International Organizations

This afternoon, the New America Foundation hosted "The New Forgotten War," a talk about the future of Iraq. It featured Ad Melkert, the special representative for the U.N. secretary-general in Iraq.

Melkert, a former Dutch member of parliament, remains cautiously optimistic about Iraq's future, with an emphasis on the cautious part. The good news is that security in Iraq is better than it was two years ago. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been able to confront violence in the southern part of the country, Melkert said. As a result of the safer state, investment is starting to rise, but it still has a long way to go. Corruption, the terrible infrastructure, and legal concerns hamper Iraq's ability to draw serious investment.

One serious problem for the nascent state is budgetary, Melkert said. When oil prices are high, the government spends all of its revenue, but when they fall, they have to slash the budget.

Further, Iraq is still under dozens of UN chapter seven sanctions, stemming from Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. The current leadership says these sanctions need to be lifted because they were implemented against Hussein and not the current government.

These problems could potentially be amplified in the coming months and years as foreign security forces draw down in the country. Melkert said that one of two things will happen. Either the Iraqi forces will somehow maintain order, or the insurgents will attack as soon as the United States leaves. Right now, police officers, public servants, and UN workers and buildings remain prime targets.

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It now seems close to certain that Herman Van Rompuy, the prime minister of Belgium, will be EU president, and Catherine Ashton, currently the EU trade commissioner and the former leader of the British House of Lords, will be foreign-policy czar.

The picks have a symmetry thought necessary in Europe: Rompuy and Ashton are male and female, from a small country and a large one, conservative and liberal.

They are also expected and surprising. Rompuy has for weeks been considered a frontrunner for president. Ashton -- decently known in Britain and on the continent, but barely known elsewhere -- is something of a surprise. The BBC and other outlets report that up until the very end of negotiations, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown pushed for former PM Tony Blair to win the top spot. Germany and other big continental countries advocated for Rompuy, and won; Brown and social-democrats then pushed Ashton through.

Ultimately, Ashton is the more interesting pick. I believe the foreign-policy gig will end up being the vastly more influential one -- Ashton will control thousands of civil servants and a large budget, and will have powers to set policy priorities for the EU. It is unclear just what Rompuy's staffing and responsibilities will be.

But is Ashton qualified enough? Prominent enough? And might any countries object? She has an important job as trade commissioner, but has only been in it for a year. We'll have answers to those questions -- as well as to how transformative these positions might be -- when she and Rompuy take office next month.

Matt Yglesias has some good commentary on the new team and the importance these positions might have, as well as a useful explanation of Ashton's formal title (she is known as Lady Ashton, Baroness of Upholland -- not because she inherited a barony, but because she won an honorific title when she joined the House of Lords). And we'll post any more interesting updates here.

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Today, the way Europe functions as a political bloc might change dramatically. In a matter of hours, we should have official word from Brussels as to the new presient and foreign-policy chief of the European Union: positions hashed out over the course of a decade and finally approved by the passage of the Lisbon Treaty, which might -- just might -- give Europe a much more powerful and unified presence on the international stage.

We'll have the latest, as soon as we hear, here.

At this point, the most-tipped favorite for president is Herman van Rompuy, the prime minister of Belgium. And British papers have already announced Catherine Ashton (the Baroness of Upholland, naturally), a somewhat obscure former leader of the House of Lords and current EU trade commissioner, as foreign-policy chief. 

It was reported last week that attacks on and kidnappings of aid workers in Chad have caused six aid organizations, including the International Committee of the Red Cross, to suspend operations there. Undeterred, this morning the top U.N. official in Chad announced "positive signs on the horizon," predicting increased peace and stabilization in the country.

This isn't the first time violence has driven away aid groups: in May, 2008, the head of the Eastern Chad mission of British aid organization Save the Children was shot and killed. At first, the organization announced that it would continue working in the country, but five months after the killing ultimately decided to leave.

At this point, the situation doesn't seem that dire with regards to the ICRC: In an interview, Bernard Barrett, an ICRC spokesman, said, "We're not pulling out totally. We're suspending some activities -- we're maintaining life-saving services, particularly medical services." The organization's other work in Chad ranges from water sanitation projects to animal vaccinations; hardly trivial work, particularly given the persistent lack of food security. As far as resuming these activities, Barrett reports a wait-and-see scenario. "Once we've obtained the release of our delegate who was kidnapped, at that point we'll be able to ascertain the security situation," he says.

Chad is a country in dire need of help. Last May, Doctors Without Borders led the effort to combat an outbreak of meningitis, immunizing 7.5 million people in the region. DWB is another organization that has been driven to suspend operations in Chad because of the recent violence. It's terrible to contemplate how many deaths might have resulted from the 65,000 cases of infection in and around Chad had DWB left just six months earlier.  

The violence that has hindered desperately needed assistance ultimately stems from poor governance, said Richard Downie in an interview with FP. According to Downie, a fellow with the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, "Until you have credible political parties and some sort of civil society developing, it's hard to see the long-term prospects of Chad looking bright."

That sort of civil society seems a ways off. Chad ranks 173 out of the 180 countries surveyed in Transparency International's 2008 Corruption Perceptions Index, just three spots up from Afghanistan. And the country's heavily oil-dependent economy has only reinforced the political maladies that accompany "the devil's excrement."

It's tough to avoid Downie's conclusion: "I don't see a long-term solution to what's going on in Chad at the moment without much more engagement from the international community."

Photo:  FRANCESCO FONTEMAGGI/AFP/Getty Images

European leaders are starting to follow suit; Britain's five largest banks have agreed to publish the pay of their key staff members, and will spread bonus payments over three years. French president Sarkozy has announced a set of even tougher and more broadly applied regulations.

Of course, not everyone thinks that bonus reforms are the way to go. Nobel prize-winning conomist Robert F. Engle III says

We shouldn't ban bonuses, but restructure the way they're paid so they're more commensurate with the risk the company is taking....What's important is we give the banking system the right incentives to figure this out. When companies get too big and too complex to fail, they would face a higher tax rate, which would go into a rescue fund. The banks are not excited about it, they would rather go back to business as usual."

What do you call the grouping of the United States, France, Britain, China, Russia, and Germany, who are due to meet with Iran tomorrow for nuclear talks? In the U.S. it is generally referred to as the wonderfully awkward P5+1. But of course it all depends on your perspective:

The latter grouping is known either as the P plus 1 (the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany) or the E3 plus 3, the three Europeans countries plus the others.

This is even worse than P5+1. There's nothing really "European" about this group and it's bizarre to refer a set of countries with an adjective that only describes half of them. Why not the "Pacific rim countries plus 3" or the "English-speakers plus 4"?

The only solutions I can see are to expand the security coucil so that countires like Germany don't need a special invite, or add another country with a vowel so they can have a proper acronym.

"You don't have to hold public office to be a public servant," President Barack Obama said in his address here to the opening session of the Clinton Global Initative. If what his predecessor Bill Clinton says is any indication, it's better if you're not.

Clinton noted that as a former community organizer, Obama was himself an NGO veteran. Additionally, his wife Hillary spent much of the time he was in politics woring in a non-gvenerntal capacity. Noting how they're roles had changed, Clinton mused, " I think I got the long end of the stick."

Without disparaging its goals or methods, CGI does at times seems to embody a decidedly undemocratic ethos, the idea that wealthy donors and political VIPs, unencumbered by the legislative process can achieve the most good for the most people. As Clinton argued, enough heads of states and business leaders (including the CEOs of Coca-Cola and Wal-Mart who spoke at the session) share his views on the urgency of climate change leglistaion, "It's to to convince congresses and parliaments that we're on the right track."

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who also spoke, argued for the virtues of the G-20 over the G-8, not becamse it is more representative, but because compared to the U.N. security council, it is far more efficient. "As the CEOs here could tell you, if there were 192 people on your board of directors, you wouldn't get very much done."

There wasn't much news in Obama's speech, it was a courtesy call that that he decided to make after finding himself "vulnerable to the charms" of the former president. Obama described the need for a "new spirit of global partnership" like that embodied by CGI. What is less discussed is that this type of global partnership oftens happens outside the traditional systems of governmance and depends on the good faith and wisdom of non-elected elites. 

Given what Obama has been facing on the hill lately (an ordeal Clinton certainly identifies with) that probably sounds pretty good to him these days.  

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, and his her office released two reports on violence in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in 2008, citing "possible war crimes and crimes against humanity" by the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP), a rebel group formerly led by Laurent Nkunda and backed by the government of Rwanda.

Talk about your diplomatic understatement. The crimes involved dozens of killings and rapes. But for those following the DRC this statement has to seem kind of weak. There have been all sorts of atrocities in Eastern Congo for years, and the only questions really are which militia was guilty in which case. Possible? The U.N. head of mission in the DRC called the attacks war crimes immediately after they happened. 

Reuters reporters shrewdly dig into the problematic fact that while Nkunda was later arrested by Rwandan forces, it was his lieutenant, Jean Bosco Ntaganda (shown above), nicknamed "The Terminator" who was commanding the CNDP forces at the time of the November killings. Guess where he is? 

Ntaganda, who is being sought by the International Criminal Court on separate war crimes charges, wasintegrated into Congo's army in January along with other members of the Tutsi-dominated CNDP...

"We know he is there. We are aware of it. He was integrated. He wasgiven a role. And according to our partners, he does not play a role inthe operations that MONUC is supporting," said Kevin Kennedy, MONUC's head of communications.

"But it isn't our job to investigate the role of Bosco Ntaganda in the (army)," he told journalists in Kinshasa.

One other question for other Congo watchers out there. Doesn't a lot of focus seem to be just on the CNDP, when the Hutu FDLR militia has been committing terrible massacres for years? In fact, wasn't a key reason--along with grabbing minerals--for Rwandan support of Nkunda that he was protecting Congolese Tutsis from the marauding FDLR, many of whom were genocidaires? Maybe I've just missed it or Nkunda made such a good media character. Is the FDLR getting as much U.N. heat?

Update: This post originally mistook the gender and misspelled the name of U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Navanethem, or Navi, Pillay. 

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