The Drones Club

Could drones – currently used by the CIA for targeted assassinations (just don’t call them that, especially as they often seem untargeted) – be used for good? Andrew Stobo Sniderman and Mark Hanis, co-founders of the Genocide Intervention Network, seem to think so…

Imagine if we could watch in high definition with a bird’s-eye view. A drone would let us count demonstrators, gun barrels and pools of blood. And the evidence could be broadcast for a global audience, including diplomats at the United Nations and prosecutors at the International Criminal Court.

In some ways it is not so very different to what George Clooney is already doing with his Satellite Sentinel Project. And it is not the first time it has been tried with drones. Sam Bell once tried to buy a drone in his hols to fly over Darfur…

The executives offered an old, low-end, limited- range UAV for $5 million. That was still, as Bell puts it, “a bit out of our price range,” but he thought it might be worth splurging–until he and fellow anti-genocide crusader Mark Hanis ran their potential purchase by an expert.

Oh, so Hanis has form. And has already been told once it was bonkers.

Anyway, this time he reckons he has the arguments licked with an interesting mix of good intentions and an appeal to everyone’s favourite freedom fighter…

This sounds a lot like surveillance, and it would be. It would violate Syrian airspace, and perhaps a number of Syrian and international laws. It isn’t the kind of thing nongovernmental organizations usually do. But it is very different from what governments and armies do. Yes, we (like them) have an agenda, but ours is transparent: human rights. We have a duty, recognized internationally, to monitor governments that massacre their own people in large numbers. Human rights organizations have always done this. Why not get drones to assist the good work?

Well, here’s one reason. A black and white, name em and shame em approach to human rights isn’t the only show in town. Lots of organisations have taken a different stand to ensure they retain access to people hurt or imprisoned. You might want to check with the Red Cross and see how they feel about this. But if your aim is to escalate a conflict and ensure aid agencies are prevented from entering, then this is exactly the right course to follow. And then what about the legal status of invading a country’s airspace?

It may be illegal in the Syrian government’s eyes, but supporting Nelson Mandela in South Africa was deemed illegal during the apartheid era. To fly over Syria’s territory may violate official norms of international relations, but governments do this when they support opposition groups with weapons, money or intelligence, as NATO countries did recently in Libya. In any event, violations of Syrian sovereignty would be the direct consequence of the Syrian state’s brutality, not the imperialism of outsiders.

Of course in Libya there was also the small matter of UN resolution. But anyway, what’s the harm when you mean well?

It’s not about the swimming pool

The Rotana swimming pool in Khartoum - favoured Saturday venue of Sudan's expat aid workers

There’s a fascinating blog post by Duncan Green, Oxfam GB’s head of research, about whether the charity should open up its guest house swimming pool in Nairobi. Apparently it’s closed at present for fear of…

Reputational risk – back in the UK, where swimming pools are luxury items, Oxfam’s big cheeses saw a tabloid scandal in the making and closed it (see right, the blue of the pool is a protective tarpaulin, not water). It didn’t help when some bright spark decided to advertise for a swimming pool attendant on the Oxfam website……

Swahili Street has an interesting response:

The aid business is a very strange world. It sees itself as a world apart, which is self fulfilling. Thinking that yours is a world apart leads to both guilty hand wringing, as seen in Oxfam’s empty pool, and also a deeply unattractive  sense of entitlement, as seen in some of the comments on the post.

I think this hits the nail on the head. Charities have a lot to think about in East Africa. The billions of pounds poured into Somalia, Kenya, Uganda and the rest have made little difference to sustainable development. There’ll be another famine scare in the Horn in a year or so’s time, despite the 2011 appeals. Few of them dare speak out about the corruption and poor governance that means the region cannot move forward. And at times, the charities seem more interested in beating the others to funds (such as the occasion Oxfam moved forward its Darfur appeal to beat an upcoming one by the Disasters Emergencies Committee).

There is plenty for the charities to mull. The issue is not a sodding swimming pool. After all, I’ve swum with plenty of aid workers in plenty of pools across the region.

Memogate: What’s the truth got to do with it?

To no-one’s great surprise, we learned yesterday that Mansoor Ijaz, the crucial figure in the “memogate” saga, would not be coming to Pakistan to explain exactly who knew what. His lawyer said he feared for his safety. Mr Ijaz told me he feared for his evidence:

“It’s very simple, there’s an inherent conflict of interest for the security detail that’s arranged. The only evidence I have is on the Blackberries. What if they were confiscated when I arrived or just snatched out of my hand? Then the whole evidence process changes.”

He said he would have been happy to return if his safety was guaranteed by the military. But was upset when the Interior Ministry took responsibility instead.

One sure fire to try to stop Mr Ijaz coming was certainly to give responsibility for his safety to Rehman Malik, the man in charge of Benazir Bhutto’s security on the day she died, and part of the government that Mr Ijaz’s allegations could bring down.

In some ways the no-show suits both parties. Mr Ijaz’s evidence is looking less credible by the day and he now has a useful excuse not to come. And for a government facing multiple threats it neutralises one of the risks to its survival – for now.

But once again in Pakistan, we’re left wondering whether truth is the loser.

Captain or statesman?

Piece in today’s Sunday Times (behind the paywall) confirms theory that all of Pakistan can be understood by looking at the cricket team. In this case it’s how the captain, Misbah-ul-Haq, has transformed the team’s fortunes…

Geoff Lawson, an earlier Pakistan coach, rates Misbah the cleverest man in Pakistan cricket. “He has a statesman-like demeanour, which so many Pakistan captains lacked,” Lawson said. “He handles adversity analytically, not emotionally.”

Peace v Justice: Lessons from Northern Ireland

African Union soldier outside aid camp near El Fasher, South Sudan, 2005

On one of my final visits to Khartoum I was discussing the gnarly old peace-versus-justice debate with a diplomat, who used a comparison with a peace process closer to home. She was making a point about the utility of issuing a warrant for the arrest of President Omar al-Bashir even as negotiations continued for independence for Southern Sudan… (taken from Saving Darfur)

“It would be like arresting Martin McGuinness during the Good Friday negotiations.”

I was reminded of this by David Aaronovitch’s column in the The Times on Thursday (I’m afraid those of you who prefer not to pay for your journalism will not be able to read it) in which he sets out the dilemma by comparing one family’s desire for justice in Northern Ireland for their dead relative, with the benefits of sweeping such cases under the carpet, those benefits being:

It is that the peace process has succeeded partly because we have not sought too assiduously to examine who did what in the bloody recent past.

Not only have terrorists been released and pardoned, but it was also decided not to seek extradition in many cases of terrorists who had fled abroad on the ground that, as Charles Clarke put it when Home Secretary, it was “neither proportionate nor in the public interest”.

We hear much about the competing demands of peace and justice, but usually with reference to Sudan or Kenya and during the Arab Spring in Libya or Syria. But the debate rumbles on in the UK and Ireland too. And of course it must be desperately difficult for anyone who has lost a relative to see men they suspect of murder taking on positions of responsibility.

Aaronovitch spells out the dilemma without drawing a conclusion.

But reading again about how setting aside horrendous crimes in the north of Ireland was seen as an important part of finding peace, I’m reminded again that vantage point matters. How easy it is to try to impose lofty ideals of justice on faraway lands; how much more difficult to do it at home, where bombs and bullets can affect our loved ones.

My own position changed during the 2008 violence in Kenya. A shoddy peace deal rewarded government thugs who rigged an election and opposition figures who launched a wave of ethnic violence with ministerial positions for both. There was no justice in that. But it stopped the killing. And – for me – it was killing that had happened in the streets close to my house. Maybe justice will come now as the ICC decided whether to try six Kenyan suspects for their alleged roles.

In that case the right decision was made. And in Northern Ireland. But too often, a noisy Western lobby continues to push for justice before peace when it comes to conflicts elsewhere, places they have often not bothered to visit – despite claiming to speak for the voiceless.

So here’s my point. If we have set aside questions of justice in order to secure peace at home, shouldn’t we do the same for Sudan, Syria and the rest?

Piracy an Important Source of Development Cash in Somalia

I’ve always been impressed by Somalia’s pirates. The country is a basket case in so many ways, but amid the insecurity and poverty they have managed to become world leaders in their field. And I’m not completely joking when I say they are a reminder that Somalia has an incredibly resourceful population that can overcome its chaotic clan-based rivalries when it wants to.

And now there’s a fascinating study of the economic impact of piracy on Somalia, produced for Chatham House, by Anja Shortland of Brunel University. She used satellite imagery to produce before-and-after comparisons of several of the main pirate lairs, such as Hobyo and Eyl. The pictures show how wealth is being spread around and invested in the sort of development that has long been missing from Somalia. While coastal villages may actually have not received as much as they would have liked, her conclusions on how to end the problem of piracy are worth remembering:

A negotiated solution to the piracy problem should aim to exploit local disappointment among coastal communities regarding the economic benefits from piracy and offer them an alternative that brings them far greater benefits than hosting pirates does. A military crack-down on the other hand would deprive one of the world’s poorest nations of an important source of income and aggravate poverty.

What this means for my long-forgotten prediction that Somali pirates would buy Djibouti and launch bid for 2020 Olympics is anyone’s guess…