Is policing in Timor-Leste a spectator sport?

Cillian Nolan is the International Crisis Group's Dili-based analyst.

The end of February is here, which means it's time for the UN Security Council to renew the mandate of the UN Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste. Based on the Secretary-General's latest report, released on 18 February, it seems very much like business as usual. The report clings to the fiction that the UN is in charge of policing the half-island state. The reality is a lot murkier. A formal handover of 'executive policing responsibilities' is progressing on a district-by-district basis, but response to recent events resembles a collective abdication of responsibility.

In December, shots fired into the air by the Timorese police (PNTL) outside a late-night party led to the death of a popular musician. The PNTL General Commander soon ordered his officers in Dili to 'step back' and give the UN police the lead.

As Dili residents began to complain about the sudden invisibility of their own police, the Timorese district commander then unilaterally ordered his officers to cease operations altogether. He said the UN police were ineffective, using their guns 'just for show', citing the injury of his officers in a confused joint response to fighting in one of the city's markets.

He also said the PNTL wasn't learning anything from its UN counterparts. After all, the commander asked, isn't the UN technically responsible for security? It was a daring rebuke to the logic of the UN's district-by-district handover. Newspapers quickly filled with calls for the return of the PNTL, seen as faster to respond and less hesitant to bring out its guns. PNTL has since returned to the streets, but the incident hurt the image of the UN police and further weakened the 'democratic policing principles' they are here to promote.

Neither the PNTL senior command nor the Government publicly spoke out against the district commander's move. The General Commander was busy leading a dubious 'mega-operation' against rumoured 'ninja' activity in the border districts — without any UN involvement, even though the international force retains executive authority in the area. (One leading NGO has also raised concerns over possible human rights violations.)

The Secretary-General's report is short on prescriptions to cure the ills of the Timorese police, but provides incisive diagnosis of its problems. Dili is back to 'apparent normalcy' since the 2006 crisis, but it argues the PNTL is not ready to give up UN support. The service remains weak in operational, administrative and management capacity, and lacks basic equipment. There are few clear, enforced policies on fundamentals such as the use of force. There is ample evidence of misconduct with no effective disciplinary mechanism. Police frequently have little understanding of the country's evolving criminal legislation.

Much work thus remains to be done, but the report also acknowledges the 'limited capacity of UNMIT police to contribute to the development of the PNTL', noting consistent difficulties in attracting staff with the right skills. The Secretary-General recommends a limited reduction in police presence by mid-2011. But the question is not how many police will be here but what they will be doing. Much remains to be defined regarding a 'reconfiguration' of roles as the handover proceeds.

Given this inability of UN police to influence outcomes, Crisis Group recommended in December that the UN hand over formal control sooner rather than later. This would bring the mission's mandate into line with the reality of policing in the country and hopefully prompt the Government, and the police, to take further steps toward solving problems only they can fix.

Future support from either the UN, Australia, Portugal, or even Indonesia will only work if the Government can be clear about its needs. It requires a comprehensive plan for the force's future development — a full independent assessment could be a first step. In the meantime, the Government, PNTL and UNMIT need to put aside public rancour and find common ground on 'reconfiguring' the role of the UN police if they are to remain an active player rather than a mere spectator in building the police in Timor-Leste.

U.N. Seeks to Drop Some Taliban From Terror List

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By DEXTER FILKINS

KABUL, Afghanistan — The leader of the United Nations mission here called on Afghan officials to seek the removal of at least some senior Taliban leaders from the United Nations’ list of terrorists, as a first step toward opening direct negotiations with the insurgent group.

In an interview, Kai Eide, the United Nations special representative, also implored the American military to speed its review of the roughly 750 detainees held in its military prisons here — another principal grievance of Taliban leaders. Until late last year, the Americans were holding those prisoners at a makeshift detention center at Bagram Air Base and refusing to release their names.

Together, Mr. Eide said he hoped that the two steps would eventually open the way to face-to-face talks between Afghan officials and Taliban leaders, many of whom are hiding in Pakistan. The two sides have been at an impasse for years over almost every fundamental issue, including the issue of talking itself.

“If you want relevant results, then you have to talk to the relevant person in authority,” Mr. Eide said. “I think the time has come to do it.”

In recent days, Afghan and American officials have signaled their willingness to take some steps that might ultimately lead to direct negotiations, including striking the names of some Taliban leaders from the terrorist list, as Mr. Eide is suggesting.

The remarks by Mr. Eide, who will leave his post here in March, were the latest in a series of Afghan and Western efforts to engage the Taliban movement with diplomatic and political means, even as a new American-led military effort was under way here.

American, Afghan and NATO leaders are also preparing to start an ambitious program to convince rank-and-file Taliban fighters to give up in exchange for schooling and jobs. That plan, expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, will be the focus of an international conference later this week in London.

The plan aims at the bottom of the Taliban hierarchy — the foot soldiers who are widely perceived as mostly poor, illiterate, and susceptible to promises of money and jobs. In 2007 and 2008, a similar effort unfolded in Iraq, where some 30,000 members of the country’s Sunni minority — many of them former insurgents — were put on the American payroll. Partly as a result, violence there plummeted.

Mr. Eide said that in Afghanistan, such efforts at reintegration, while useful, would not be enough. While some rank-and-file Taliban soldiers might be fighting for economic reasons, he said, the motives of most were more complex. The Taliban’s leaders exert more control over the foot soldiers than they are given credit for, he said.

“I don’t believe it’s as simple as saying that these are people who are unemployed, and if we find them employment they will go our way,” Mr. Eide said. “Reintegration by itself is not enough.”

In the past, talks between the Afghan government and the insurgents have foundered on a few core issues. Afghan leaders have demanded that the Taliban forswear violence and their association with Al Qaeda before talks can begin. For their part, the Taliban have demanded that the Americans and other foreign forces leave the country first.

But some Taliban leaders have indicated that they might be willing to engage in some sort of discussions if their names were stricken from the United Nations’ so-called “black list.” The list contains the names of 144 Taliban leaders, including Mullah Mohammed Omar, the movement’s leader, as well as 257 from Al Qaeda. Under United Nations Resolution 1267, governments are obliged to freeze the bank accounts of those on the list and to prevent them from traveling.

Some Taliban leaders say the black list prevents them from entering into negotiations — if they show their face, they say, they would be arrested.

“This would allow the Taliban to appear in public,” said Arsalan Rahmani, a former deputy minister with the Taliban who now lives in the Afghan capital, Kabul. “It would allow the possibility of starting negotiations in a third country.”

Mr. Eide said he does not believe that senior Taliban leaders like Mullah Omar should be removed from the list. It was Mr. Omar, after all, who provided sanctuary to Osama bin Laden and thousands of fighters from Al Qaeda, which launched the Sept. 11 attacks.

But some second-tier Taliban should be taken from the list, he said. Those leaders are not necessarily associated with terrorist acts but might be able to speak for the movement, he said, and might be willing to reciprocate a good-will gesture.

The request to strike any Taliban names from the United Nations list would have to made by Afghan government. In the past, Afghan officials have indicated that they might be willing to take some names off — even that of Mr. Omar. But they have kept details and their ultimate intentions under wraps.

Last week, the American envoy to the region signaled some willingness to allow some Taliban names to be taken off the list as long as they are not senior commanders responsible for atrocities or associated with Al Qaeda.

“A lot of the names don’t mean much to me,” Richard Holbrooke, the Obama administration’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, said last week in Kabul. “Some of the people on the list are dead, some shouldn’t be on the list and some are among the most dangerous people in the world.

“I would be all in favor of looking at the list on a case-by-case basis to see if there are people on the list who are on the list by mistake and should be removed, or in fact are dead,” he said.

Mr. Holbrooke showed no willingness to ease up on the leaders of the insurgency, including Mr. Omar and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the leader of the Islamic Party, an insurgent group fighting the government and the Americans here. “I can’t imagine what would justify such an action at this time,” he said, “and I don’t know anyone who is suggesting that.”

As for the Taliban prisoners, American officials say they imposed a more rigorous review process several months ago, and that they are examining the cases of each detainee. This month, after years of keeping the names of detainees secret, the American military released the names of 645 detainees being held in the main detention center outside of Kabul.

Since September, when the new review process was imposed, the Americans have reviewed the cases of 576 detainees, and 66 of those have been released, Col. Stephen Clutter said. A review of all 645 detainees will be completed by the end of March, he added. Mr. Eide said he hoped it would go further.

“There needs to be a more comprehensive review of the list that has now been published,” Mr. Eide said.

Still, for all of that, it wasn’t clear Sunday just how the Taliban would respond — or if it would at all.

“I don’t know what they will do,” Mr. Rahmani said.

Sangar Rahmi contributed reporting.

U.N. Security Council orders arms embargo on Eritrea

Image by erjkprunczyk via Flickr

By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 24, 2009; A07

NEW YORK -- The U.N. Security Council on Wednesday imposed an arms embargo on the East African country of Eritrea and vowed to slap financial and travel restrictions on its leaders for arming Islamist militants in Somalia.

The resolution, which was introduced by Uganda, passed by a vote of 13 to 1 in the 15-nation council, with Libya voting "no" and China abstaining.

In opposing the vote, Libya's U.N. envoy, Ibrahim Dabbashi, said: "Libya was a victim of sanctions for many years and as such has committed itself to not be a party to the taking of sanctions against any African country whatsoever."

Image by met.e.o.r.a via Flickr

The embargo followed months of frustration by U.S., African and U.N. officials over Eritrea's alleged role in arming al-Shabaab, an Islamist group that is trying to overthrow Somalia's U.N.-backed transitional government. The African Union, which has sent thousands of peacekeepers to Somalia, had urged the council to act.

Susan E. Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said the United States quietly pressed Eritrea in recent months to cease its support for Somali militants but had made little progress.

"The council acted today, not hastily, not aggressively, but with the aim quite sincerely of encouraging Eritrea to do as this council and so many of its members have repeatedly called upon it to do, which is not to continue actions which destabilize Somalia," Rice said after the vote. "We did not come to this decision with any joy -- or with anything other than a desire to support the stability of peace in the region."

Eritrea's U.N. ambassador, Araya Desta, denied that his country supports Somali militants, saying the resolution was based on "fabricated lies" concocted by Ethiopia, its neighbor and chief military adversary, and Ethiopia's chief foreign ally, the United States.

"The U.N. Security Council has today passed a shameful resolution imposing sanctions against Eritrea," he said after the vote, adding that Eritrea has never given military or financial support to the opposition in Somalia. "We don't want to take sides in Somalia."

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In a recent interview with The Washington Post, Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki also dismissed the allegations as "fabricated" and accused the United States of pursuing years of failed policies in the region.

The resolution expresses "grave concern" over Eritrea's provision of "political, financial and logistical support to armed groups engaged in undermining peace and reconciliation in Somalia." It demands that Eritrea "cease all efforts to destabilize or overthrow, directly or indirectly," the transitional government.

The resolution calls on the U.N. sanctions committee to compile a list of political and military leaders who will be barred from traveling outside Eritrea and whose financial assets will be frozen.

The U.N. council has had an increasingly rocky relationship with Eritrea, which clashed in recent years with U.N. peacekeepers monitoring its border with Ethiopia and more recently refused to abide by U.N. demands to withdraw its troops from territory of its other neighbor, Djibouti. The resolution reiterates a demand that Eritrea withdraw its forces from Djibouti.

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Desta denied that Eritrean troops are occupying any part of Djibouti. He also criticized the council for failing to enforce a 2003 resolution -- and a peace accord -- requiring Ethiopia to withdraw its troops from Eritrea. Ethiopia has never done so.

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Handing Back Responsibility to Timor-Leste’s Police

Asia Report N°180
3 December 2009

This executive summary is also available in Tetum, Portuguese and Indonesian.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Click here to view the full report as a PDF file

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The United Nations should hand over formal control of the Timor-Leste police as soon as possible. A protracted process that began in May has taken a bureaucratic approach to assessing whether they are ready to take charge, but the reality on the ground is that the Timorese police have long operated under their own command. Without an agreed plan for reforming the country’s police after the 2006 crisis, the UN and the government have made a poor team for institutional development. A longer handover may further damage relations between the UN’s third-largest policing mission and the Timor-Leste government, which has refused to act as a full partner in implementing reforms. The UN has a continued role to play in providing an advisory presence in support of police operations. For this to work, the government must engage with the UN mission and agree upon the shape of this partnership. To make any new mandate a success, they need to use the remaining months before the current one expires in February 2010 to hammer out a detailed framework for future cooperation with the police under local command.

Timor-Leste still needs the UN and stepping back is not the same as leaving too early. There is domestic political support for a continuing albeit reduced police contingent, at least until the planned 2012 national elections. A sizeable international deployment can no longer be left to operate without a clear consensus on the task at hand. Any new mandate should be limited, specific and agreed. The UN can provide units to underwrite security and support the Timorese police in technical areas such as investigations, prosecutions and training. These would best be identified by a comprehensive independent review of police capacity, and matched with key bilateral contributions, including from Australia and Portugal. In return, the Timorese should acknowledge the need to improve oversight and accountability mechanisms. The UN and its agencies must continue to help build up these structures and in the interim monitor human rights.

The UN took a technocratic approach to the highly politicised task of police reform. Sent in to restore order after an uprising in 2006, the UN police helped shore up stability in the country but then fell short when they tried to reform the institution or improve oversight. They are not set up to foster such long-term change and were never given the tools to do so. The Timorese police were divided and mismanaged at the top; the UN misplaced its emphasis on providing hundreds of uniformed officers to local stations across the country. It neglected the role played by the civilian leadership in the 2006 crisis and the need to revamp the ministry overseeing the police as part of a lasting solution. The mismatching of people to jobs, short rotations as well as the lack of familiarity with local conditions and languages clipped the ability of international police to be good teachers and mentors. Without the power to dismiss or discipline officers, the mission could not improve accountability. The government declined to pass laws in support of the UN role, sending a defiant message of non-cooperation down through police ranks.

In the absence of a joint strategy, structural reform has been limited. The government appointed a commander from outside the police ranks, compromising efforts to professionalise the service. It has promoted a paramilitary style of policing, further blurring the lines between the military and police. The skewed attention to highly armed special units will not improve access to justice, and the ambiguity it creates risks planting the seeds of future conflict with the army. Timorese leaders are attuned more than any outsider to the deadly consequences of institutional failure. To avoid this, Prime Minister Xanana Gusmão, an independence hero, now heads a joint defence and security ministry. Political quick fixes based on personalities may keep the police and the army apart in the short term, but they add little to more lasting solutions that respect for rule of law might provide.

For the international community, this struggle over command of the police between the UN and one of its member states contains many lessons. The slow drawdown of UN police in Timor-Leste is not the prudent exit strategy it may appear. The mission has been neither a success nor failure. Unable to muster consensus on a long-term police development strategy, it leaves behind a weak national police institution. The mission’s most enduring legacy might be in the lessons it can teach the Security Council not to over-stretch its mandates. The UN should think carefully about stepping in and taking control of a local police service, particularly, as in the case of Timor-Leste, when large parts of it remain functioning. Complex reforms of state institutions cannot be done without the political consent of those directly involved.

RECOMMENDATIONS

To the Government of Timor-Leste:

1. Take steps to support the rapid resolution of as many pending police certification cases as possible, including passing any necessary legislation, and ensure that those with outstanding or future criminal convictions are removed from the Polícia Nacional de Timor-Leste (PNTL).

2. Develop a strong, independent oversight capacity for the police, either through overhauling the police’s internal disciplinary functions by making its operations fully transparent and public or, if necessary, developing a separate police ombudsman body.

3. Implement the proposed new police rank structure to improve professionalisation and decrease potential for political manipulation of the police service.

4. Avoid the militarisation of policing and clearly demarcate in law and policy the role of the police and army as well as the conditions and procedures by which soldiers can aid civilian authorities in internal security or other situations.

To the United Nations Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste (UNMIT) and the Government of Timor-Leste:

5. Ensure that executive policing responsibilities are handed over to the Timorese police as soon as possible, spelling out the steps to hand back formal authority to the PNTL, maintaining a limited advisory and support presence for the UN police in operational areas identified as priorities by the government.

6. Reorient future mission mandates towards maintaining a limited advisory presence for the UN police in those operational areas identified by the government and bolstering security in advance of the next elections in 2012, and clarify the conditions necessary before a future full withdrawal of the international policing contingent.

7. Focus the future mission, bilateral efforts and government programs on solving existing training needs, equipment shortfalls, and fixing administrative processes identified in the joint assessments from the national to sub-district level.

8. Commit to a fully independent review of policing capacity in Timor-Leste to be performed before the final withdrawal of the UN police contingent.

To the UN Security Council:

9. Set realistic goals for a future mandate extension for UNMIT and recognise the limited capacity of UN police to play an ongoing development role with their Timorese counterparts.

To Bilateral Donors, including Australia and Portugal:

10. Support an independent review of policing capacity commissioned by the Government of Timor-Leste and UNMIT, and commit to linking future development efforts to needs identified in the review under a common framework.

11. Insist on a long-term capacity-building strategy centred on building institutional values of rule of law, professionalism and human rights.

To the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations:

12. Conduct a thorough lessons learned exercise on UNMIT’s executive policing mandate, UN police’s development role, and the incomplete security sector review in order to inform future missions.

Dili/Brussels, 3 December 2009

U.N. Says U.S. Delays Led to Aid Cuts in Somalia - NYTimes.com

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By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

NAIROBI, Kenya — United Nations officials said on Friday that the supply of critical food aid to Somalia had been interrupted and that rations to starving people needed to be cut, partly because the American government has delayed food contributions out of fears they would be diverted to terrorists.

Last month, American officials said that they had suspended millions of dollars of food aid because of concerns that Somali contractors working for the United Nations were funneling food and money to the Shabab, an Islamist insurgent group with growing ties to Al Qaeda. American officials played down the impact of the delays and said that the food shipments would resume soon, once the American government was assured that the United Nations was doing more to police the aid deliveries.

But on Friday, the World Food Program said, “the food supply line to Somalia is effectively broken.”

United Nations officials said that around 40 million pounds of American-donated food was being held up in warehouses in Mombasa, in neighboring Kenya, because American officials were not allowing aid workers to distribute it until a new set of tighter regulations was ironed out. United Nations officials said the American government was insisting on guarantees that were unrealistic in Somalia, like demanding that aid transporters not pay fees at roadblocks, which are ubiquitous and virtually unavoidable in a nation widely considered a case study in chaos.

American aid officials declined to comment on Friday.

In the drought stricken regions of central Somalia, where entire communities are on the brink of famine, elders said that many children who had been surviving off of the American donations were now dying from hunger.

“We are totally dependent on this food and people are now suffering,” said Ahmed Mahamoud Hassan, the chairman of the drought committee in Galkaiyo, central Somalia. “We have nothing else to eat.”

Somalia is one of the neediest nations in the world — and one of the most complex environments to deliver aid. Ever since the central government imploded in 1991, this parched country has lurched from one crisis to the next, the latest being a vicious civil war between a weak government and an extremist Islamist insurgency during one of the worst droughts in years.

The United States has played a huge role in saving lives by supplying about 40 percent of the $850 million annual aid budget for Somalia. But that aid is often only loosely monitored at best once it enters the country because of the dangers of working in Somalia and the fact that so much of it is a no-go zone for foreigners.

For months now, United Nations officials have been negotiating with American counterparts, trying to agree on language for new rules that would ensure, as much as possible, that American donated food goes to needy people and not to the Shabab. Last month, American officials said they were legally bound to do this, because the American government has listed the Shabab as a terrorist organization, a designation that means that aiding or abetting the Shabab is a serious crime.

There is increasing evidence, according to United Nations documents, that some of the United Nations contractors in Somalia have been stealing food and channeling the proceeds to the Shabab and other militant groups. United Nations officials are currently investigating some of their biggest contractors.

United Nations officials say that other donor nations have been skittish to contribute aid during these investigations, which is another reason for the aid shortages in Somalia. The global recession has also taken a toll on aid operations around the world.

That said, “the United States is traditionally WFP’s largest single donor,” said Peter Smerdon, a spokesman for the World Food Program, “and other donors cannot make up the difference.”

He warned that the food supplies for Somalia were steadily dwindling each month and that by December, “we will completely run out.”

Partly because of the standoff over the new rules and the ensuing interruption in the food pipeline, the United Nations World Food Program recently halved the emergency rations to the more than 1 million displaced Somalis.

United Nations officials said they have been urging the American government to release at least some of the food from the warehouses in Kenya while they work out the new rules. United Nations officials said that even if they wanted to bypass the American government and ship in food from other countries, which would cost millions of dollars, it would be impossible to get it to Somalia in time and that the American sacks of grain sitting in Mombasa was the only solution to averting a widespread famine.

“The urgency of the situation has been communicated,” said one United Nations official in Nairobi, who spoke on condition of anonymity because negotiations were continuing. “Basically, USAID,” the American government’s aid agency, “has to come through, one way or the other.”

BBC - Afghan strife makes UN relocate

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The UN says it will temporarily relocate 600 of its international foreign staff based in Afghanistan.

The personnel would return to work once security had been boosted at unsecured accommodation used by the UN, it said.

The transfer would not affect work such as aid delivery, as this was done by local Afghan staff, the UN added.

The move follows a dawn raid by the Taliban last week on a hostel in the capital, Kabul, which left five UN workers and three Afghans dead.

The attack on the private Bekhtar guesthouse in the Shar-i-Naw district last Wednesday was the deadliest on the UN in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001.

ANALYSIS
Andrew North, BBC News, Kabul It may be a temporary move by the UN, but it is a drastic one.

The UN insists emergency programmes, such as delivering food aid, will continue.

But relocating nearly half its international staff for up to four weeks, while security is upgraded, will inevitably disrupt some operations.

Some may feel it is over-reacting. Other humanitarian agencies are so far not following the UN lead.

But last week's attack has had a devastating impact on UN morale here, comparable to the 2003 suicide bombing of its headquarters in Baghdad.

Six years later, UN staff in Iraq still work under draconian security restrictions, severely limiting what they can do.

A key question will be how much new security procedures here will affect the ability of UN staff to continue working Afghanistan.

On Monday, also citing security concerns, the UN halted long-term development work in north-western Pakistan, a region bordering Afghanistan viewed as a haven for Taliban and al-Qaeda militants.

In a Kabul news conference on Thursday, Kai Eide, the head of the UN's Afghan mission, said some of the staff - mostly "non-frontline" personnel - would be moved within the country, others outside.

"We are not talking about pulling out and we are not talking about evacuation," the Norwegian diplomat said.

The temporary relocation of staff was likely to take three to four weeks, the UN said.

The UN has up to 1,300 international staff - out of a workforce of about 5,600 - based in Afghanistan.

The personnel to be moved come from all UN agencies and different Afghan cities.

Mr Eide told the BBC later: "It's quite clear that the security situation for our staff has become much more complex over the last year."

“ This will have a huge impact on our operation here. It will take longer and it will be more difficult to achieve our goals. ”
UN worker

But he said the Taliban would not succeed in driving the UN out of Afghanistan, in the same way it was forced from Iraq six years ago after a suicide truck bombing on a UN compound killed a top envoy and more than 20 others.

"We will certainly continue our work, but we are taking the measures in order to do so and we are enhancing our security," said Mr Eide.

Meanwhile, British forces are continuing to hunt the Afghan policeman who shot dead five UK soldiers on Tuesday in Helmand.

They are investigating whether the gunman - who opened fire in a compound where the UK troops had been mentoring Afghan police - is linked to the Taliban.

In the guesthouse raid last week, UN employees tried to flee as three heavily armed Taliban militants hiding explosive vests under police uniforms attacked.

THE UN IN AFGHANISTAN

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (Unama) - set up in 2002 - is the umbrella body for all UN agencies

Role is to promote peace and stability in Afghanistan focusing on humanitarian and political issues

Most UN agencies have a major presence in Afghanistan

Major areas of activity include reconstruction, food distribution, political outreach and elections

UN employs about 5,600 staff across Afghanistan

UN also works in partnership with hundreds of governmental and non-governmental organisations

The three gunmen were shot dead.

The hostel - which had been used by the UN and other international organisations - was gutted by fire.

Foreign officials have warned that the Kabul government's reputation for corruption and the recent crisis surrounding the fraud-marred presidential election are fuelling the Taliban insurgency.

Security has continued to deteriorate, despite the presence of more than 100,000 Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), including about 68,000 Americans.

On Thursday Isaf said it was investigating reports that civilians had been killed in a rocket attack by Nato forces on insurgents allegedly planting a bomb in Lashkar Gar, Helmand province.

US President Barack Obama is currently considering a request from the US commander in Afghanistan for another 40,000 troops.

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown last month announced 500 extra British soldiers would be sent.

Assaults Sustained in E. Congo - washingtonpost.com

Image by United Nations Photo via Flickr

By Carley Petesch
Associated Press
Wednesday, October 14, 2009

JOHANNESBURG, Oct. 13 -- More than 1,000 civilians have been killed and nearly 900,000 displaced in eastern Congo by Rwandan Hutu militiamen and Congolese forces since January, humanitarian groups said Tuesday.

The report released by a coalition of 84 organizations said that many of the killings were carried out by Rwandan Hutu militiamen. Congolese government soldiers also have targeted civilians, the report said.

A Congolese military operation has been aimed at forcing out the Hutu militiamen, many of whom sought refuge in neighboring Congo after participating in Rwanda's 1994 genocide, which killed more than 500,000 people.

But the groups said Tuesday that the military operation, which is backed by a U.N. peacekeeping force, is not doing enough to protect civilians in the region.

"The human rights and humanitarian consequences of the current military operation are simply disastrous," said Marcel Stoessel of Oxfam.

The U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo, known as MONUC, has backed the Congolese army in eastern Congo since March, after a joint Congolese and Rwandan operation against the Rwandan Hutu militiamen.

Lt. Col. Jean-Paul Dietrich, military spokesman for the mission, said the United Nations is working hard to protect civilians in the region.

"We are in conversations with the government, who knows our position on this subject -- the officers who have committed these crimes cannot participate in the army and should be tried by the international or national judicial systems," he said.

However, U.N. officials have said that they do not have enough boots on the ground to perform effectively in Congo, a country bigger than Western Europe but with only 300 miles of paved roads.

The 3,000 additional U.N. peacekeepers authorized by the U.N. Security Council in November are only just arriving in the region, the report said.

"The U.N. needs to make it clear that if the Congolese government wants its continued military support, the army should remove abusive soldiers from command positions and its soldiers should stop attacking civilians," said Anneke Van Woudenberg, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch.

U.N. Data Show Discrepancies in Afghan Vote - washingtonpost.com

Image by jarnocan via Flickr

By Colum Lynch and Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, October 7, 2009

UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 6 -- Voter turnout data kept confidential by the United Nations' chief envoy in Kabul after Afghanistan's disputed August presidential election show that in some provinces the official vote count exceeded the estimated number of voters by 100,000 or more, providing further indication that the contest was marred by fraud.

In southern Helmand province -- where 134,804 votes were recorded, 112,873 of them for President Hamid Karzai -- the United Nations estimated that just 38,000 people voted, and possibly as few as 5,000, according to a U.N. spreadsheet obtained by The Washington Post.

The disclosure of the data seems likely to worsen a credibility crisis for the U.N. special envoy, Kai Eide, who is already facing allegations that he sided with Karzai. In the past week, two U.N. political officers in Kabul have resigned because of a lack of confidence in Eide's leadership, according to U.N. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel issues.

The departures were triggered by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's decision last week to fire Eide's American deputy, Peter W. Galbraith, after he accused his boss of failing to provide Afghan and international officials with evidence of fraud, primarily by Karzai's supporters.

Galbraith pressed Eide to turn over to international monitors the United Nations' estimated turnout data, which indicated that many fewer voters cast ballots in certain provinces than the number of votes recorded by election officials. Galbraith said Eide refused to share this data with the internationally led Electoral Complaints Commission once it became clear that the information reflected poorly on Karzai.

In an interview last week, Eide acknowledged withholding the data, saying that the information could not be verified and that he required a formal request in order to share it. He said he was confronted by a "confusing situation" in which "a lot of information was coming from sources that had their own agenda. We can't just hand over a bunch of information if we haven't made a solid assessment of it."

Eide added that he "really feels offended" by allegations that he favored Karzai, saying he had taken a balanced approach that enjoyed the "unanimous" support of the international community.

The U.N. spreadsheet shows widespread discrepancies between turnout and results, particularly in the volatile southern and eastern provinces where Karzai won with large margins. There are also allegations of fraud by followers of Abdullah Abdullah, Karzai's main competitor, but on a lesser scale.

Diplomats in Kabul have previously referred to such discrepancies, but the U.N. data have not been publicly disclosed until now.

In Paktika province, for example, where Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission has reported that 212,405 valid votes were cast, including 193,541 for Karzai, the United Nations estimated that 35,000 voters turned out. In Kandahar province, which recorded 252,866 votes, including 221,436 for Karzai, the United Nations estimated that 100,000 people voted.

In several provinces won by Abdullah, the United Nations estimated a larger turnout than election officials recorded. In Balkh province, for example, the organization estimated that 450,000 people voted, while the results showed 297,557 votes, 46 percent of them for Abdullah.

Although the estimates in some cases include a broad range of possible turnout, Galbraith said it was important information to share with Afghan officials and international monitors. "I favored turning it over to the Electoral Complaints Commission," he said. "I think we did an excellent job at collecting data. . . . We collected it with the idea of assisting the Afghan legal party that was investigating fraud, but Kai opposed turning it over."

Dan McNorton, the U.N. spokesman in Kabul, did not challenge the authenticity of the spreadsheet, but he said it should be read with caution. "The information that you have is unsubstantiated raw data and should be treated as such," he said.

McNorton said the Afghan and U.N.-backed electoral institutions are carrying out a "robust and methodologically sound" audit of the suspect ballot boxes that will be completed by the end of the week. "To suggest that UNAMA has supported one particular candidate over another is ludicrous," he said, using the acronym for the U.N. mission in Afghanistan.

U.N. officials have accused Galbraith of seeking to overturn the Afghan constitution in his zeal to thwart Karzai's election victory, saying he sought to "disenfranchise" large numbers of potential Karzai voters by closing 1,500 of 6,900 polling stations in volatile regions in southern and southeastern Afghanistan that are populated by members of the president's Pashtun ethnic group.

Senior U.N. officials also asserted that Galbraith urged Eide in a meeting in early September to consider annulling the elections because of fraud, to convince Karzai and Abdullah to step aside, and to set up a transitional government headed by Ashraf Ghani, a former World Bank economist who finished in fourth place with 2.7 percent of the vote. Galbraith, according to these officials, offered to seek support for the plan from Vice President Biden.

"Here's a man, a U.N. representative, advocating an unconstitutional change of government," Vijay Nambiar, Ban's chief of staff, said of Galbraith. "Of course he was recalled. What would you have expected us to do?"

Galbraith declined to discuss the details of the meeting but said there had been no formal proposal for a new government or a mission to Washington. "It's a smoke screen to obscure the real issue, which was whether the U.N. should handle electoral fraud," Galbraith said. "There was no mission to Biden or anybody else because there was no plan to do this."

The disputed election results have complicated the Obama administration's efforts to persuade a skeptical American public of the need to prosecute a war on behalf of Karzai's government.

"There is nothing more important this year than the legitimacy and credibility of our Afghan partners," said J. Alexander Thier, director for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the U.S. Institute of Peace. "The deepening skepticism in the United States about the entire engagement rests upon the idea that we don't have a credible partner in Afghanistan."

U.N. officials on both sides of the debate say Karzai -- who secured 54.6 percent of the first-round vote -- is ultimately expected to win the election, even without the help of fraudulent votes. But the reports of massive fraud have cast a cloud over Karzai's candidacy in Afghanistan, and Abdullah has stoked those suspicions by accusing Eide of bias toward the president.

On Saturday, Karl W. Eikenberry, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, sought to bolster international support for the U.N.-backed election, telling a gathering of two dozen diplomats that the United States has full trust in Eide. "The U.S. Embassy has full confidence in UNAMA and its leadership," said Caitlin Hayden, a U.S. Embassy spokeswoman.

Edmond Mulet, the U.N. assistant secretary general for peacekeeping, also defended the envoy. "Kai has the full support of the secretary general and of the most important stakeholders, the member states, including the United States, and all the ambassadors and special envoys sitting in Kabul," he said.

But Galbraith has received backing from some rank-and-file staffers, including one former subordinate who said Galbraith "was highly popular among the staff."

"The environment had become very toxic," said Tracey Brinson, Galbraith's assistant in Kabul, who also plans to leave her job this month. "There is a lot of anger, a lot of resentment, sort of hurt feelings, and people are a little disillusioned about what they are doing."

Partlow reported from Kabul.

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• Third of Afghan votes 'fraudulent' (guardian.co.uk)

Peter W. Galbraith -- U.N. Isn't Addressing Fraud in Afghan Election - washingtonpost.com

By Peter W. Galbraith
Sunday, October 4, 2009

Before firing me last week from my post as his deputy special representative in Afghanistan, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon conveyed one last instruction: Do not talk to the press. In effect, I was being told to remain a team player after being thrown off the team. Nonetheless, I agreed.

As my differences with my boss, Norwegian diplomat Kai Eide, had already been well publicized (through no fault of either of us), I asked only that the statement announcing my dismissal reflect the real reasons. Alain LeRoy, the head of U.N. peacekeeping and my immediate superior in New York, proposed that the United Nations say I was being recalled over a "disagreement as to how the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) would respond to electoral fraud." Although this was not entirely accurate -- the dispute was really about whether the U.N. mission would respond to the massive electoral fraud -- I agreed.

Instead, the United Nations announced my recall as occurring "in the best interests of the mission," and U.N. press officials told reporters on background that my firing was necessitated by a "personality clash" with Eide, a friend of 15 years who had introduced me to my future wife.

I might have tolerated even this last act of dishonesty in a dispute dating back many months if the stakes were not so high. For weeks, Eide had been denying or playing down the fraud in Afghanistan's recent presidential election, telling me he was concerned that even discussing the fraud might inflame tensions in the country. But in my view, the fraud was a fact that the United Nations had to acknowledge or risk losing its credibility with the many Afghans who did not support President Hamid Karzai.

I also felt loyal to my U.N. colleagues who worked in a dangerous environment to help Afghans hold honest elections -- at least five of whom have now told me they are leaving jobs they love in disgust over the events leading to my firing.

Afghanistan's presidential election, held Aug. 20, should have been a milestone in the country's transition from 30 years of war to stability and democracy. Instead, it was just the opposite. As many as 30 percent of Karzai's votes were fraudulent, and lesser fraud was committed on behalf of other candidates. In several provinces, including Kandahar, four to 10 times as many votes were recorded as voters actually cast. The fraud has handed the Taliban its greatest strategic victory in eight years of fighting the United States and its Afghan partners.

The election was a foreseeable train wreck. Unlike the United Nations-run elections in 2004, this balloting was managed by Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission (IEC). Despite its name, the commission is subservient to Karzai, who appointed its seven members. Even so, the international role was extensive. The United States and other Western nations paid the more than $300 million to hold the vote, and U.N. technical staff took the lead in organizing much of the process, including printing ballot papers, distributing election materials and designing safeguards against fraud.

Part of my job was to supervise all this U.N. support. In July, I learned that at least 1,500 polling centers (out of 7,000) were to be located in places so insecure that no one from the IEC, the Afghan National Army or the Afghan National Police had ever visited them. Clearly, these polling centers would not open on Election Day. At a minimum, their existence on the books would create large-scale confusion, but I was more concerned about the risk of fraud.

Local commission staff members were hardly experienced election professionals; in many instances they were simply agents of the local power brokers, usually aligned with Karzai. If no independent observers or candidate representatives, let alone voters, could even visit the listed location of a polling center, these IEC staffers could easily stuff ballot boxes without ever taking them to the assigned location. Or they could simply report results without any votes being in the ballot boxes.

Along with ambassadors from the United States and key allies, I met with the Afghan ministers of defense and the interior as well as the commission's chief election officer. We urged them either to produce a credible plan to secure these polling centers (which the head of the Afghan army had told me was impossible) or to close them down. Not surprisingly, the ministers -- who served a president benefiting from the fraud -- complained that I had even raised the matter. Eide ordered me not to discuss the ghost polling centers any further. On Election Day, these sites produced hundreds of thousands of phony Karzai votes.

At other critical stages in the election process, I was similarly ordered not to pursue the issue of fraud. The U.N. mission set up a 24-hour election center during the voting and in the early stages of the counting. My staff collected evidence on hundreds of cases of fraud around the country and, more important, gathered information on turnout in key southern provinces where few voters showed up but large numbers of votes were being reported. Eide ordered us not to share this data with anyone, including the Electoral Complaints Commission, a U.N.-backed Afghan institution legally mandated to investigate fraud. Naturally, my colleagues wondered why they had taken the risks to collect this evidence if it was not to be used.

In early September, I got word that the IEC was about to abandon its published anti-fraud policies, allowing it to include enough fraudulent votes in the final tally to put Karzai over the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff. After I called the chief electoral officer to urge him to stick with the original guidelines, Karzai issued a formal protest accusing me of foreign interference. My boss sided with Karzai.

Afghanistan is deeply divided ethnically and geographically. Both Karzai and the Taliban are Pashtun, Afghanistan's dominant ethnic group, which makes up about 45 percent of the country's population. Abdullah Abdullah, Karzai's main challenger, is half Pashtun and half Tajik but is politically identified with the Tajiks, who dominate the north and are Afghanistan's second largest ethnic group. If the Tajiks believe that fraud denied their candidate the chance to compete in a second round, they may respond by simply not recognizing the authority of the central government. The north already has de facto autonomy; these elections could add an ethnic fault line to a conflict between the Taliban and the government that to date has largely been a civil war among Pashtuns.

Since my disagreements with Eide went public, Eide and his supporters have argued that the United Nations had no mandate to interfere in the Afghan electoral process. This is not technically correct. The U.N. Security Council directed the U.N. mission to support Afghanistan's electoral institutions in holding a "free, fair and transparent" vote, not a fraudulent one. And with so much at stake -- and with more than 100,000 U.S. and coalition troops deployed in the country -- the international community had an obvious interest in ensuring that Afghanistan's election did not make the situation worse.

President Obama needs a legitimate Afghan partner to make any new strategy for the country work. However, the extensive fraud that took place on Aug. 20 virtually guarantees that a government emerging from the tainted vote will not be credible with many Afghans.

As I write, Afghanistan's Electoral Complaints Commission is auditing 10 percent of the suspect polling boxes. If the audit shows this sample to be fraudulent, the commission will throw out some 3,000 suspect ballot boxes, which could lead to a runoff vote between Karzai and Abdullah. By itself, a runoff is no antidote for Afghanistan's electoral challenges. The widespread problems that allowed for fraud in the first round of voting must be addressed. In particular, all ghost polling stations should be removed from the books ("closed" is not the right word since they never opened), and the election staff that facilitated the fraud must be replaced.

Afghanistan's pro-Karzai election commission will not do this on its own. Fixing those problems will require resolve from the head of the U.N. mission in Afghanistan -- a quality that so far has been lacking.

galbraithvt@gmail.com

Peter W. Galbraith served as deputy special representative of the United Nations in Afghanistan from June until last week.

U.N. Human Rights Council Shelves Divisive Report on Gaza War - washingtonpost.com

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

By Howard Schneider and Colum Lynch
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, October 3, 2009

JERUSALEM, Oct. 2 -- The U.N. Human Rights Council on Friday shelved a controversial report on Israel's recent war in the Gaza Strip, averting a crisis in the push to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks but potentially scuttling efforts to initiate broad war-crimes prosecutions over the conflict.

Palestinian officials dropped their support for a scheduled Friday vote on the report after intense lobbying from the Obama administration, which argued that action on the study would "backfire" by driving Israel away from possible peace talks and strengthening opposition among Western countries worried about similar investigations of their soldiers.

A fact-finding mission chaired by former South African judge Richard Goldstone concluded that there is evidence of war crimes by Israeli soldiers and Hamas fighters and said that if the two sides did not conduct independent investigations, the International Criminal Court should consider prosecutions. The government of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu responded angrily that the panel's findings undermined the right of nations to self-defense by playing down Hamas's rocket attacks on Israel in the years before the three-week winter war.

Israeli officials said this week that if the Geneva-based Human Rights Council forwarded the report to the U.N. General Assembly, the action would all but end hopes for restarting peace negotiations -- a message reinforced by U.S. officials in talks with Palestinians.

White House special envoy George J. Mitchell has been meeting this week in Washington with Israeli and Palestinian negotiators, and President Obama has set a mid-October deadline for efforts to restart direct talks between them.

"We said we have to keep our eye on the ball," said a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "I think they [the Palestinians] recognized that to push this up the hill, it could really backfire."

Israeli officials did not comment on the decision. Human Rights Watch urged the United States either to press for Israel and Hamas to conduct their own probes or to support their referral to the International Criminal Court.

"The larger danger is that it legitimizes the Netanyahu argument that democratic states can't be constrained in the way they fight terrorism -- that enforcing respect for the rules is an inherent challenge to the right of self-defense," Tom Malinowski, director of Human Rights Watch's Washington office, said of the decision.

While defusing an issue for Netanyahu's government, the delay is a potential blow to the political standing of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

The Palestinian leader is being pulled by Washington toward renewed negotiations despite the inability of Mitchell and Obama to coax Israel into agreeing to freeze the construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank -- a step Abbas felt would broaden Palestinian support for the talks. Along with his attendance at a meeting with Netanyahu in New York last week, the delay in action on the Goldstone report marks a second big accommodation to the United States.

"These developments in New York and now in Geneva have affected negatively the slightly improving public position of our leadership. It is disappointing on all levels," said Ghassan Khatib, a Palestinian Authority spokesman.

Abbas was already caught in the middle of the Gaza conflict, a ground and air war directed at his main rival, the Islamist Hamas movement. Abbas holds power only in the West Bank, and he used the security forces under his control to tamp down protests as Israel rolled into Gaza, which Hamas had seized in 2007. More than 1,100 Palestinians were killed in the war, according to Israeli officials, while officials in Gaza say more than 1,400 died, including hundreds of civilians. Thirteen Israelis were killed.

Hamas criticized the delay in Geneva as a sign of Abbas's "collusion" with Israel.

Also Friday, Hamas celebrated the release of 20 Palestinian prisoners traded for a videotape sent to Israel of captured soldier Gilad Shalit. Held for more than three years since being seized in a cross-border raid, the 23-year-old soldier appeared relaxed and healthy on the 2 1/2 -minute video, which was shown on national television and offered the first tangible proof of his condition.

Lynch reported from New York.

Mon migrant workers in Malaysia invited to register with the UN - Democracy for Burma

Image by Franz Patzig via Flickr

Wed 30 Sep 2009, Asahi

On the 15th this upcoming October, 2849 Mon migrant workers in Malaysia will be allowed to register as refugees with the United Nations (UN).

The invitation has been extended not only to Mon workers already residing in Malaysia, but also to Mon refugees living in refugee camps in Thailand, many of whom are now moving to Malaysia to take advantage of the UN’s offer.

Registering as refugees win the UN provides migrants with official United Nation identification documents; such identification aids them in finding employment and provides legal benefits.

According to Nai Sai Wana, chairman of the Malaysia Mon Refugee Organization, migrant workers from many Burmese ethnic minorities will be allowed to register in much higher numbers than last year. Between 600 and 700 Ka Chin, 10, 000 Chin, over 600 Shan, over 2,800 Mon, over 1,000 Karen, and roughly 400 Karen Ni migrant workers from Burma will be allowed to register with the United Nations by then end of a registration period that started on July 17th and will last until the cutoff point on October 15th.

“On the 15th of March 2009, we registered with UN about 5,000 Mon migrants in Malaysia. So, they gave many Mon migrants this special this October. In 2009, those who have been registered at the UN can get a job easier than others. And NGO groups help those who have registered already to get jobs,“ he added. Nai Sai Wana also mentioned that opportunities for migrant worker registration in Malaysia this year were far greater than last year, when only migrants recently released from prison, or those infected with diseases like HIV, were allowed to register with the UN. According to the chairman, there are over 20,000 Mon migrant workers living, but only 6,500 are members of the Malaysia Mon Refugee Organization. By becoming members of the MMRO, migrant workers are allowed to register with the United Nations as legal workers in Malaysia.

According to a worker already registered in Malaysia, this year the MMRO wants to register more Mon migrants than last year, because the organization is anxious to draw UN attention to migrant worker issues and abuses in Malaysia.

“After we registered, we got a paper [like a certificate] and then one month later we got a UN ID. If we have a UN ID, we are supported when we want a job, and the police don’t arrest us. In fact, we can get a good job as well as a good salary. We aren’t afraid of a boss who doesn’t pay money each month for a working salary,” this worker added.

According to a Mon migrant worker who registered with the UN just last month, many Mon migrant workers in Malaysia want to register with the UN because not registering leaves them vulnerable to being arrested by the Malaysian police will. It is also very difficult to get a good job without a UN certificate and a passport.

“If we have no UN ID or passport, the police can arrest us at any time. And we have to be afraid that they will arrest us if we go somewhere. Those who have a ID get a salary of 1200 Malaysian ringgit per month, but those without an ID only get 800 ringgit per month. Sometime a boss wouldn’t pay our salaries, and we couldn’t complain, this worker added.

On the 13th of August in 2009, 250 Mon migrant workers in Malaysia were allowed to register with the UN, Nai Sai Wana pointed out.

The chairman also mentioned that last year, the UN allowed Kachin migrant workers to register in greater numbers than members of other ethic minorities from Burma. Only 30 member of each ethnic group (including the Mon) were allowed to register.