond rationally or logically to external conditions had little currency in these discussions. Indeed, the opposite was more persuasively put – namely, that the international community was wanting in both logic and foresight in repeatedly advancing tactics that would generate predictable negative reactions in the North.

It’s a point confirmed or at least implied by Mohamed ElBaradei in his farewell speech to the UN General Assembly: “…[S]ixteen years after the IAEA reported the country to the Security Council for non-compliance with its non-proliferation obligations, it has moved from the likely possession of undeclared plutonium to acquiring nuclear weapons. The on-again, off-again nature of the dialogue between the DPRK and the international community has stymied the resolution of the issue….”[ii]

The Nuclear Threat Initiative, in an Issue Brief on North Korea, notes that Kim Jong-il consistently links “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” to a removal of the threat it sees from the US and to “peaceful co-existence.” The NTI concludes: “The North Korean nuclear issue is a complex and multi-dimensional problem that has deeper roots than meets the eye. In order to fundamentally resolve this issue, North Korea’s threat perception must be properly addressed and the United States is in a unique position to do just that. As long as North Korea believes that nuclear weapons are the only means of guaranteeing its survival against the threat it believes to be facing from the United States, there is a very slim chance that it will relinquish its nuclear weapons capability. Therefore, a durable solution to the acute security dilemma on the Korean peninsula can only be achieved when the United States sincerely engages in talks with North Korea to work towards normalizing ties between the two countries and establishing a permanent peace regime on the Korean peninsula. In other words, efforts to permanently strip North Korea of its nuclear weapons capability – past, present, and future – must be pursued in tandem with normalization talks in order to ensure positive results.”[iii]

The view of South Korean civil society voices engaged in north-south issues is also reflected in other proposals from elements of the international “expert” community. Leon Sigal links the elimination of nuclear weapons from the Korean peninsula to a formal US commitment “that it has no hostile intent toward Pyongyang” and to a commitment “to signing a peace treaty that ends the Korean War when North Korea is nuclear-free.”[iv] Similarly, Andrei Lankov, who sees no breakthrough in the foreseeable future, insists there is no option but long-term dialogue and negotiations: “As the experience of the Cold War has demonstrated, these exchanges lead to the spread of information, which in turn slowly undermines the power of the regime, whose legitimacy is largely based on false claims. In the long run, these exchanges will probably prove decisive, since they will contribute to the growth of the internal forces that alone can change the North Korean state (and, among other things, bring about de-nuclearization).”[v]

South Koreans at the meeting near the edge of the DMZ made a similar point in response to questions about the obvious fact that while the North Korean regime may very well be highly sensitive to its own security, it has no demonstrable regard for the human security of its people. True, they said, but the way to change that is through engagement and dialogue, not isolation and threats.

Gradually improving economic conditions, through the integration of the North Korean economy into the global economy (the opposite of sanctions), removal of the security threats that drive regime paranoia, and the gradual promotion of people-to-people exchanges with the South and the rest of the world will, together, have an inevitable liberalizing effect in the North, say the South Koreans in these discussions. And it is this gradual change that will also gradually alleviate the desperate economic and political/human rights conditions that the people of North Korea now face.

eregehr@ploughshares.ca

Notes

[i] Jacques E.C. Hymans writes of the “problematic…assumption…that North Korea’s actions are rational responses to external incentives.” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “Discarding tired assumptions about North Korea,” 28 May 2009.  http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/op-eds/discarding-tired-assumptions-about-north-korea.

[ii] Mohamed ElBaradei, “Statement to the Sixty-Fourth Regular Session of the United Nations General Assembly,” http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Statements/2009/ebsp2009n017.html.

[iii] NTI Issue Brief: The Six-Party Talks and President Obama’s North Korea Policy.http://www.nti.org/e_research/e3_six_party_obama_north_korea.html.

[iv] Leon V. Sigal, “What Obama should offer North Korea,” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 28 January 2009.  http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/op-eds/what-obama-should-offer-north-korea.

[v] Andrei Lankov, “Beating Kim at His Own Game,” 17 November 2009, The New York Times.http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/opinion/17iht-edlankov.html.

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