Migration - Atlantic Council

Economy & Business European Union

Europe Center

Providing expertise and building communities to promote transatlantic leadership and a strong Europe in turbulent times.

The Europe Center promotes the transatlantic leadership and strategies required to ensure a strong Europe.

The post #AtlanticDebrief – What were the main takeaways from the EUCO summit? | A Debrief from Dave Keating appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Pavia joins BBC World Service to discuss potential outcomes as EP’s committee visits Lampedusa for a search and rescue fact-finding mission.

Atlantic Council — Thu, 22 Jun 2023 19:47:32 +0000

The post Pavia joins BBC World Service to discuss potential outcomes as EP’s committee visits Lampedusa for a search and rescue fact-finding mission. appeared first on Atlantic Council.

‘Any nationality just not Syrian’: Refugee deportations surge in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey

Arwa Damon — Tue, 20 Jun 2023 16:11:25 +0000

“Bring me any nationality, anything, just not Syrian,” joked the Jordanian work permit processing official to Yousef, the Syrian man standing in front of him.

Yousef is not his real name. We’re not disclosing his identity nor additional details due to the precarious nature of his current circumstances. He has been in his profession for nearly ten years, operating an organization in Amman. Yousef’s career has been progressing remarkably. But none of that carries any weight in this instance.

“I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do. No Syrians,” the official reaffirmed.

The clock is running out on Yousef’s temporary visa in Jordan, necessitating his exit. But where is he to go?

“I felt like walls were closing in on me. I couldn’t breathe,” He confides in me. “I’m out of options.”

He’s not the only one. Facebook private chat groups for Syrian in Jordan are filled with confusion and anxiety. Questions fly back and forth: “Does anyone know if there is a new procedure?” “Is there a way to prolong deportation?” “What happens if I’m stopped on the street?”

Going back to Syria carries the risk of potential detention risk despite the regime’s continuous claims of amnesty for returnees. No one I have spoken to trusts the regime’s claim, and all know that detention in Syria most likely ends in death.

But it’s not just Jordan where Syrians must fear deportation. Living in Turkey has become increasingly difficult as well. Even Syrians who own property in Turkey are getting their residencies rejected. Lebanon is a non-starter.

It’s a terrifying situation to be in. It’s a sort of fear that doesn’t dissipate, and a different one to the sort that drove Syrians out of their homes and into this wretched existence, where they’ve been branded as refugees—rejected and unwanted seemingly everywhere.

I get a message from a mother I know in Lebanon:

“Arwa, please, you have to do something. They are not going to renew our papers. You have to save us.” Umm Mohammed’s voice is cracking, breaking, desperate.

Umm Mohammed and her family fled Syria ten years ago. Her youngest children were born in Lebanon, and her eldest daughter is in university. While life in Lebanon has grown increasingly unbearable for them—the hatred they receive for being Syrian forces them to rarely venture out—at least they encountered no issues with their yearly permit That is, until now.

A relative who knows the family said he was informed through an official that their papers would be stamped “deport/leave”.

“We can’t go back. We just can’t. Our house was destroyed after we left. It was bombed. We have nothing.” Umm Mohammed is begging and begging. “My kids’ lives are here. They are all in school. I haven’t been able to tell my husband yet. He will have a stroke.”

Umm Mohammed and her family registered with the United Nations (UN) in 2013 as refugees. Umm Mohammed says that five years ago, they were called in twice for asylum interviews. Such hope they had! But then they got a phone call from someone who told them they were rejected while failing to provide a reason. Umm Mohammed says they’ve called the numbers on their papers to try to understand why, but no one even answers the phone. They personally visited the offices in their area and in Beirut. However, they could not even get through the front door.

She doesn’t understand what is happening in her life; how everything is just so out of her control. Two of her siblings who interviewed at the same time as her family were resettled in other countries years ago. One is in Norway, and the other is in the United States.

“Please, please just do something to try and see if you can get an answer; if there is anything we can do to get our file moving again.” Umm Mohammed pleads to me. “Our lives are in your hands. My children’s lives are in your hands.”

I called the number on the paperwork she provided me numerous times but received no answer. I’ve reached out to people I know to see if they can point me in the right direction or to the right person. This is hardly the first time I’ve heard about Syrians struggling to get in touch with the UN in Lebanon or to get updates on their status.

The Arab League’s decision to “normalize” relations with the government of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad has pushed a fast-forward button on making life harder for Syrian refugees in the region through deportations and rejections of residencies. But it’s hardly anything new.

While Syria’s neighboring countries have long been struggling to host their Syrian refugee populations, with many, like Lebanon, being in a complete crisis of their own, the sheer lack of care provided to refugees is inhumane. This should not be regarded as a “Syria” problem. This is one of the core problems in the overall approach toward managing Syrian refugees. Neighboring countries need to be provided with the support—which has never fully materialized despite pledges—to host and treat their refugee populations with humanity.

Ahmed al-Reems’ story is especially jarring. He arrived in Turkey in 2019, settling in a village around 40 km from the heart of the capital, Ankara. Late last year, Turkish security forces came for him, his wife, his two-year-old son, and his four-year-old daughter in the middle of the night.

“We didn’t understand what was happening, it was 4 am, and they were banging on the door shouting police! police!” Ahmed tells me over the phone. “They said we just want to take you to the immigration department. I asked them to let me pack a bag, at least take diapers for my littlest one. He told me don’t worry about it; you will be back home in a bit.”

When his family boarded the bus, they realized that it was packed with other Syrian families from their same area. Eighteen families—around sixty people in all—had been rounded up at the same time.

They were held for twenty-four hours in a detention facility. There were no blankets nor food, and the conditions were filthy. Ahmed says he and his family were then boarded on another bus and told that they were going to another area in Ankara. Instead, they were driven for hours to Gaziantep (which is close to the border with Syria), given papers, and ordered to sign them.

“I said no at first, but they insisted. I didn’t want to create problems, so we did. I still thought I had a chance of going back home,” Yousef recalls, his voice utterly dejected. “At 6 am, they took us to the border crossing and just shoved us away.”

The presence of Syrian refugees was central to the recent elections in Turkey. The opposition party spouted hateful anti-refugee rhetoric and vowed to rid the country of them. While less vocal about their intentions, the government coalition of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who won the presidential vote, has been deporting Syrians for years. However, generally speaking, expulsion had been reserved for those who had not renewed their papers, traveled outside of their permit zone, or incurred other minor infractions.

“It might have been because of the elections,” Ahmed speculates, “but I still don’t understand. I had my residency; we were all legal. I didn’t do anything wrong. I’ve never had any problems.”

In Turkey, they had managed to build a home again. Not exactly the same as the one they had fled from when the bombs arrived in their town in Syria, but it was still a home, filled with their personal belongings and the children’s toys. It’s all gone again. They are back to living in a tent in Idlib.

“I still feel like I’m going to wake up from this nightmare,” Ahmed says. “I feel like I am a dead man.”

Arwa Damon is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East. She is also the president and founder of the International Network for Aid, Relief, and Assistance (INARA), a nonprofit organization that focuses on building a network of logistical support and medical care to help children who need life-saving or life-altering medical treatment in war-torn nations.

The post ‘Any nationality just not Syrian’: Refugee deportations surge in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Scowcroft Strategy Scorecard: Does the Quadrennial Homeland Security Review make the grade?

Atlantic Council — Wed, 24 May 2023 21:26:30 +0000

Scowcroft Strategy Scorecard:
Does the Quadrennial Homeland Security Review make the grade?

On April 20, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released the third Quadrennial Homeland Security Review (QHSR). DHS calls the QHSR its “capstone strategy document,” setting out the short- and medium-term direction for the US government’s third-largest cabinet department. By law, the QHSR is a “review,” not a “strategy,” and so it devotes much of its ninety-two pages to a summary of DHS’s current activities and recent accomplishments, more than a pure strategy would contain. With these caveats in mind, experts with the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security’s Forward Defense program read the 2023 QHSR and offered their assessment of its depth and importance for our latest scorecard.

Thomas Warrick

Senior fellow, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security; director, Future of DHS Project

Given DHS’s size and the breadth of its missions—counterterrorism; law enforcement; cybersecurity; aviation, border, and maritime security; immigration; and infrastructure protection—the QHSR should be considered one of the most important strategic documents put out by a major US cabinet department. The QHSR, while subordinate to the Biden administration’s October 2022 National Security Strategy, should, in theory, be comparable to the Department of Defense (DOD) National Defense Strategy (NDS), which gets enormous attention in Washington and around the world.

The QHSR’s reality is rather different. No major news outlet covered the QHSR’s release on April 20. Only specialized news sites and a few others reported on it or on Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas’s speech the next day announcing the QHSR’s release along with DHS’s ninety-day “sprint” focusing on US nonmilitary vulnerabilities to China and establishing a DHS task force on uses and threats from artificial intelligence.

One reason for this lack of coverage may be that the QHSR, being a “review,” is more of a summary of DHS’s current activities and recent accomplishments. Lists of accomplishments seldom make news in today’s contentious Washington political scene. While the QHSR should educate the public about what DHS does, the people who need educating the most about DHS are probably the least likely to read ninety-two pages of government prose, even with pictures. Nevertheless, the QHSR is an important strategic road map to where the Biden administration and Mayorkas want to go.

Distinctiveness

Is there a clear theme, concept, or label that distinguishes this strategy from previous strategies?

This QHSR is distinctive in three ways. First, it exists—the Trump administration did not release a QHSR during its four years between January 2017 to January 2021. While the Trump administration never produced a QHSR, it had a coherent—and divisive—approach to immigration and domestic terrorism, much of which was led from the White House, not DHS. Second, the Biden administration promised during the campaign and afterwards a break with many of the Trump administration’s homeland security policies, especially on immigration and domestic terrorism, and the QHSR makes this very clear. Third, this QHSR intentionally returns to the tone and structure of the two Obama administration QHSRs, released in 2010 and 2014, with three changes from the Obama QHSRs:

showing how the threat landscape has changed since 2014,
highlighting the importance of partnerships to the Biden administration’s and Mayorkas’s model of the homeland security enterprise, and
recognizing a new mission area for DHS: combating crimes of exploitation and protecting victims.

DHS has long fought crimes of exploitation—this QHSR elevates the importance of this work and explicitly aligns DHS with the victims of such crimes. This will make it hard for future administrations to backslide from protecting exploited victims.

Sound strategic context

Does the strategy accurately portray the current strategic context and security environment facing the United States? Is the strategy predicated on any specious assumptions?

Just as the National Defense Strategy is primarily, though not exclusively, focused on military threats to the United States, the QHSR should bring equal focus and vigor on the nonmilitary threats to the United States. The third QHSR provides a good summary of today’s dynamic terrorism threats (both international and homegrown), the challenges and strains on what it calls our “broken” immigration system (Mayorkas goes so far as to call it “completely broken;” his critics would no doubt agree), cyber threats from criminals and hostile nation-states, crimes of exploitation, the threat from fentanyl and transnational organized crime, natural and man-made risks to critical infrastructure, and other challenges to homeland security. Of particular importance is elevating fentanyl, transnational organized crime, and crimes of exploitation to the strategic level—no longer are they issues of only crime. The third QHSR wants the United States to see these as strategic threats, requiring a more strategic response.

Defined goals

Does the strategy define clear goals?

A sound strategy needs to define what “victory” looks like. In DOD’s mission space, victory is understandable: the goal is victory in war, coupled with deterrence and maintaining the peace at all other times. It’s a lot harder to define the end state in homeland security, and this QHSR, like many national security strategies of previous administrations of both parties, often uses phrases like “preventing and mitigating active threats” and “continue advancing national efforts” that give the direction but leave the ultimate goal fuzzy. There are few concrete end states against which this QHSR’s success or failure can be judged, but this is not unique to this QHSR or this administration.

For example, no responsible counterterrorism strategy would publicly set itself the goal of “no successful terrorist attacks.” The difficulty of detecting lone violent extremists and their ability to get semiautomatic assault rifles, coupled with political realities in the United States, mean that the QHSR needs—rightly—to point toward other approaches like community programs (see QHSR numbered page 8) needed to reduce active shooter events well below their levels in recent years, which would be a worthy goal. In cybersecurity, the QHSR describes the many innovative programs that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has undertaken in the past two years, but mentions only at the end of the cybersecurity section (QHSR numbered page 35) the truly transformational National Cybersecurity Strategy’s effort to shift fundamental risks from end users to the tech companies that are best situated to build security into their hardware and software. This will fundamentally change the future of cybersecurity and is a worthy goal.

Clear lines of effort

Does the strategy outline several major lines of effort for achieving its objectives? Will following those lines of effort attain the defined goals? Does the strategy establish a clear set of priorities, or does it present a laundry list of activities?

The third QHSR, like its predecessors, makes clear which DHS components are responsible for which missions and lines of effort. Unlike DOD’s military services, which encompass different domains but serve a (mostly) unified strategic mission, DHS’s eight components are organized functionally, and thus contribute differently to the QHSR’s six mission areas:

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to aviation security (part of mission 1, counterterrorism and threat prevention).
CBP, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to land border security (mission 2, border security, but also part of mission 1) and immigration (mission 3).
The US Coast Guard (USCG) and CBP to maritime security (part of missions 1 and 2).
CISA, ICE, TSA (for pipelines), USCG (maritime cybersecurity) and the US Secret Service (USSS) to cybersecurity and fighting cybercrime (mission 4).
The Federal Emergency Management Agency and CISA to infrastructure protection and resilience (mission 5); however both CBP and USCG have a part of mission 5.
ICE, CBP, USSS, and USCIS to law enforcement (mission 6, combating crimes of exploitation and protecting victims, but also part of other missions).

While this QHSR, like its predecessors (and like similar strategic summaries of DHS’s missions during the Trump administration), contains extensive descriptions of DHS activities, this QHSR proves the aphorism that—unlike DOD, where missions end when a war is over and the military pivots (for example) from the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific—at DHS, missions never go away. In this respect, the “new” mission 6 of combating crimes of exploitation and protecting victims is not at all new—it is the recognition of a mission DHS has had almost since its inception in 2003.

Realistic implementation guidelines

Is it feasible to implement this strategy? Are there resources available to sustain it?

The QHSR is not a budget, but any DHS report on its missions raises the question whether DHS has the resources to succeed in those missions. Alignment between policy and resources is one of DHS’s greatest challenges.

After the October 2022 National Defense Strategy, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in March 2023 that DOD’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 budget request was “the most strategy-driven request we’ve ever produced from the Department of Defense.” DOD is asking for $842 billion in FY 2024, $26 billion more than in FY 2023. A look at the China and Russia section of the NDS shows the link between DOD’s strategy and its budget request.

DHS cannot say the same thing about the third QHSR and DHS’s FY 2024 budget, which calls for a 1.1 percent increase over FY 2023. DHS officials understand this. The QHSR calls for more efforts and resources on cybersecurity; border and immigration security; community-based programs to prevent future mass shootings as happened in recent years in Uvalde, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and elsewhere; and to head off threats to critical infrastructure from natural causes and nation-state adversaries.

The third QHSR does not have to quantify the resources required to achieve its goals, but it has rightly laid out this secretary’s road map for where DHS and the homeland security enterprise need to do more. One of the third QHSR’s most important benefits should be to focus a much-needed debate—inside the administration and with the Congress and the American people—over whether the United States is spending enough on homeland security.

Brigadier General Francis X. Taylor (ret.)

**Nonresident senior fellow, Forward Defense, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security**

Overall, DHS’s QHSR sets forth a comprehensive review of the challenges facing the homeland security enterprise. The program initiatives outlined in the report, if successful, will improve the security posture of the homeland. There are some concerns about whether there is sufficient political and popular support for the initiatives outlined in the report. In addition, DHS should consider an annual review of outcomes that have resulted from its initiatives to give US citizens a sense of how effective the department has been in improving security of the homeland. This report is a good start but needs annual reiteration that reflects sustained improvement in the United States’ overall security posture.

Distinctiveness

Is there a clear theme, concept, or label that distinguishes this strategy from previous strategies?

The QHSR sets forth in clear detail the myriad of threats that face the homeland and the challenges for the homeland security enterprise to effectively address those threats. The world continues to evolve, as does the threat environment since the creation of DHS and this QHSR reflects the complexity of the threat environment and DHS’s initiatives to address that environment in new and innovative ways.

Sound strategic context

Does the strategy accurately portray the current strategic context and security environment facing the United States? Is the strategy predicated on any specious assumptions?

The strategic context of the QHSR is sound and does not underplay the seriousness and challenges of the threat that faces the homeland security enterprise. The emphasis on partnerships to meet the challenges is an important underlying principle for DHS. Never has it been more important for DHS to strengthen and broaden its partnerships as the threat environment continues to change.

Defined goals

Does the strategy define clear goals?

The QHSR clearly defines the programs undertaken to address each mission area to address the threats that face the US homeland, but the mere implementation of programs does not ensure effective outcomes.

Clear lines of effort

There are clear lines of effort that are identified in the QHSR. The core mission areas are addressed effectively, but it is not clear that the programs initiated are yet effective in achieving the goals of DHS. Time will tell what outcomes are achieved and how effective DHS has been in mitigating the threats to the homeland.

Realistic implementation guidelines

Is it feasible to implement this strategy? Are there resources available to sustain it?

The QHSR fundamentally outlines the challenges that DHS must address to keep the homeland safe. It is not clear that there are sufficient resources to execute this mission as outlined in the QHSR. Congressional support of these initiatives and funding will be critical to DHS’s success.

Seth Stodder

**Nonresident senior fellow, Forward Defense, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security**

Like any strategy or planning document produced by a federal bureaucracy, the report on the 2023 Quadrennial Homeland Security Review inevitably provokes some trepidation from a potential reader, as such documents produced by Washington bureaucrats rarely last five seconds in an email inbox and never touch a printer.

But in all seriousness, this year’s QHSR is somewhat of a page-turner. It is the first one since 2014—almost a decade. And what a decade it has been! ISIS and Al Qaeda, while still threats, have taken a back seat to AR15-wielding white nationalist extremists in the minds of counterterrorism professionals. The sense of operational control of the border that US officials felt they had in 2010 seems like a quaint bygone era, as compared to the massive challenges the United States faces today at the US-Mexico border. The cyber threats are much more varied, with the rise of catastrophic ransomware attacks and the drumbeat of cyber threats to our critical infrastructure and our electoral system. Meanwhile, emerging technology presents opportunities and threats like nothing before—from the rising concerns about social media invasions of privacy, disinformation campaigns, and deep fakes, to the threat of quantum computing and the potentially civilization-altering challenge presented by artificial intelligence. Nation-state threats to the homeland from Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea have become far more serious since 2010. On the other hand, the ultimate challenge to the US homeland may be environmental, as the force and impact of global climate change and the likelihood of more deadly pandemics have become ever more severe.

The 2023 QHSR—and the evolving mission of DHS—aptly reflect the tectonic shifts happening in the global security environment overall and its implications for US homeland security. To be sure, the original five homeland security missions from the first QHSR Report in 2010 are still there: (1) preventing terrorism and enhancing security; (2) securing and managing US borders; (3) enforcing and administering US immigration laws; (4) safeguarding and securing cyberspace; and (5) ensuring resilience to disasters. But so many of the characters in the play have changed, or assumed greater or lesser prominence.

Suffice it to say, DHS has its hands full—with a sprawling and ever-more important set of missions, all of which requiring close partnerships with other federal, state, local, territorial, and tribal agencies, the domestic and global private sector, nongovernmental organizations, and the millions of Americans and other nationals who interact with DHS every single day. And this new QHSR ably reflects this massive and growing responsibility.

Distinctiveness

Is there a clear theme, concept, or label that distinguishes this strategy from previous strategies?

The key theme is the steadily evolving and, in some cases, radically changing and ever more complex threat picture, and the need for DHS and its components to evolve its missions and focus accordingly. This is expressed forcefully in the document. Unsurprisingly, most of the missions are the same—with one addition—as those stated in the previous QHSRs. But that does not necessarily warrant any effect on its score here as the missions of DHS and homeland security are what they are. Rather, it is the threat and broader strategic environment that has, in some cases, radically changed. And the 2023 QHSR articulates this extremely well.

Sound strategic context

Does the strategy accurately portray the current strategic context and security environment facing the United States? Is the strategy predicated on any specious assumptions?

The 2023 QHSR is extremely clear on the security environment facing the United States and, specifically, the US homeland. The QHSR also effectively nestles DHS and its six core missions neatly within the Biden administration’s broader strategic framework for the United States, as expressed in the National Security Strategy, the National Defense Strategy, and other key documents. The analysis here is sound, and it does not rest on any specious or unfounded assumptions—either about the threat or the missions and capabilities of DHS.

Defined goals

Does the strategy define clear goals?

The 2023 QHSR clearly sets forth various goals, backed up with various vignettes and descriptions of ongoing or past programs, initiatives, and other actions reflecting efforts in furtherance of goals. That said, the goals are for the most part relatively vague (e.g., “DHS must be a leader in the responsible use and adaptation of emerging technologies” or “DHS remains committed to facilitating and expanding naturalization pathways for new Americans”), without specifying any particular measurable outputs against which one might assess success or failure. However, one could argue the point of how does one know when the border is actually “secure” or under “operational control,” or when the asylum system is processing claims “fairly” or “efficiently?” And, from a fiscal standpoint, is there a way of knowing when increasing budgets hit a point of diminishing returns—where an additional dollar invested in, say, detection equipment or in efforts against drug smuggling might be better invested elsewhere, such as public health or education? It is hard to clearly find measurable goalposts for these from the QHSR.

Clear lines of effort

The QHSR—and previous DHS documents—have outlined the key missions and lines of effort, and the DHS operational components and management offices have (for the most part) worked out relatively delineated areas of focus meant to maximize unity of effort within DHS, while minimizing interagency conflict and rivalry. As is the nature of this kind of beast, the QHSR does have a bit of the whiff of a laundry list (or lists) of various component activities and success stories (albeit clean laundry, thankfully), but the lists are placed within an intelligently articulated framework of clear priorities. Again, as discussed above, it is difficult to discern measurable outputs or where the signposts are toward achieving mission goals and objectives—but the lines of effort are clearly stated.

Realistic implementation guidelines

Is it feasible to implement this strategy? Are there resources available to sustain it?

This is somewhere between an unfair question and an incomplete one—in the sense that the QHSR is not meant to be a budgetary document, and indeed there is no sense here as to whether resources are remotely adequate to achieving the goals. Moreover, as noted above, some of the goals are so vague or total (e.g., “preventing labor exploitation”), that it is hard to assess—judging solely from the QHSR—exactly how these goals might be achieved, how success or progress toward the goals could be measured, or at what point diminishing returns might be reached for additional spending. So, it’s hard to grade this one—but it surely isn’t a perfect score.

Forward Defense, housed within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, generates ideas and connects stakeholders in the defense ecosystem to promote an enduring military advantage for the United States, its allies, and partners. Our work identifies the defense strategies, capabilities, and resources the United States needs to deter and, if necessary, prevail in future conflict.

This article is part of the Future of DHS Project by the Forward Defense program with financial support from Deloitte.

It’s broken: The humanitarian response is keeping Syrians in a loop of helplessness

Arwa Damon — Wed, 03 May 2023 10:50:15 +0000

“They want us to stay dependent and helpless,” says Zuhair al-Karrat, a general surgeon and health director in Idlib, a city in northwest Syria. “We’ve been saying for twelve years we don’t want humanitarian handouts. We want development projects, we want early recovery projects, we want factories.”

The “they” is the outside world: the United Nations (UN), the United States, other Western nations, Turkey—countries that call themselves “friends of Syria” but have their own interests at the core of their Syria policies. It’s also Russia, Iran, and the Arab nations that are “normalizing” relations with Damascus.

I know this region well, having traveled there countless times as a senior correspondent for CNN. But this trip in March, after the earthquakes that decimated this region, was different. I was not there just to observe; I was on a humanitarian mission with my charity, the International Network for Aid, Relief, and Assistance, or INARA. Greater insight into the aid world and how it functions has worsened my frustrations. I found myself muttering repeatedly, “It’s broken. This isn’t right.”

It has been well over a decade since the first of Syria’s displaced settled in these hills and fields in northwest Syria. They were the residents of Jisr al-Shougour, bombed in June of 2011. Each time I visit, I recall meeting those first arrivals stretching canvas between olive trees for shelter, and the young girl I met sleeping out of the back of her family’s van, telling me they had just come for a few days. Over time, the population swelled with those who fled Aleppo, Homs, Hama, Damascus, and elsewhere.

The population in Idlib province has more than tripled since people first took to the streets twelve years ago, from under one million to more than three. Hospitals and schools were bombed and not rebuilt. Factories ceased to function or are now in regime territory, meaning the job opportunities and products are inaccessible for those in the rebel-held northwest of the country. Some fields are planted, but many remain unsown. There is potential but no opportunity.

Every year, as has been the case for more than a decade, there are pleas for more funding for food baskets, for winterization campaigns with images of little faces shivering in subzero temperatures. Every year, funding efforts fail to meet their targets and those pleas go unheeded. Fair or not, the prevailing sentiment in Idlib is that UN agencies responsible for shelter want to keep the population in tents.

INARA in partnership with Kids Paradise provided Ahlam al-Ahmad and her family with hygiene kits, childrens toys, clothing, and food after their tents flooded. Photograph courtesy of Arwa Damon.

A little boy plays in muddy and sewage-filled waters at a camp in Syria. There are growing concerns about the spread of diseases such as cholera. Photograph courtesy of Arwa Damon.

Ahlam al-Ahmed stands among what she and her family have been able to salvage from the floods. Photograph courtesy of Arwa Damon.

The author at a camp INARA set up in partnership with Syria Forum for those who lost their homes in the earthquake. Photograph courtesy of Arwa Damon.

I met Ahlam al-Ahmad as she slogged through knee-deep mud. Floods had just ravaged her small camp on the edge of agricultural fields in Idlib, the water so powerful it swept away everything in some of the tents, drowning clothes, kitchenware, mattresses, blankets, small stores of rice, potatoes, and jars of lovingly prepared Ramadan stuffed vegetables.

Like hundreds of thousands here, she was displaced by war, running away with nothing but the clothes she had on. It has been all but impossible for her family to get back on their feet, to rebuild even the smallest fraction of what they lost.

“Why do we live here?” she asks rhetorically. “It’s for work. We women work in the fields, it’s the only thing available.”

“I mean we had sorted ourselves out, sort of,” she continues, her voice cracking as she points to what they were able to salvage from the muck. It took her family years to achieve this meager progress—an existence in three tents, one of which acts as the kitchen. But even with four of them working the fields, they couldn’t afford a home with walls—not when their labor yields just three dollars a day. And there is such a yearning for walls.

Adults yearn to lean back against a wall, while many young children don’t even know what it is to live within a stable structure.

Moving beyond an emergency response

Spiraling inflation, coupled with rising global prices, has pushed this population even deeper into poverty. And yet last year the UN barely met half of its funding goal for Syria. The argument has long been that funding the sorts of projects that would allow greater autonomy for the northwest region—such as building proper shelters, factories, and schools—was too risky, what with the incessant and unpredictable Russian and Assad regime bombing campaigns.

However, for more than three years now the battle lines have remained stable, and the skies no longer buzz with fighter jets raining death and destruction. Yet the humanitarian framework around Idlib is still viewed through the prism of emergency response. That needs to change.

Aside from the emergency response to the recent earthquake, the bulk of funding opportunities for projects in Syria are for small-scale development—efforts such as vocational training and microgrants—and civil engagement interventions. These activities provide little help to the population. Instead, they permit outside players to claim that they support development.

Civil engagement is important and can bring together inspiring minds, but it’s a fruitless exercise based on donor desires and not realities on the ground. “You can’t expect someone who is tunnel-focused on mere survival, on the next meal, to be able to have the mental capacity to focus on anything else. That is how they keep us weak,” explains Hasan al-Moussa, a Syrian friend of mine active in the humanitarian and development space.

Vocational training and microgrants are important, but they need to be significantly scaled up to have a real impact.

At the same time, there is division among the UN Security Council members not just over cross-border access, but also over whether the focus should be on emergency, early recovery, or development. The emergency cycle that northwest Syria has been stuck in for more than a decade is creating dependency and perpetuating poverty, ignorance and disillusionment, and even that response is falling short of the needs. Early recovery and development projects, which would lay the framework to break the cycle, are too few, too small, too short term. The pattern of the current approach is paralyzing the population in a state of helplessness.

On the ground, the bleak situation can feel almost deliberate, an attempt to keep the population unemployed and uneducated. Just enough comes in for outside officials to point to certain projects and make themselves look good, but nowhere near enough to break the cycle of dependency. More money needs to be put into funding projects that create large-scale job opportunities and access to education for those who have none.

Helping the people of Syria will take moral courage that has long been lacking, and it will take—for once—those who hold the purse strings and power over northwest Syria to put their own politics and interests aside. People deserve the chance to regain agency over their own lives. That is the real humanitarian thing to do.

Arwa Damon is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East and president and founder of the International Network for Aid, Relief, and Assistance (INARA), a nonprofit organization that focuses on building a network of logistical support and medical care to help children who need life-saving or life-altering medical treatment in war-torn nations.

The post It’s broken: The humanitarian response is keeping Syrians in a loop of helplessness appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Russia’s invasion highlights the need to invest more in Ukrainian studies

Oleksandra Gaidai — Tue, 25 Apr 2023 16:44:06 +0000

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has highlighted the need for greater international investment in Ukrainian studies. However, this discussion does not always take into account the realities of wartime Ukraine.

While Russia’s invasion has generated unprecedented international interest in Ukrainian studies, it has also had a profound and overwhelmingly negative impact on the academic community in Ukraine itself. This must be taken into account. After all, the international development of Ukrainian studies depends largely on the state of academia in Ukraine. As Andriy Zayarnyuk wrote last year, “the center of Ukrainian studies is now in Ukraine.”

A recent report evaluating the current state of Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar studies identified more than 160 study centers located mainly in North America and Europe. Ukrainian studies centers are mostly placed within Slavic studies departments, with courses tending to focus on Ukrainian culture, language, and literature rather than politics and economics.

Europe has the most centers primarily concentrated in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Poland. Notably, Ukrainian studies remains virtually nonexistent in some neighborhood countries such as Romania and Turkey. This absence became particularly evident following Russia’s full-scale invasion, with a recent survey of Ukrainian studies professionals identifying increased demand for expert commentary.

Even in countries with Ukrainian studies programs, the focus is often limited. Universities typically employ individual lecturers who offer courses on Ukrainian topics which can change from semester to semester. Factors leading to the closure of Ukrainian studies centers include lack of funding, lack of student interest, weak institutionalization, and reliance on the activities of individual researchers.

A more comprehensive approach to Ukrainian studies is clearly needed. This should include the establishment of Ukrainian professorships to make studies an integral part of the academic environment and less exposed to changes in political preferences.

Subscribe to UkraineAlert

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

Name
First Last
Email*
Email
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Growing international interest in Ukraine as a result of Russia’s invasion has already boosted the field of Ukrainian studies. Universities have been able to bypass bureaucracy to host more people from Ukraine, with a diverse range of Ukrainian academics fleeing the war and arriving in the West over the past fifteen months. Among students, interest in Ukrainian studies has never been higher. The challenge is to ensure this does not become a mere passing fad.

To make Ukrainian studies more resilient in the long run, Ukrainian topics need to be integrated into existing classes on subjects such as Soviet or Russian imperial history, or even European studies, contemporary politics, and international relations. The goal should be to make Ukraine part of the conversation on different issues.

At the same time, much will depend on parallel progress in Ukraine. Key objectives include translating source materials, integrating Western academic practices, and improving English skills among the academic community.

Wartime realities in Ukraine have created new possibilities for Ukrainian academia but have also deepened many of the problems that existed before the invasion. Much of the country’s educational infrastructure has been destroyed, but the impact on human capital has been even more devastating. In short, Ukraine is currently losing many of its best people including significant numbers of irreplaceable academic professionals.

Eurasia Center events

After Vilnius: What’s next on Ukraine’s path to NATO?

Eastern Europe NATO Security & Defense Ukraine

Ukraine’s universities are currently in survival mode but reform is also on the agenda. Just one day before the full-scale invasion began in February 2022, the Ukrainian government adopted a new two-year development strategy for the country’s higher education system. The Ministry of Education has since announced that it will use this strategy as a road map for the reconstruction and continuation of reforms in the post-war period. However, the strategy was designed before the war and does not target the specific problems caused by Russia’s invasion.

Last month, Oksen Lisovyi was appointed as Ukraine’s new Minister of Education. It is not yet clear whether he intends to implement radical reform with long-term goals or keep the existing higher education system largely in place. While support for change is widespread, many within the academic community and education industry also appear to favor a more conservative approach.

Ukraine may not have the luxury of time for an extended debate. Funding for education has been severely cut as a result of the Russian invasion, with academics struggling to survive on inadequate salaries. This is forcing many to consider a career change. Others have left their university positions to serve in the army. It is not clear how many will return to academia, or whether they will have jobs to return to.

Students also find themselves confronted by harsh realities. With no end in sight to the Russian invasion, today’s Ukrainian high school graduates face a choice between an uncertain fate in their homeland or exploring the wide range of study options currently available at European and North American universities.

Ukraine’s universities have responded to the challenges of the invasion with ingenuity, utilizing tools developed during the Covid pandemic to switch to distance learning. However, uncertainty over the future looms large.

Some Ukrainian universities still maintain cooperation with Western institutions, but these relationships typically depend on prewar ties and offer one-sided academic mobility enabling Ukrainian scholars and students to study abroad. It would be good to see European and North American universities launch more nonresident fellowships for Ukrainians who are unwilling or unable to leave the country.

It may also be time to consider establishing new platforms and institutions for collaboration between Ukrainian scholars and their international colleagues. Ukraine can offer opportunities for Western academics focused on the Soviet and Russian empires who are no longer able to access Russian archives. Ukraine’s State Archive Service has been digitizing materials for some time and has introduced a united search system of Ukrainian archives.

The past year of war has sparked unprecedented interest in Ukrainian studies while creating both huge challenges and exciting opportunities. Ukrainian studies is now widely recognized as an important field that requires far more international attention. Looking ahead, the discussion must address both institutional and practical issues. The most important task at this stage is to prevent the further erosion of Ukraine’s academic potential and create the conditions for sustainable post-war development.

Oleksandra Gaidai is a Department of History postdoctoral fellow at American University.

Impact investing can also aim to create self-reliance for refugees and internally displaced people through “refugee lens” investing, which is a framework to qualify and track investments developed by the Refugee Investment Network (RIN), where I work with enterprises and investors focused on impact.

Forced displacement cuts across at least thirteen of the seventeen SDGs around the world, according to RIN. Actively investing in displaced populations leads to new and sustainable solutions. In the aftermath of the earthquakes, that could include supporting the thousands of refugee-owned small businesses in the earthquake region, providing microfinance to local farmers and artisans, or facilitating tech-based remote employment. The goal is to increase displaced people’s livelihoods, financial inclusion, and continued skills development (especially to respond to workforce losses due to the earthquake), thus leading to equitable economic and social revival. Funding the communities and employers around the country that welcome the displaced will also be important.

Having value chains focused on supplier diversity, economic inclusion, and job creation will also help this cause. The public and private sectors can strengthen community resilience by prioritizing local and displaced suppliers affected by the disaster, including social enterprises and cooperatives employing and supporting vulnerable communities through “social procurement.” For instance, Innovation for Development (i4D), a local economic development organization, aims to connect three hundred local producers from the earthquake-affected region with buyers to ensure business continuity and new contracts.

In international trade, proponents of a “Turkiye Compact” call for trade concessions from the European Union, United States, and Canada to incentivize the private sector to hire both Syrian refugees and locals in Turkey with the goal of boosting the local economy and improving social cohesion. According to a United Nations Development Programme feasibility study conducted prior to the earthquakes, such a policy could create 284,000 new jobs (including 57,000 jobs for refugees) and boost exports by 3 percent, primarily of labor-intensive agricultural, processed food, and textile products. Furthermore, local enterprises participating in the Turkiye Compact would become attractive investment opportunities given their tangible impact on displaced communities through employment and sourcing.

Finally, Turkey’s vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem is more crucial than ever. Accelerators, specialized funds, and growing communities of practice can nurture innovative, impact-driven ventures for earthquake-affected communities and create inclusive solutions. Examples so far have included a waste management start-up facilitating food aid, e-commerce solutions enabling microentrepreneurs, online mental health platforms offering therapy to survivors, and tech innovations in rescue and relief, among many others. Additionally, catalyzing entrepreneurship by underserved communities, especially those experiencing intersectional disadvantages, such as the refugee women entrepreneurs featured in an Atlantic Council documentary last year, will create new pathways to self-reliance.

Bringing all of these solutions together and amplifying their impact through the resources of the global impact investing community, local partnerships, and blended financing—with guarantees, concessional loans, or grants to attract private investments, for instance—will yield tremendous, complementary results.

With such a comprehensive toolbox, it will be possible to rebuild better after this terrible disaster and create more inclusive economies and resilient communities.

Selen Ucak is a social impact professional working at the intersection of private sector and international development. She currently leads a global community of refugee-led and refugee-supporting businesses and social enterprises at the Refugee Investment Network, as well as serving as a consultant on additional projects.

The post Impact investing can help rebuild an inclusive, resilient Turkey after the earthquakes appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Anti-war Russians struggle to be heard

Christopher Isajiw — Thu, 06 Apr 2023 18:12:04 +0000

Ever since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022, the Putin regime has worked hard to present the impression of overwhelming Russian domestic support for the war effort. This has involved everything from celebrity endorsements and relentless pro-war coverage in the Kremlin-controlled mainstream Russian media, to online flash mobs and carefully choreographed mass rallies in central Moscow.

Meanwhile, a ruthless clampdown has made it increasingly difficult and dangerous for dissenting voices to be heard. Nevertheless, opposition figures continue to question the true levels of public backing for the invasion, while insisting that large numbers of Russians are either opposed or indifferent. The real situation within Russian society is certainly far more complex than the Kremlin would like us to believe, but today’s suffocating atmosphere means there is little reason to expect an increase in visible anti-war activity any time soon.

Officially at least, Putin’s approval rating has increased significantly since the start of the full-scale invasion just over one year ago. According to Russia’s only internationally respected independent pollster, the Levada Center, the Russian President’s rating rose from 71% on the eve of the invasion to 82% in March 2023. The same source indicates consistently high levels of support for the invasion of Ukraine, with over 70% of respondents expressing their approval in every single survey conducted throughout the past thirteen months.

These figures point to strong levels of public support for the war but they must be viewed in context. Critics question the validity of any public opinion polling in a dictatorship such as Putin’s Russia, where people are legally obliged to call the invasion a “Special Military Operation” and can face criminal prosecution for social media posts. This is worth keeping in mind when analyzing surveys of Russian opinion.

Many poll respondents may be inclined to demonstrate their patriotism and their support for the Russian military while being less enthusiastic about the invasion itself or the Kremlin’s war aims. Others may have become swept up in the relentless flow of pro-war propaganda or cut off from alternative sources of information. It is also important to acknowledge that a large majority of people refuse to participate in polling of this nature. They may choose to decline for a wide range of reasons, but it is possible that many simply prefer not to share anti-war opinions with strangers.

Subscribe to UkraineAlert

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

Name
First Last
Email*
Phone
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

What evidence is there of anti-war sentiment in today’s Russia? When the invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, efforts to claim strong public backing for the war were hampered by a series of protests in cities across the country involving mainly young Russians. However, these public demonstrations failed to reach any kind of critical mass and were fairly rapidly suppressed by the authorities with large numbers of detentions.

Other Russians have voted with their feet. A mass exodus of Russian nationals began during the first weeks of the war, with a second wave starting in September 2022 in the wake of Russia’s first mobilization since World War II. Hundreds of thousands of military-age Russian men fled to neighboring countries in the last four months of the year, leading in some cases to massive queues at border crossings.

This outflow of people has had a considerable negative demographic impact on Russia, but it would not be accurate to claim that everyone who has left the country during the past year holds anti-war views. Many chose to leave in order to avoid military service, while others feared the inconvenience of wartime conditions. Thousands of wealthy Russians have relocated to destinations like Dubai, where they can manage their Russian businesses while distancing themselves physically and psychologically from the war.

For those who remain in Russia, it is still possible to live a fairly normal life despite the imposition of sanctions and the departure of many high-profile Western brands. Meanwhile, some members of Russia’s billionaire elite are believed to oppose the war, but most see their fortunes as tied to Putin and are fearful of the consequences if they break with the regime publicly.

There are indications that the war is becoming less and less popular among the very troops charged with leading the invasion. The refusal of many contract soldiers to extend their service has forced the Russian authorities to introduce legislative changes, while in recent months there has been a sharp increase in video addresses on social media featuring mobilized Russian soldiers complaining about suicidal tactics and high death tolls. At the same time, there is little indication yet that mounting demoralization on the front lines is shaping the public mood back in Russia itself.

Eurasia Center events

After Vilnius: What’s next on Ukraine’s path to NATO?

Eastern Europe NATO Security & Defense Ukraine

What of Russia’s beleaguered political opposition? For more than twenty years, the Putin regime has sought to silence any genuine opposition forces via increasingly direct means. These efforts have intensified since the onset of the Ukraine invasion, with independent media outlets shut down and many of the country’s relatively few remaining opposition figures either jailed or forced to flee. Some have attempted to speak out against the war while in exile, with others who left Russia in previous years such as Gary Kasparov and Mikhail Khodorkovsky serving as vocal opponents of the invasion.

The most prominent opposition figure in today’s Russia, Alexei Navalny, remains in prison. Navalny has managed to issue a number of statements from jail condemning the war. In February 2023, he published a fifteen-point plan calling for the Russian military to withdraw completely from Ukraine and arguing that Russia must accept Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders. While many have welcomed Navalny’s unambiguous opposition to the invasion, others remain wary due to his ties to Russian nationalism and earlier reluctance to back the return of Crimea to Ukraine.

At this point, extreme Russian nationalism appears to pose a far greater threat to the Putin regime than liberal anti-war sentiment. A new class of pro-war bloggers has emerged over the past year and has become a powerful force within the more active segments of Russian society. Hardliners such as Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov have gained in stature thanks to their prominent roles in the invasion and have engaged in rare public criticism of key establishment figures.

The authoritarian nature of the Putin regime makes it almost impossible to accurately gauge levels of anti-war sentiment in today’s Russia. It may take a decisive military defeat before many of those who oppose the war dare to speak up and demand change. In a sense, this is exactly what Putin is fighting against. He invaded Ukraine primarily because he feared Ukrainian democracy would serve as a catalyst for similar demands inside Russia itself. So far, he has managed to prevent anti-war or pro-democracy movements from gaining momentum. However, if his invading army’s battlefield fortunes continue to deteriorate in Ukraine, those who dream of a different Russia may finally find their voices.

Christopher Isajiw is an international relations commentator and business development consultant to private, governmental, and non-governmental organizations.

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

Name
First Last
Email*
Name
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

One of the earliest indications that Kazakhstan would not align with Russia over the invasion of Ukraine was the decision in spring 2022 to cancel the country’s traditional World War II Victory Day celebrations. The cancellation was an unambiguous rebuff to the Putin regime, which has placed the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany at the heart of modern Russian national identity and expects regional leaders to demonstrate their loyalty via reverence for the Soviet war effort.

This snub was followed by an even more direct and public fallout in June 2022. While sharing a stage with Putin at a flagship annual economic forum in Saint Petersburg, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev declared that he would not recognize Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.

Perhaps the most eye-catching indication of Kazakh public support for Ukraine has been the “Yurt of Invincibility” initiative, which has seen a number of traditional Kazakh yurts set up in Ukrainian towns and cities in recent months to help Ukrainians cope with electricity blackouts caused by Russian bombing of the country’s civilian infrastructure.

Organized by the Kazakh business community and backed by private donations, the yurt initiative has proved highly popular among Ukrainians while sparking considerable anger in Russia. However, Kremlin attempts to elicit an official response from the Kazakh authorities were politely declined, with Kazakh Foreign Ministry spokesperson Aibek Smadiyarov stating there was “nothing to explain.”

It is not hard to imagine why the appearance of “Yurts of Invincibility” across Ukraine struck such a nerve in Russia. Manned by activists offering free electricity and internet access along with hot drinks, the yurts represent a humane response to the inhumanity of Russia’s brutal invasion. In a very real sense, these traditional Kazakh abodes serve as symbols of post-colonial solidarity between Kazakhstan and Ukraine.

Eurasia Center events

After Vilnius: What’s next on Ukraine’s path to NATO?

Eastern Europe NATO Security & Defense Ukraine

Russian discontent over the critical Kazakh response to the invasion of Ukraine has led to attacks on Kazakhstan from Russian officials and in the country’s Kremlin-controlled information space. Since the start of the invasion, pundits on Russia’s notoriously inflammatory political talk shows have begun speculating over the possibility of future Russian military intervention in Kazakhstan. During a November 2022 episode of prominent regime propagandist Vladimir Solovyov’s daily show, one commentator declared: “the next problem is Kazakhstan.” He went on to claim that “the same Nazi processes can start there as in Ukraine.”

These provocative statements were echoed by Russian Ambassador to Kazakhstan Alexei Borodavkin, who warned in December 2022 that “radical nationalist tendencies” were becoming more and more visible in Kazakhstan, before suggesting Russia was ready to “help” the Kazakh authorities address this issue.

The Russian Ambassador’s comments were particularly provocative as they closely mirrored the kind of language used by the Kremlin to justify the invasion of Ukraine. This played on longstanding Kazakh fears that Moscow may attempt to exploit the presence of a large ethnic Russian minority in Kazakhstan, which is concentrated in northern regions of the country bordering the Russian Federation.

Suggestions that ethnic Russians living in Kazakhstan are somehow oppressed have sparked a bitter response from many Kazakhs, who pride themselves on their tolerant attitude toward Russia and their respectful approach to the shared inheritance of the imperial past.

Unlike other post-Soviet states, Russian remains an official language in today’s Kazakhstan. The country also accepted hundreds of thousands of Russians fleeing mobilization into the Russian military in late 2022. Critics say this welcoming stance makes a mockery of Kremlin propaganda claims about a rising tide of Russophobia in today’s Kazakhstan.

The past year has witnessed historic shifts in allegiances and attitudes across the entire post-Soviet space. Ukraine’s heroic fight against Russian imperialism has prompted countries throughout the region to question the nature of their own ties to the Kremlin and seek geopolitical alternatives capable of countering Russian influence.

In Kazakhstan, the invasion has amplified anti-imperial sentiment and enhanced existing decolonization processes. These trends look set to gain further momentum in 2023. Geography alone dictates that Kazakhstan cannot realistically hope to cut all ties with Russia, but there is no escaping the fact that the full-scale invasion of Ukraine has seriously undermined Russian influence in a country where all roads once led to Moscow.

Kamila Auyezova is a research analyst who focuses on geopolitical and climate issues in Eurasia. You can find her on Twitter @KAuyezova.

Turkey and Syria’s devastating earthquakes send a reminder to the world: Don’t leave Syrians behind

Pınar Dost — Fri, 17 Mar 2023 15:18:52 +0000

Three weeks after devastating earthquakes rattled across Turkey and northwest Syria on February 6, the US House of Representatives approved a resolution mourning the more than 55,000 people who lost their lives (with more than 48,000 of those deaths taking place in Turkey).

The bill, passed by a bipartisan 412-2 vote, was introduced by Congressman Joe Wilson (R-SC), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia as well as co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on US-Turkey Relations and Turkish Americans.

The bill is important for several reasons.

First, it represents a friendly hand extended in support to Turkey from an institution whose Turkey-related actions usually consist of warning or admonishing the country or its government—and whose tone has reflected strained relations in recent years.

Second, the bill is a reminder of the forgotten circumstances of Syrians in the Syrian opposition-held northwest. Before the earthquakes, over 4.5 million people in northwest Syria—including 2.9 million internally displaced people—already faced precarious situations after more than a decade of war, cold, and disease. The earthquakes made support for them even more urgent.

While rescue teams and assistance from all over the world arrived quickly in Turkey, it took many days for rescue teams and help to access Syria’s northwest—the part of the country most damaged in the earthquake. The aid that was dispatched immediately following the earthquake, including at least two dozen shipments of disaster relief aid, was sent to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus and none reached opposition-controlled areas in northwest Syria in the first week.

Third, against that backdrop, the bill is also a warning to the Assad regime. It accuses the regime of “cynically exploit[ing] the disaster to evade international pressure and accountability, including by preventing the United Nations from providing assistance through multiple border crossings between [Turkey] and Syria.” The bill also calls upon the Biden administration to use diplomatic tools “to open all [Turkey]-Syria border crossings for United Nations assistance”; and calls for an oversight mechanism “to ensure that United States-funded assistance is not diverted for the benefit of the Assad regime.”

Finally, the bill signals that the United States is watching the region’s geopolitical currents closely, at a time when Russia in particular is trying to stitch together an understanding between Turkey and Syria.

A history of politicized aid

The humanitarian response in Syria has been politicized and exploited throughout the war by the Assad regime and its supporters. Already in 2014, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2165—which set the legal framework for the UN to deliver cross-border humanitarian aid from four crossings on Syria’s borders with Jordan, Iraq, and Turkey—highlighted that the body was “deeply disturbed by the continued, arbitrary, and unjustified withholding of consent to relief operations and the persistence of conditions that impede the delivery of humanitarian supplies to destinations within Syria, in particular to besieged and hard-to-reach areas.” Over the years, Russia’s attempts at the UNSC to limit cross-border aid and thus legitimize the Syrian regime’s territorial control have led to a continuous reduction in the number of allowed crossings. Eventually, in July 2020, only the Bab al-Hawa crossing from Turkey was renewed.

Following the earthquake, this sole crossing was not used for three days due to damaged roads and logistical problems, and the UN only started using other crossings following the Assad regime’s approval—even though some observers, as well as members of the UN-appointed commission of inquiry, believe the UN did not need the green light from Damascus. The post-earthquake relief work also revealed the UN’s tangled relations with the regime.

According to UN data, at least 148 cities and towns in northwest Syria have been affected by the earthquakes. The region is divided into territories governed by the regime: the former al-Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the Turkey-backed Syrian National Army (SNA).

While a 2020 ceasefire in Idlib saved many lives and brought relative calm to the region, the stability has been hampered several times mainly because of infighting among SNA factions and HTS’s attempts to expand its area of influence. In many cases, these incidents resulted in Turkey attempting to mediate among groups or in the Turkish army intervening to end the violence and bring the groups all to their assigned areas, as was the case last October. Therefore, Turkey’s intervention was limited to maintaining the status quo.

In the weeks after Assad agreed to open two more crossings to facilitate the delivery of aid, many countries and UN agencies provided truckloads of aid to the region. The UN launched a call for $397 million in aid support for Syria, while US Secretary of State Antony Blinken—during his first official visit to Turkey on February 19—toured the earthquake-hit areas around Hatay Province. He also visited Incirlik Airbase, met US search and rescue teams, and announced an additional $100 million in aid for the recovery, bringing total US assistance in response to the earthquake to $185 million.

Moves on the region’s chessboard

The United States and Turkey have been at odds with each other in Syria as the United States has supported the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in its fight against the Islamic State in Syria, while also pushing back on Iran and dealing with Assad and Russia.

The SDF is dominated by the People’s Protection Units (YPG): the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is recognized by the United States and the European Union as a terrorist organization and which Turkey has been fighting for almost forty years. That’s why Turkey has launched three operations in northern Syria to create a “safe zone” in the region with the aim of securing its borders and enabling Syrians in Turkey to voluntarily return to Syria.

Turkey has been signaling its intent to launch another incursion into northern Syria since May 2022, and the United States, Russia, and Iran have all publicly declared their objection to such an attempt. Russia instead has been trying to mediate between Turkey and Syria for the normalization of ties between the two countries.

In December 2022, Turkish, Syrian, and Russian defense ministers and intelligence chiefs met in Moscow, the first ministerial-level meeting between Turkey and Syria in over a decade. The United States and the Syrian opposition, including the Syrian Interim Government and HTS, are against a normalization between Turkey and the Assad regime. Following the talks in December, demonstrations took place in various opposition-held cities in the Aleppo and Idlib governorates to protest the Turkish rapprochement with the regime.

During a recent visit by the Iranian foreign minister to Ankara, the Turkish foreign minister announced that the deputy foreign ministers of Russia, Turkey, Syria, and Iran (who was invited after expressing resentment about not being included) would meet in Moscow. A meeting scheduled for March 15 was then postponed for “technical reasons” following a meeting the day before between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Assad in Moscow on the twelfth anniversary of the anti-regime uprising.

It’s clear that the earthquake has helped Assad politically and financially.

Assad’s say over border crossings, and therefore his control over these territories, has effectively been recognized by the UN. He got a 180-day exemption to Syria sanctions for disaster aid from the United States, even though US sanctions never targeted humanitarian assistance in the first place. And he received international assistance and political support, including in the form of visits by foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Jordan.

However, none of those visits would be as important as Turkey fully normalizing relations with the regime, which would be a strategic gain for Assad and his supporter, Putin.

It is unclear whether Erdoğan is engaging in a political maneuver ahead of upcoming elections this May to save face with an electorate that, while divided over many issues, is seemingly united in their opposition to Syrian refugees staying in Turkey. Normalization with Assad would facilitate the return of Syrians to their country. Turkey is the world’s largest refugee-hosting country and hosts 3.6 million Syrians alone.

While the US bill mourning the lives lost in the earthquakes rightly recognized “[Turkey’s] continuing support to Syrian refugees in [Turkey] and in northwestern Syria,” it is worth highlighting that any deal between Syria, Turkey, and others trying to mediate (including Iran and Russia) seems not only unrealistic in the near future (because of the parties’ conflicting expectations) but also unproductive for Turkey, the future of Syria, the Syrians in the northwest, and the Syrians in Turkey.

It is clear that both Syrians in the northwest of their country and in Turkey will need continuous humanitarian support in the coming year. The earthquake has brought the forgotten fate of Syrians and of Syria to the forefront of the US agenda in the region. They must not be forgotten again.

Pınar Dost is the deputy director of the Atlantic Council IN TURKEY program. Follow her on Twitter @pdosting.

The post Turkey and Syria’s devastating earthquakes send a reminder to the world: Don’t leave Syrians behind appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Beyond the US-Mexico border: Destination of final goods, environmental impact, and future scenarios for border relations

Atlantic Council — Mon, 27 Feb 2023 20:12:06 +0000

Three complementary analyses to a two-part US-Mexico border report.

A joint analysis by the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center, the University of Texas at El Paso’s Hunt Institute for Global Competitiveness, and El Colegio de la Frontera Norte.

Analysis 1

US-Mexico commerce: Tracking the final destination and Mexico’s fiscal benefit with greater border efficiency

By Edgar David Gaytán Alfaro, John Gibson, Mayra Maldonado, Jason Marczak, Roberto Ransom, and Ignacia Ulloa-Peters

This report determines the value and final destination of northbound commercial trade flows. Based on limited data, it finds that 45 percent of trade entering the United States remains in border states (Arizona, California, New Mexico, or Texas), while 55 percent is distributed to other regions across the United States. It also evaluates the tax revenue collected by Mexico’s six border states (Baja California, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, Sonora, Tamaulipas) stemming from increased efficiencies at the border. Read our report to find out more about the top 5 receiving states, as well as the economic impact that different regions across the United States would experience following a 10-minute reduction in wait times.

DOWNLOAD report

Analysis 2

Our border environment, water, and air pollution

By The Hunt Institute for Global Competitiveness, University of Texas at El Paso

This environmental impact analysis evaluates the impact idling vehicles have on water and air pollution across the US-Mexico border. Reduced wait times can significantly reduce particulates in the air and water, which currently pose a significant threat to the health of people living in border communities. To find out more about the potential reduction in pollution following decreased wait times, read our report or view our infographic.

DOWNLOAD report

View Report infographic

Analysis 3

Border 2033: Three scenarios for the United States and Mexico

By Peter Engelke, Deputy Director of Foresight, Scowcroft Strategy Initiative; and Nonresident Senior Fellow, Global Energy Center, Atlantic Council

Foresight scenarios help us tell stories about how the future might unfold and are intended to stir imaginative thinking. In this report, we portray three scenarios of a world that might exist ten years from now in 2023 based upon uncertainties in the United States and Mexico’s relationship today. More specifically, we hypothesize what the US-Mexico relationship would look like if 1) there is little to no change in the manners that the United States and Mexico engage, 2) fears over border security leads to an increasingly hardened border, and 3) Mexico and the United States increase collaboration on border issues. Find the full report below.

DOWNLOAD report

Read our two-part US-Mexico Border report

Report Sep 27, 2022

The economic impact of a more efficient US-Mexico border: How reducing wait times at land ports of entry would promote commerce, resilience, and job creation

By Alejandro Brugués Rodríguez, John Byrd, Noé Arón Fuentes Flores, David Gaytan, John Gibson, Camila Hernández, Mayra Maldonado, Jason Marczak, Jorge Eduardo Mendoza Cota, Roberto Ransom, and Ignacia Ulloa

Improvements in border management and the adoption of new technologies at the US-Mexico border have the potential to enhance border security and generate economic benefits for the United States and Mexico through expedited flows of goods and people.

Economy & Business Latin America

Report Feb 17, 2023

The transformative power of reduced wait times at the US-Mexico border: Economic benefits for border states

By Alejandro Brugués Rodríguez, Noé Arón Fuentes Flores, David Gaytan, John Gibson, Mayra Maldonado, Jason Marczak, Jorge Eduardo Mendoza Cota, José Ángel Moreno, Roberto Ransom, and Ignacia Ulloa-Peters

Atlantic Council’s new data shows that a mere 10-minute reduction in wait times – without any additional action – can create thousands of Mexican jobs, grow the gross domestic product (GDP) of several Mexican states, and generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in new spending in the United States.

Economy & Business Inclusive Growth

Made possible by

The Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center broadens understanding of regional transformations and delivers constructive, results-oriented solutions to inform how the public and private sectors can advance hemispheric prosperity.

The post Beyond the US-Mexico border: Destination of final goods, environmental impact, and future scenarios for border relations appeared first on Atlantic Council.

One year, eight world-changing numbers. Quantifying Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Atlantic Council experts — Fri, 24 Feb 2023 16:11:51 +0000

One year ago, Russian troops streamed over the borders of Ukraine in the dead of night in an attempt to swiftly seize the country and topple its government. Instead they met with remarkable Ukrainian resistance and the rallying of Ukraine’s international allies to its defense, thwarting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plans. It is hard to calculate the suffering, destruction, and global upheaval caused by the conflict, which has evolved into a brutal war of attrition with no end in sight. But there are some eye-opening numbers that help tell this story. To mark one year since Putin’s full-scale invasion, experts from across the Atlantic Council have identified the figures they believe best illustrate all the ways this war has shaken the world.

108,000

Approximate amount of Ukrainian territory occupied by Russia, in square kilometers

Many analysts see Russia’s failure to topple Kyiv as a sign of Russian weakness. They argue that Washington and Brussels need not worry about Russia’s threat to NATO because Russia’s military is weaker than we thought. These data tell a different story: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shows that Moscow—which controls roughly 108,000 square kilometers of Ukrainian land, according to Institute for the Study of War data analyzed by the New York Times—is capable of seizing and occupying territory on its border the size of two Baltic states. Estonia’s total territory is about 45,000 square kilometers, while Latvia checks in at 64,000 and Lithuania at 65,000. The Russian military is potentially strong enough to cause World War III and break NATO. These are the data that keeps US European Command planners and vulnerable Eastern flank NATO allies up at night.

—Matthew Kroenig is the senior director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

8 million+

Refugees from Ukraine recorded in Europe since the start of the war

Russian atrocities in Ukraine over the past year have caused untold disaster and spurred the largest humanitarian crisis in Europe in nearly eighty years. The Kremlin has launched unrelenting assaults on civilian infrastructure, culminating in the deaths of civilians and permanently damaging energy facilities. Meanwhile, over fifty thousand allegations of war crimes have emerged from recently liberated Ukrainian cities, including harrowing reports of mass graves, torture in detainment camps, and the utilization of sexual assault as a weapon of war.

As a result, Europe has opened its doors to more than eight million refugees fleeing from Ukraine for their safety. While the prevailing belief is that large, Western European countries have led Europe’s efforts to counter Russia’s aggression, Central and Eastern European countries bear the brunt of refugee waves coming from Ukraine—due to both their proximity and already established Ukrainian diaspora communities. Nearly one-third, or 2.5 million, of total refugees from Ukraine in Europe have settled in countries included in the United Nations’ Refugee Response Plan (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Moldova, Romania, and Slovakia), while Poland has settled the greatest number of refugees at over 1.5 million and has seen over eight million refugees cross its border seeking safety since the start of the war (though six million have also returned to Ukraine).

Looking at the refugees taken in as a proportion of national population, Estonia, Montenegro, and the Czech Republic top the list, while some larger countries such as France and the United Kingdom fall toward the bottom. As Ukraine’s closest neighbors, Central and Eastern European countries have served on the front line of Europe’s greatest refugee crisis in generations and are likely to continue doing so as the war enters its second year.

—Kristen Taylor was a Young Global Professional at the Europe Center in the fall of 2022 and is a master’s student at American University. Akshat Dhankher and Emma Nix are program assistants at the Europe Center and lead the Ukraine Aid Tracker project.

Nearly 90%

Reduction in Russia’s piped natural gas export volumes

Russia’s piped natural gas export volumes have shrunk from four hundred to five hundred million cubic meters (mcm) per day to around sixty mcm per day, one year after Putin unleashed his bloody war of choice on Ukraine and an energy assault on Europe, Moscow’s biggest energy consumer at the time. Neither is going as planned.

While oil and gas are vital for Russia’s state budget, Moscow leans heavier on oil exports for revenue and gas exports for geopolitical leverage, which Putin unleashed by abruptly stopping supplies to multiple nations in Europe in order to discourage support for Ukraine. But by cutting supplies, Moscow also cut itself out of the European market as nations adjusted to the massive curtailment—albeit at a hefty price. Much of the market share will be challenging or impossible to recover, regardless of the war’s outcome, as European buyers commit to long-term contracts with alternative suppliers and invest in new liquefied natural gas (LNG) infrastructure to bring gas to areas previously monopolized by Russian exports.

However, a full decoupling from reliance on Russian gas is far from complete. New projects must come online to fill the supply gap in the long term, and the allure of discounted Russian exports could tempt some regions in Europe to take in gas from the Kremlin after the war. Additionally, Russian LNG exports to Europe increased in 2022—an important trend for European nations to observe as they work to unburden themselves from dependance on an unreliable producer.

Nevertheless, Putin accelerated Europe’s preexisting diversification efforts with his energy blackmail and, ironically, without Western sanctions on Russian methane. Moscow will never again supply 40 percent of Europe’s natural gas.

—Olga Khakova is the deputy director for European energy security at the Global Energy Center.

60.2%

Amount of Russia’s forecasted 2023 budget deficit reached by January

Moscow’s budget deficit in the month of January alone is more than half of its planned deficit for the entirety of 2023. Looking at the below graph, you’ll see a clear surge in Russia’s budget deficit in December. While December spending in Russia is usually high, January remained far into negative territory at a loss of 1.8 trillion rubles. Why the mismatch with Moscow’s predictions?

It’s because the 2023 budget is calculated based on oil revenues coming in at sixty dollars per barrel—the same value that the Group of Seven (G7) nations set as its price cap on December 5—but prices have since dropped well below that mark. With income shrinking, and heavy costs of the war to bear, Russia’s budget deficit is likely to widen past its own 2023 estimate of 2.9 trillion rubles.

—Sophia Busch is a program assistant at the GeoEconomics Center.

52.5%

Proportion of Russia’s tank arsenal destroyed

Prior to last February’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia was estimated to possess around 3,330 operational tanks. After one year of fighting, open-source intelligence has visually confirmed that Russia has lost over 1,700 tanks, or just over 50 percent of its pre-war total operational stocks. One estimate suggests that the total lost could be over 70 percent, given that not all losses are accessible to open-source intelligence. Russia is estimated to have around 17,000 additional tanks in storage, ranging from early Cold War-era T-55s, T-62s, and T-64s to more recent T-72s, T-80s, and T-90s, however the condition of these stored tanks is unclear.

—Jeffrey Cimmino is an associate director in the Scowcroft Strategy Initiative in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

Countries with domestic accountability responses to Russia’s invasion

The response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine—and the 68,321 crimes of aggression and war crimes registered by Ukraine—has included rapid international action to ensure accountability. Ukraine tops the list with domestic investigations and trials, advocacy to establish a Special Tribunal on the Crime of Aggression, and work to establish a claims commission. However, other countries have followed suit with domestic processes including criminal investigations, targeted sanctions designations, and asset seizures, as well as coordinated efforts through a joint investigative team and the Russian Elites, Proxies, and Oligarchs Task Force.

This is an atypical amount of legal action. This is partly due to practical reasons: Ukraine has an incentive to cooperate with other jurisdictions, and countries close to Ukraine are likely to have refugees who can provide evidence and perpetrators arriving on their territory. However, there are also known double standards in global access to justice—there is less clamor for international action when the perpetrators are from politically well-connected Western countries or part of intractable conflicts—which are considered likely to be a contributing factor to a reported lack of support for certain measures from the Global South. These accountability efforts will shape international legal precedent as they progress, but authorities should also ensure that they become the norm and serve to expand the options available to all atrocity victims.

—Celeste Kmiotek is a staff lawyer for the Atlantic Council’s Strategic Litigation Project.

Number of countries in a new nonaligned movement

On March 2, 2022, in an emergency special session following Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, the United Nations General Assembly advanced resolution ES-11/1 demanding full withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukraine. A total of 141 countries voted in favor of the resolution, including many of the world’s democracies. Thirty-five countries, from China and India to Iran and South Africa, abstained. Five countries— Belarus, North Korea, Nicaragua, Russia, and Syria—voted against it.

Seven months later, the General Assembly voted again to condemn Russia’s invasion and not recognize Russia’s claims to Ukrainian territory. The votes remained largely unchanged, with only two additional countries voting in favor (a total of 143) of a weakened resolution, thirty-five abstentions, and the same five no’s. (Several countries missed the vote in both cases.)

Both votes show that the international community overwhelmingly stands together to rebuke Russia’s invasion. But such little movement in vote numbers and member groupings—after nearly a year of an increasingly brutal and illegal war, human-rights abuses and apparent war crimes, and massive disruptions to the global economy—suggests that the world is roughly divided into three blocs. The first is a collection of countries, encompassing many members of the free world, that stand together to defend international law and order when it is most under threat. The second is a new nonaligned movement of countries that, for varied political or strategic reasons, choose to hedge or stay out of the fray completely. The third is an “axis of autocracies” that act to disrupt or displace the rules-based order.

These groups are of course not exact or exhaustive. Many states who voted in favor of both resolutions are not free or democratic or may not be supportive of more punitive steps to punish Russia, such as sanctions. Still, how countries have voted on these resolutions displays a real fact of today’s global order: Countries are increasingly coalescing into democratic and autocratic blocs when responding to international issues, with some remaining non-aligned.

—Danielle Miller and Imran Bayoumi are assistant directors with the Scowcroft Strategy Initiative.

50 billion euros

Monetary value of assistance sent to Ukraine by the EU and its member states since the start of the war

Despite the Kremlin’s bet that its war of aggression would isolate Ukraine from Europe, the European Union (EU) and its member states have responded with unity of purpose by sending immediate and continued aid to Ukraine.

An estimated 12 billion euros of this assistance was dispatched in the form of military aid, which accounts for both the 3.6 billion euros the EU has contributed via the European Peace Facility and bilateral donations from twenty-four EU member states. European partners not only sent a major wave of this military assistance immediately after Russia’s initial incursion but have also sustained donations throughout the year since—progressively sending heavier and longer-range weaponry—suggesting growing trust in Ukraine’s defensive capabilities and an increasing realization that Ukraine is the front line for the defense of Europe overall.

Meanwhile, an estimated 1.7 billion euros has taken the form of humanitarian aid, which has provided food, clothing, shelter, health care, and other basic needs to nearly fourteen million people in Ukraine. The European Commission has coordinated this unprecedented operation under the auspices of the EU Civil Protection Mechanism, standing up logistical hubs in Poland, Romania, and Slovakia to direct aid into the country. Lastly, as the challenge of Ukraine’s physical and institutional reconstruction looms ahead, the EU has provided 7.2 billion euros in macro-financial assistance—with an additional 18 billion euros of loans approved by the European Council in December 2022—and is sending other financial support through the European Investment Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

—Akshat Dhankher and Emma Nix are program assistants at the Europe Center and lead the Ukraine Aid Tracker project.

The post One year, eight world-changing numbers. Quantifying Russia’s war in Ukraine. appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Gadzala Tirziu in The New York Sun on Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s role as “Europe’s gatekeeper”

sodal — Thu, 16 Feb 2023 16:56:33 +0000

ORIGINAL SOURCE

On February 9, Scowcroft Center Nonresident Senior Fellow Aleksandra Gadzala Tirziu published a piece in The New York Sun on the role of Italy’s new Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, in securing Western European borders. To curb the entry of migrants, the Meloni administration has recently taken measures to complicate migrant-aid services, such as the work of charity ships that ferry migrants across the Mediterranean.

“Without much too fanfare… she has taken to fashioning Italy as Europe’s gatekeeper amid what is becoming an intractable migrant crisis — one exacerbated by Russia’s growing influence in Africa.”

Aleksandra Gadzala Tirziu

Fellow

Aleksandra Gadzala Tirziu

Africa Center Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Economy & Business Technology & Innovation

The Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security works to develop sustainable, nonpartisan strategies to address the most important security challenges facing the United States and the world.

Yevgeniya Gaber: Watch out for political manipulation of the tragedy

The post Gadzala Tirziu in The New York Sun on Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s role as “Europe’s gatekeeper” appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Experts react: How the world should respond to the devastating earthquake in Turkey

Atlantic Council experts — Mon, 06 Feb 2023 16:17:52 +0000

This post was updated at 4:40 p.m. ET on Monday.

A 7.8-magnitude earthquake in southeastern Turkey on Monday, followed by a large aftershock, killed thousands and caused widespread devastation in both Turkey and Syria. As locals pick up the pieces and aid groups rush in, how can the international community help? What will the impact be for a region already reeling from a decade-long war and refugee crisis? Our experts on Turkey and the wider region deliver the answers.

Borzou Daragahi: The widespread damage could have been avoided

Rich Outzen: With global help needed to rescue trapped people, regional tensions could ease

Eser Özdil: Aid contributions will help build diplomatic ties

Watch out for political manipulation of the tragedy

The tragedy has mobilized Turkey’s allies to join together in solidarity. More than forty-five countries have already extended their condolences and offered help to Turkey. In Ukraine, where people know well how it feels to wake up to the shouts of those trapped under the rubble of leveled buildings, many have joined a campaign to garner assistance to those affected in the devastating earthquake, while political leadership expressed readiness to send a large group of rescue workers to Turkey to assist in the crisis response. Ukrainians’ hearts and prayers have been with Turkey today.

With so much happening in the region, it is important to make sure that the cost of human lives is not depreciated, people’s deaths do not become mere figures in statistics, and necessary lessons are learned. There is also a risk that the devastating consequences of the earthquake, just months ahead of critical elections, will be used for political manipulations and information operations—both internally and externally. Just hours after the tragedy, Russian Telegram channels and think tanks have published similar messages urging Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to take this opportunity to renew direct talks with Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, claiming this would be a good time for a coordinated Turkish-Russian-Syria response. This was followed by a phone conversation between Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin. At the same time, there are an increasing number of social media posts sharing conspiracy theories on the possible “man-made” character of the catastrophe, allegedly aimed at weakening Turkey after rising tensions with its Western allies. These malign efforts to influence public perception about the tragedy should be taken seriously.

—Yevgeniya Gaber is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council IN TURKEY and at the Center in Modern Turkish Studies, Carleton University. Previously she was a foreign-policy adviser to the prime minister of Ukraine. Follow her on Twitter @GaberYevgeniya.

The widespread damage could have been avoided

If just one building collapses in a known earthquake zone, it is a tragedy. If dozens across several major cities collapse, it signals a preventable tragedy. Turkey vowed to implement changes to its building practices following the tragic 1999 Kocaeli province earthquake that left seventeen thousand dead. It instituted new construction rules and implemented mandatory earthquake insurance for all buildings. Architects and urban planners have been warning for years that the rules are not being followed strictly enough. This is an issue that cuts across Turkey’s partisan divide and needs much greater public scrutiny ahead of the May 14 elections.

—Borzou Daragahi is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs and an Istanbul-based journalist writing for the Independent.

With global help needed to rescue trapped people, regional tensions could ease

These devastating earthquakes have killed at least two thousand people and injured over eight thousand according to Monday’s reporting, with totals likely to rise. Turkey, unfortunately, has experience with severe earthquakes and has sophisticated emergency-response mechanisms. Yet there will be a need for technical assistance from neighbors and allies for time-sensitive tasks such as extricating people trapped under damaged and collapsed buildings. Azerbaijan, Israel, many European countries, and others have offered the rapid deployment of teams for this sort of work. It is worth remembering that millions of Syrian refugees live in southern Turkey, and there is a role for European donors as well as the Turkish government to help Syrians who live alongside Turkish neighbors in the affected area, but also across the border in northern Syria, which has also seen widespread destruction.

Sympathetic and supportive messages from across the region, including Athens, remind us that tragedies can also create a sense of solidarity in times of crisis. There may be some softening of heretofore tense regional relations in the aftermath and during the recovery process.

—Rich Outzen is a geopolitical consultant and nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council IN TURKEY with thirty-two years of government service both in uniform and as a civilian. Follow him on Twitter @RichOutzen.

Aid contributions will help build diplomatic ties

Turkey is once again faced with the devastating effects of an earthquake, this time epicentered on Kahramanmaraş, in the southeastern region of the country. The earthquake also affected highly populated cities including Gaziantep, Şanlıurfa, Antakya, Adana, and Malatya. It is cold in the region at the moment, and all kinds of humanitarian aid are needed. Although Turkey has extensive experience in dealing with similar natural disasters, any support from other countries will make a difference in the field. History has shown us many times that a common struggle in natural disasters such as earthquakes can make positive contributions to the development of relations between countries. I think that countries that show solidarity with Turkey will also improve their bilateral relations.

—Eser Özdil is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council IN TURKEY and the founder and managing director of GLOCAL Group Consulting, Investment, and Trade.

The post Experts react: How the world should respond to the devastating earthquake in Turkey appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Biden just tightened US migration policy. Can he calm the surge at the border?

Atlantic Council experts — Thu, 05 Jan 2023 22:44:23 +0000

On Thursday, US President Joe Biden announced that the United States will more swiftly remove unauthorized immigrants, expanding a pandemic-era restriction known as Title 42. Meanwhile, Biden expanded the use of a special authority to allow in up to thirty thousand migrants per month from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Venezuela, so long as they have a US sponsor. We asked our experts what’s behind the policy shifts from the White House and what happens next.

1. Why did Biden expand the parole program to Cuba, Nicaragua, and Haiti?

Putting in place the tools for a more orderly asylum process at the US-Mexico border is pivotal with the surge in encounters. Today’s announcement of an expansion of the Venezuela parole program to Cubans, Nicaraguans, and Haitians will hopefully help to dissuade asylum seekers from risking their lives to make the trek north.

In October and November 2022, more Cubans (sixty-five thousand) and Nicaraguans (fifty-five thousand) arrived at the southwest border than in fiscal years 2020 and 2021 combined. The twelve thousand Haitian arrivals in those two months amount to one fifth of their total fiscal 2022 arrivals.

But people won’t stop leaving while they have little hope for a better life in their own countries. That is the case in Cuba (where inflation is soaring and repression escalating), Daniel Ortega’s Nicaragua (where democratic freedoms no longer exist), Nicolás Maduro’s Venezuela (with its own soaring inflation and repression), and gang-controlled Haiti. So border policies must be accompanied by new US and partner country strategies to improve livelihoods in these migrants’ countries of origin. And the United States must hold those like Ortega accountable for his actions to weaponize migration by doing things such as lifting the visa requirement for Cubans in order to more easily facilitate passage to the United States.

But the border is about more than migration. It is a vital source of commerce that promotes the creation of US jobs. Our recent work shows that just a ten-minute reduction in border wait times could have a $5.4 million annual impact on the US economy and create nearly nineteen thousand jobs in Mexico. Greater commerce translates into greater security as well. Economic growth creates jobs, making it less desirable to leave home. It is absolutely achievable to have a border that is more secure and more efficiently promotes commerce. That should be the goal.

—Jason Marczak is the senior director of the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center.

2. What impact will this have at the border?

Biden’s visit to the border ahead of the North American Leaders Summit next week is an important step toward the amelioration of a crisis that has long afflicted the US-Mexico border. Smart border policies that streamline crossing processes not only benefit issues around migration, but also help decongest communities that are regularly choked by vehicular and pedestrian traffic.

Initiatives such as the New Migration Enforcement Process for Venezuelans have already decreased the percentage of attempted migrant crossings by nearly 90 percent. The expansion of such programs to additional groups could have similar effects, thus alleviating burdens on the health care and sanitation industries, among others.

Additionally, as border agencies utilize their resources to confront surges in pedestrian traffic, wait times for vehicles exponentially increase. Subsequent carbon emissions deteriorate the air quality around ports of entry, directly affecting the health outcomes of local communities. Further, vehicles waiting in line for miles constrict local mobility, hindering residents’ ability to travel back and forth between school, work, hospitals, and more.

It is important to keep people at the center of border policy, and initiatives that aim to enhance secure and efficient crossings should be celebrated by not only the United States and Mexico but the region as a whole.

—Ignacia Ulloa Peters is an assistant director at the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center.

3. Will Biden’s plan work?

The Biden administration’s announcement that it will surge resources to the southwest US border and speed up processing for asylum applicants is a most welcome response to the extraordinary surge of people from troubled countries such as Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Nothing will satisfy some critics, but those who support security, economic prosperity, values, and the US history of welcoming refugees from troubled lands should see today’s announcement as good news.

One absolute essential is the need for additional resources and personnel to make this plan work. The administration needs to send Congress an urgent supplemental budget request and to invoke some of the president’s extraordinary authorities to get additional personnel at the border to achieve the goal of making definitive, binding determinations of asylum eligibility in days, not weeks. The administration needs additional resources to (1) integrate legitimate asylees and their families to make important social and economic contributions to US society or (2) return ineligible people to a place of safety under existing laws. The administration and Congress now need to put forward the resources needed to satisfy US values, security, and prosperity. This would be historic, and it is achievable.

—Thomas Warrick is a nonresident senior fellow at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security’s Forward Defense practice and a former deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism policy at the US Department of Homeland Security.

4. What should happen next?

The American people have a right to expect secure borders. Crucial to this is a fair, orderly, and efficient process for those seeking to come and for determining who may stay. Unfortunately, the United States’ current system is utterly broken, and this is particularly true of the asylum system—weighed down by a 1.6 million-case backlog, with each case taking years to resolve. This has encouraged thousands with marginal claims to make dangerous journeys to the US border every month, expecting that the United States will not only let them in but also allow them to stay and work during the years it will take for their asylum claims to be resolved.

The measures announced today by Biden are the latest in a series of efforts aimed at gaining control over this untenable situation—establishing orderly processes for those with legitimate asylum claims; providing opportunity for those desiring to escape repressive or criminal regimes in Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, or Haiti; and working with Mexico and other nations to strengthen enforcement against those choosing not to use these legal processes and, instead, trying to sneak in.

These are excellent steps, but band-aids. Congress needs to get involved—not only to provide the resources and legal fixes needed to expedite the resolution of asylum claims and better secure the border, but also to reform the immigration system more broadly, giving lawful status to those who have been here a while, expanding lawful channels for those wanting to come, and creating more efficient mechanisms for employers to hire the workers the US economy needs. Biden and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas deserve great credit for muddling through with the limited tools they have, but to truly get control of the border, Congress needs to put politics aside and fix the broken system.

—Seth Stodder is a nonresident senior fellow in the Scowcroft Center’s Forward Defense practice and a former assistant US secretary of homeland security for borders, immigration, and trade policy.

The post Biden just tightened US migration policy. Can he calm the surge at the border? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Agachi interviewed by Politico on the biggest unexpected threats to the United States

Anca Agachi — Wed, 14 Dec 2022 09:30:00 +0000

READ THE ORIGINAL ANALYSIS

Staff

Anca Agachi

Associate Director

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Transatlantic Security Initiative

Africa Conflict

The Transatlantic Security Initiative, in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, shapes and influences the debate on the greatest security challenges facing the North Atlantic Alliance and its key partners.

The post Agachi interviewed by Politico on the biggest unexpected threats to the United States appeared first on Atlantic Council.

As Putin retreats in Ukraine, he is also losing Kazakhstan

Kamila Auyezova — Wed, 30 Nov 2022 21:16:20 +0000

Russia’s carefully choreographed political talk shows are notorious for their anti-Ukrainian invective, but in late November the target was Kazakhstan. “We must pay attention to the fact that Kazakhstan is the next problem, because the same Nazi processes can start there as in Ukraine,” commented one pundit on the prime time Evening with Vladimir Solovyov show. Russian officials subsequently criticized this thinly veiled threat, but many observers noted that in the tightly controlled world of Kremlin propaganda, such sensitive statements are unlikely to have been made without some form of prior approval.

The incident highlights rising concern in the Kremlin as the invasion of Ukraine continues to erode Russia’s position elsewhere in the former Soviet Empire. The most prominent shift since the onset of the invasion has been in relations with Kazakhstan, which has demonstrated its desire to distance itself from an increasingly isolated Moscow and pursue a more assertive multi-vector foreign policy with closer ties to China, Turkey, and the West.

Subscribe to UkraineAlert

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

Name
First Last
Email*
Comments
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Kazakhstan has traditionally been one of Russia’s closest allies. Due to a combination of factors such as common history, security cooperation, economic integration, and one of the world’s longest shared borders, there is little chance of a complete collapse in bilateral ties. Nevertheless, Kazakhstan has adopted a principled position in relation to the current war and has underlined that it does not approve of Russia’s attack on Ukraine.

Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev made his position particularly clear during the annual Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum in June. Seated on stage alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin, Tokayev declared that Kazakhstan had no intention of recognizing the independence of the so-called Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics in eastern Ukraine. The move was widely seen as a very deliberate and very public snub to Putin and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Tokayev’s comments in Saint Petersburg came following a series of moves signaling Kazakhstan’s decision to step away from Russia. Since the invasion began in February, Kazakhstan has chosen to abstain rather than back Russia during a number of key UN votes on the war. The Kazakh government has also vowed to strengthen energy cooperation with Europe at a time when Putin was hoping to use his stranglehold on oil and gas supplies to pressure European leaders into abandoning their support for Ukraine.

In a highly symbolic move, Kazakhstan canceled the country’s annual Victory Day celebrations in May. This gesture angered many in Moscow, where official reverence for the Soviet role in World War II is regarded as an indication of continued political loyalty to Russia.

As the invasion of Ukraine has escalated, so has the critical rhetoric from Kazakh officials. When hundreds of thousands of Russians fled to Kazakhstan in September in order to avoid mobilization into the Russian army, Tokayev vowed to provide humanitarian assistance. In a stinging rebuke, he said most of the fleeing men had been forced to leave Russia due to the “hopeless situation” in the country, before condemning Putin’s attempts to annex four partially occupied Ukrainian provinces.

Eurasia Center events

After Vilnius: What’s next on Ukraine’s path to NATO?

Eastern Europe NATO Security & Defense Ukraine

As Russian influence recedes, Kazakhstan is moving forward with a more assertive foreign policy of its own. In recent weeks, this has seen the Chinese and German leaders both visiting the Central Asian country. On November 11, Tokayev participated in the Summit of the Organization of Turkic States in neighboring Uzbekistan, where he again stressed the importance of strictly observing the UN Charter. In a further blow to Moscow, Kazakhstan has already begun to enhance the Trans-Caspian international transport route, which bypasses Russia and travels through China, Kazakhstan, the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and on to Europe via Turkey.

Russia is likely to fall further behind as other countries take advantage of Putin’s rapidly unraveling invasion of Ukraine to gain influence in Central Asia. Kazakhstan is now actively strengthening ties with two of Russia’s main Eurasian competitors, China and Turkey. During a May visit to Ankara, Tokayev signed an agreement on deepening security sector cooperation and joint development of military drones.

China is likely to emerge as the biggest winner from the shifting geopolitical balance of power in Central Asia, with Beijing understandably keen to emphasize its support for Kazakhstan. During a September visit to the Kazakh capital, Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke of China’s “strong support to Kazakhstan in protecting its independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity.”

Looking ahead, Kazakhstan faces the challenging task of maneuvering between the Russian bear and the Chinese dragon. Russia looks set to remain an important power in Central Asia and a key partner for Kazakhstan, but Moscow will now longer be able to dominate the region as it once did. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has already led to historic changes in Central Asia and sparked a push by Kazakhstan to pursue a more independent foreign policy.

For now, there is no question of Kazakhstan adopting an adversarial approach to Russia or choosing to side exclusively with Moscow’s rivals. Any such moves could have potentially disastrous consequences for the country’s security and independence. However, it is increasingly clear that as a result of Putin’s failing Ukraine invasion, Russian influence in Kazakhstan and the wider Central Asia region is in decline and has receded to levels not witnessed for over a century.

Kamila Auyezova is a research analyst who focuses on geopolitical and climate issues in Eurasia. You can find her on Twitter @KAuyezova.

Francis M. O’Donnell — Mon, 07 Nov 2022 21:09:44 +0000

Nine months is enough time to bring a human being to birth, but it is apparently not long enough for Russian President Vladimir Putin to realize the folly of his war against Ukraine. Instead, it is becoming increasingly clear that no meaningful settlement will be possible as long as Putin remains in power. The international community must therefore seek pathways to a lasting peace with a future post-Putin Russia.

For many decades, the USSR and subsequently the Russian Federation played a major role in advancing humanity’s progress. In sharp contrast to his predecessors, Vladimir Putin is now leading Russia away from that legacy and is transforming the country into a pariah state. Russian acts of hostility are global in scale and include everything from waging war in Georgia to the subversion of domestic politics throughout the West. Since the unprovoked attack on Ukraine began in 2014, the Putin regime has embarked on a further diplomatic frenzy that has increasingly alienated Russia’s erstwhile closest friends and foreign partners.

Yet just four years ago, Russia was party to a UN Security Council resolution on the protection of civilians in armed conflict which recognized for the first time the intrinsic link between hunger and conflict. Russia now behaves in stark defiance of these principles. On four separate occasions this year, the UN General Assembly has resoundingly rebuked Russia for its invasion of Ukraine and unwarranted and egregious violations of UN norms. Russia has been suspended from the UN Human Rights Council and the Council of Europe, and has lost its seat on the Governing Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization.

In a March 2022 resolution, the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva agreed to establish a commission to investigate violations committed during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A subsequent resolution examined the deteriorating human rights situation in Ukraine stemming from the invasion. This led to a report by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine addressing events during late February and March 2022 in the Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, and Sumy regions of northern Ukraine.

Evidence continues to mount indicating tens of thousands of war crimes committed by Russian forces acting under command responsibility, as distinct from occasional rogue elements. This evidence includes official statements, actions, and systemic politically-driven campaigns with clear genocidal intent, including widespread ethnic cleansing, deportations, and repeated large-scale missile and artillery targeting of civilian populations and vital civilian infrastructure.

For a comparatively minor territorial gain, Putin has sacrificed Russia’s reputation and socio-economic well-being. Even worse, the ricochet effects have also surged around the world creating food and energy insecurity, escalating inflation, and widespread impoverishment. There would never have been a good time for such willful misadventure, but coming in the wake of the Covid pandemic, the timing could hardly be worse.

Subscribe to UkraineAlert

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

Name
First Last
Email*
Comments
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

The increasing mendacity of the Putin regime is now so severe that members of the elite cannot even trust each other, with key figures close to the Kremlin engaging in public attacks on the leadership of the Russian military. As battlefield failure and international isolation continue to erode Putin’s authority, his entire model of government is now under threat. Russia’s prospects today are the dimmest they have been since World War II, with a range of possible dangers now emerging including deepening internal divisions and the potential collapse of the country.

While it is important to rule out any interference in the internal governance of the Russian Federation, the West can and should call for full compliance with Russia’s international obligations to defend the human rights and legitimate aspirations of Russian citizens. At this stage, the inclusion of Russian local governments and municipalities in the global effort to tackle climate change and pandemic recovery could be an opener to the de-concentration or leveling of power. When President Trump pulled the US out of the Paris Accord on Climate Change, several US states and municipalities strengthened their commitment to it.

We may already be witnessing the early warning signs of a degradation in the Russian state as sanctions and military defeats take their toll and warlords like Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov openly question Putin’s leadership of the war. Members of the Russian elite need to take stock of this decline and move beyond today’s misguided imperialism with a view to harnessing the energies of Russian society and thoroughly reforming the country’s institutions.

Eurasia Center events

After Vilnius: What’s next on Ukraine’s path to NATO?

Eastern Europe NATO Security & Defense Ukraine

The real Russia is deeper and richer than today’s stolen billions in assets and the forfeited lives from Putin’s genocidal wars against the country’s neighbors. The real Russia, including its repressed civil society and talented Russian communities around the globe, can strive to optimize broad-based outcomes that uplift the people of Russia and enhance their lives whilst restoring international partnerships and global respect. This will only be possible through the openness, transparency, and accountability of elected leaders divorced from the power of money, media, and mania. Multiple networks of Russians abroad need to coalesce around a reform agenda that looks to a post-Putin Russia and ushers in a new era of benign leadership that puts the well-being of the Russian people before the narrow predatory interests of the country’s current kleptocratic leadership.

The international community should therefore focus their attention and resources not only on enabling Ukraine to win the war but also to encourage a process of reconciliation and convergence that unites all the various and often conflicting elements of the Russian opposition both internally and in the diaspora. This would not be unprecedented. It was the unifying of the Serbian opposition that led to the overthrow of Milosevic regime.

A recognition of the dilemmas and internal stresses that Russia is facing, as distinct from but in addition to the harm caused to Ukraine and the world at large, warrants attention at the forthcoming G20 summit. The stifling of civil society and dissent has deprived the people of Russia of their rightful freedom of expression. Despite various Russian opinion polls indicating majority support for the invasion of Ukraine, this cannot be credibly authenticated. By its behavior and utterances alone, the Kremlin has disqualified itself from international relations. It is time for world leaders to acknowledge that a change of tack in Moscow is essential.

In order to advance toward the goal of peace, the international community must act to help empower alternative Russian voices. The global networks, institutions, and methods that can enable capacity for mediation and negotiation in conflicts around the world, are a vital resource to foster engagement with Russian civil society, which is largely silenced internally but not abroad, and can also be approached virtually at the local level. Getting Russian civil society to converge on peaceful alternatives and a different narrative than the Kremlin’s is the key to de-concentrating political power in Russia and incubating real participatory reform. It may also be the best way to achieve a sustainable peace.

Ambassador Francis M. O’Donnell (Ret.) is the former UN Representative in Ukraine (2004-2009)

Subscribe to UkraineAlert

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

Name
First Last
Email*
Email
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Accommodating such large numbers of Ukrainian refugees is placing enormous strains on existing public resources. For example, around 185,000 new Ukrainian students joined Polish primary schools at the start of the new academic year in September.

A number of right-wing European politicians have already attempted to exploit mounting refugee-related concerns. So far, these efforts have largely failed to gain traction. Nevertheless, attacks on refugee accommodation and assaults on individual Ukrainian refugees highlight the potential dangers. Meanwhile, some EU citizens hosting Ukrainian refugees in their homes are beginning to ask how much longer their assistance will be required.

As energy prices skyrocket and inflation soars throughout the European Union, Ukrainians may find current programs under threat due to potential public frustration. Support may be cut as governments reconsider their spending in the face of economic crisis and as populist politicians seek scapegoats.

There are already some indications of wavering support toward Ukrainian refugees. In summer 2022, Bulgaria suspended its housing accommodation program. The Bulgarian authorities stated lack of gratitude displayed by Ukrainians as the primary decision for the shift in policy, before reinstating the program following international criticism.

In September, the leader of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union, Friedrich Merz, accused Ukrainian refugees of “welfare tourism,” stating that refugees were taking advantage of German social services. Even Poland recently announced a change to its Ukrainian refugee policy, with refugees required to cover a part of living costs for collective accommodation.

Eurasia Center events

After Vilnius: What’s next on Ukraine’s path to NATO?

Eastern Europe NATO Security & Defense Ukraine

With Russia now plotting to fuel an escalation in the refugee crisis, Western leaders need to be prepared. The world’s wealthiest countries must open their doors and their wallets to ensure that solidarity with Ukraine does not flag during the coming winter months.

First and foremost, this means accepting more refugees. Larger countries, especially the United States, have vastly greater logistical capacity, resource flexibility, and physical space available to host Ukrainian refugees and lessen the constraints on smaller states in Central Europe.

So far, the United States has only committed to accepting up to 100,000 refugees. According to the UNHCR, France has accepted 105,000 Ukrainian refugees or just 154 for every 100,000 citizens compared to Estonia’s total of 60,980 Ukrainian refugees or 5,033 per 100,000 citizens. As often occurs during refugee crises, countries with lesser capacity to address the situation end up hosting the most refugees. Transatlantic partners should prove their commitment by addressing this imbalance.

It is also necessary to expand aid to countries that have accepted the most refugees per capita. At the onset of the war, humanitarian funding went only to the five countries bordering Ukraine that were originally listed in the UNHCR’s Regional Refugee Response Plan. This excluded countries which accepted a comparatively large number of refugees relative to their population such as the Czech Republic and Estonia, creating greater resource divides in areas not covered by the initial aid package scenario. While the UNHCR’s plan now includes other countries and transatlantic partners have provided additional funding, current levels of financial support remain insufficient.

Every refugee crisis is unique. While the moral and ethical imperatives of humanitarian assistance certainly apply in the present case, they are also joined by an ominous political calculus. Refugee fatigue is an opportunity for Russia to sow division between European countries and undermine Western support for Ukraine. With a challenging winter season now fast approaching, the democratic world would do well to find a renewed and expanded commitment toward refugee admittance and resettlement.

Kristen Taylor is a young global professional at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center and a graduate student at American University.

Poll: 86% of Ukrainians want to fight on despite Russian terror bombing

Peter Dickinson — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 19:55:06 +0000

In Kyiv and other cities across Ukraine, rolling power blackouts are now the new normal. With Russia’s terror-bombing campaign of civilian targets and critical infrastructure currently in its third week, the Ukrainian government has been forced to limit electricity and impose regular cutoffs in order to preserve energy amid damage to around 40% of the country’s power grid.

Vladimir Putin hopes that by destroying Ukrainian infrastructure and depriving the civilian population of essential services such as heating, water, and electricity, he can break Ukraine’s will to resist and force the Kyiv authorities to accept a peace deal on Moscow’s terms. So far, there is little sign of that happening. Instead, Ukrainians are responding to Russia’s terror tactics with the kind of resolve that has characterized the country’s war effort ever since the invasion began eight months ago.

A new nationwide poll released this week underlined the current mood of defiance across the country. Conducted on October 21-23 by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, the survey found that 86% of respondents supported the continuation of Ukraine’s military counteroffensive and rejected negotiations despite Russia’s escalating airstrikes against civilian targets.

This latest data point provides an indication of attitudes in Ukraine as Moscow’s terror-bombing campaign reached the two-week mark. It mirrors a number of earlier surveys which have consistently identified little Ukrainian appetite for any territorial concessions to the Kremlin.

This determination to stand up to Russian aggression was perhaps best articulated by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in an iconic September 11 social media post addressed to the Russian leadership in which he underlined just how far Ukraine was prepared to go in order to achieve an historic break with Russia. “Do you still think we are “one people”?” asked Zelenskyy. “Do you really think you can scare us, break us, force us to make concessions? Don’t you understand who we are and what we stand for? Read my lips: Without gas or without you? Without you. Without light or without you? Without you. Without water or without you? Without you. Without food or without you? Without you.”

This rousing Churchillian rhetoric has been accompanied by generous helpings of the good humor that Ukrainians have become renowned for over the past eight months. Ukraine has emerged as something of a social media superpower since the start of the Russian invasion, with the country’s ability to embrace dark humor in even the most desperate of situations striking a chord among international audiences. As the lights have gone out in recent weeks, many have quipped that the move will backfire on the Kremlin and lead to a baby boom, resulting in many more Ukrainians at a time when Putin is so desperately trying to destroy the nation.

Subscribe to UkraineAlert

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

Name
First Last
Email*
Phone
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

There is nothing funny about Russia’s intentions, of course. Kremlin officials and regime proxies make no effort to disguise the fact that their bombing campaign is an attempt to render Ukraine uninhabitable and force millions of citizens to flee the country. For the past month, government officials and other prominent pundits have regularly appeared on Russia’s carefully choreographed state TV political talk shows to express their support for targeted attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure and to demand an expansion of airstrikes.

The current offensive represents a dramatic escalation in Russia’s invasion at a time when Moscow already stands accused of committing genocide in Ukraine. Russian troops have reportedly engaged in systematic human rights abuses and mass executions throughout areas under Russian occupation, while tens of thousands of civilians are believed to have been killed when Putin’s forces reduced Ukrainian port city Mariupol to rubble during the early months of the war.

Meanwhile, Russian occupation authorities have allegedly subjected more than a million Ukrainians including thousands of children to forced deportation while eradicating all symbols of Ukrainian statehood and identity in areas under their control. The forced deportation of children is classified as genocide under international law.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba argued on October 22 that the current wave of airstrikes against civilian targets was further evidence of Russian genocide in Ukraine. “Deliberate strikes on Ukraine’s critical civilian infrastructure are part of Russia’s genocide of Ukrainians,” he posted, noting that the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention specifically refers to “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

Eurasia Center events

After Vilnius: What’s next on Ukraine’s path to NATO?

Eastern Europe NATO Security & Defense Ukraine

Despite a chorus of international condemnation, Russia shows no signs of ending its airstrike offensive. The key question now is whether Ukraine can repair its battered civilian infrastructure quicker than Russia can destroy it. Much will also depend on the willingness and ability of Ukraine’s international partners to deliver new air defense systems capable of protecting Ukrainian skies. However, even in a best-case scenario, military experts warn that no air defenses are impregnable, with some missiles and kamikaze drones always likely to get through.

The coming months will be yet another test of Ukrainian resilience. With Russia unable to defeat Ukraine on the battlefield, Putin is now seeking to terrorize the civilian population into surrender.

At present, this brutal plan looks to be one of the Russian dictator’s many miscalculations. Time and again, his apparent failure to understand the true nature of the Ukrainian nation has led him to take self-defeating steps that have merely served to deepen the increasingly bitter divide separating Ukraine from Russia. Putin’s terror tactics are now visibly strengthening Ukraine’s resolve to defy him.

Despite the mounting hardships caused by the Kremlin’s blackout blitz, most Ukrainians remain optimistic about the prospects of ultimately defeating Putin’s invasion. This comes as no surprise. After all, attacks on civilian infrastructure have minimal military value and are unlikely rob Ukraine of the battlefield initiative or transform the fortunes of Russia’s demoralized and decimated army. Nevertheless, with each new wave of bombings, the price of Ukrainian victory will increase further and more horror will be inflicted on the civilian population.

Peter Dickinson is Editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert Service.

Livia Godaert (@liviagodaert): Nonresident fellow at the Europe Center
John M. Roberts: Nonresident senior fellow at the Global Energy Center
Hameed Hakimi (@hameedhakimi): Nonresident senior fellow at the South Asia Center

Breaking down the agenda

The 42-year-old Sunak, a former chancellor of the Exchequer, was the runner-up to Liz Truss in this summer’s Conservative Party leadership race. Livia says that based on Sunak’s record, we can expect “a pretty hard line on immigration and refugee policies,” combined with a “push for greater economic and trade diplomacy.”
Livia also predicts that Sunak’s United Kingdom will remain a stalwart NATO ally and keep up the support for Ukraine. But what’s “less predictable” is how he will handle the “dark-money problems” caused by Russians and other kleptocrats investing in London.
In the same vein, Livia adds, “Sunak took a hard line against China during the campaign this summer, but this geopolitical stance may conflict with a greater push for foreign investment and trade.”
Those challenges, however, pale in comparison to the country’s ongoing post-Brexit “identity crisis,” Livia says. She argues that the Sunak government’s long-term goal should be to clearly articulate its vision for Britain’s place in the world and invest in the country’s “soft power.” The country can be a player in global debates on climate change, technology, and more, she says, “but thought leaders and decision makers won’t engage with the United Kingdom if they think they won’t be heard, or if they don’t see the country as a serious partner.”

Subscribe to Fast Thinking email alerts

First test

Expect Sunak to “push for a further decoupling from the single market and the European Union,” Livia tells us, including ditching the Northern Ireland protocol and instituting data reforms.
At the same time, John describes Sunak as an “economic and financial realist” who may try to improve trade relations with the continent but would face headwinds from the “wing of the Conservative Party that objects to anything other than a pure and total Brexit.”
The first test comes as early as tomorrow, when Parliament will debate a bill that would effectively reverse some 2,400 EU regulations at the end of next year—on matters ranging from workers’ rights to televising the Olympics.
“The UK business community is by and large horrified at the prospect of the chaos that dropping all these laws will mean,” John tells us. “Canceling the bill would obviously improve Britain’s trade prospects with the EU, but the hard-line right wing of the Conservative Party would block any such effort.”

Race and politics

People overseas may view the United Kingdom’s first prime minister of color as groundbreaking, but “the Asian and minority ethnic groups have a more complicated relationship with leaders such as Sunak,” Hameed tells us.
In recent years, a slew of British politicians from minority groups have risen through the ranks—including London Mayor Sadiq Khan, former Home Secretary Priti Patel, and former Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng—but there has been no real progress on solving the disparities in wealth and health faced by British people of color. “It is difficult to measure the significance of their rise beyond progressive optics,” Hameed says.
He adds that for Sunak, who attended Oxford and Stanford and married the daughter of an Indian billionaire, “his politics and leadership are likely to be defined more by his extremely privileged upbringing in Britain—and the collective wealth he enjoys with his wife—than by any presumed solidarity on the basis of his ethnic background.”

The post What to expect from Rishi Sunak’s Britain appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Vladimir Putin has little reason to celebrate on his seventieth birthday

Peter Dickinson — Fri, 07 Oct 2022 12:16:50 +0000

Vladimir Putin marks his seventieth birthday on October 7 but the Russian ruler has little reason to celebrate. For much of his 22-year reign, Putin has been credited with rejuvenating Russia and returning the country to the forefront of world affairs following the humiliations of the 1990s. However, his decision to invade Ukraine has made him personally toxic and left Russia more internationally isolated than ever. In less than one year, Putin the Great has become Putin the Pariah.

Few could have envisioned this turn of events on February 24 when Putin launched his attack on Ukraine. Most observers in Russia and the West confidently expected Ukrainian resistance to collapse in a matter of hours, allowing Moscow to install a Kremlin-friendly puppet in Kyiv. This was to be Putin’s greatest achievement, correcting what he and millions of Russians fervently believed to be the injustice of the post-Soviet settlement.

Unfortunately for Putin, Ukraine fought back. The courage and determination displayed by the Ukrainian nation during the tumultuous first days of the invasion won the admiration of the watching world and transformed international perceptions. A conflict that Putin had sort to portray as a “Special Military Operation” to address legitimate Russian security concerns was now widely recognized as a brutal and entirely illegitimate war of imperial conquest.

Russia’s battlefield fortunes have continued to deteriorate ever since. Putin’s army was beaten in the Battle of Kyiv and forced to retreat entirely from northern Ukraine. The Ukrainian Armed Forces then fought his troops to a standstill in eastern Ukraine and have since achieved stunning counter-offensive successes on both the eastern and southern fronts. Moscow has suffered staggering losses including tens of thousands of soldiers and dozens of commanders. The once vaunted Russian military has become a laughing stock, its tanks towed away by Ukrainian tractors and its frequent retreats disguised as “goodwill gestures.”

This has taken a heavy toll on morale. Fleeing Russian troops have abandoned so many vehicles and arms depots that Moscow is now officially Ukraine’s main weapons supplier. With large numbers of Russian troops simply refusing to fight, Putin was recently forced to introduce draconian new penalties for deserters while also announcing Russia’s first mobilization since World War II. It not clear whether these desperate measures will enable Putin to stop the rot within his army. International sanctions make it difficult for Russia to replace the vast amounts of equipment lost or expended in Ukraine, while many question the military value is poorly trained and demoralized conscripts against the increasingly well-armed and superbly motivated Ukrainians.

Subscribe to UkraineAlert

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

Name
First Last
Email*
Phone
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Putin’s woes are not limited to the battlefields of Ukraine. His rapidly unraveling invasion has also gravely undermined Russia’s international standing. Countries throughout Moscow’s traditional sphere of influence have been encouraged by the poor performance of the Russian military and are now openly defying the Kremlin.

Kazakhstan has sided with the West over the war and is at the same time drawing closer to China. In the southern Caucasus, Russia has been exposed as toothless amid a new flareup in the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia. The Baltic states have emerged as key champions of the Ukrainian cause and have imposed tough entry restrictions on all Russian citizens, while even Kremlin-dependent Belarus dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka has resisted Russian pressure to join the invasion. At this stage, it looks like Ukraine will become the graveyard of Putin’s imperial ambitions.

The Russian dictator’s efforts to divide the West have also backfired. Transatlantic cooperation has been reinvigorated by the invasion of Ukraine, while Europe has responded to Moscow’s energy blackmail by slowly but surely moving to end its dependence on Russian oil and gas. Worst of all, NATO has expanded on Russia’s doorstep, with both Sweden and Finland abandoning decades of neutrality and applying for membership of the military alliance.

Even Putin’s traditional partners appear to be getting cold feet. The Chinese and Indian leaders have both recently expressed their concerns over the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, while only a handful of fellow pariah nations are currently prepared to stand with Russia during voting at the United Nations.

Eurasia Center events

Ukraine attempts to encircle Lyman; civilian convoy hit in Zaporizhzha

After Vilnius: What’s next on Ukraine’s path to NATO?

Eastern Europe NATO Security & Defense Ukraine

Putin’s current plight is all the more striking as it is almost entirely self-inflicted. His well-documented obsession with Ukraine has clearly clouded his judgment and led him into a series of disastrous decisions that have undone the progress made during the early years of his reign. This obsession is rooted in Putin’s conviction that the emergence of a genuinely independent Ukraine is an historical aberration that poses an existential threat to Russia itself. Haunted by the Soviet collapse, he is convinced that the consolidation of a democratic and European Ukraine will act as a catalyst for the next chapter in Russia’s imperial retreat.

Despite his best efforts to contain the conflict within Ukraine, there are signs that instability is indeed coming to Putin’s Russia. For now, the Russian public is largely voting with its feet. An estimated 700,000 Russians fled the country in the first two weeks following the announcement of mobilization. However, there are also indications of a mounting protest mood, particularly in poorer regions such as Dagestan where ethnic minorities have already suffered disproportionate losses during the first seven months of the invasion.

More worryingly for Putin, there is growing evidence of infighting among the Kremlin elite. In recent days, key regime loyalists such as Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and the founder of the mercenary Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, have launched highly unusual public attacks on Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the Russian military commanders leading the Ukraine invasion.

This rising tide of discontent is also evident on Russian state television. The carefully choreographed political talk shows that dominate Russia’s mainstream media are widely viewed as a barometer of the mood within the Kremlin. For months, the regime’s favorite propagandists remained upbeat about the war. However, the tone has become noticably darker in recent weeks following Russia’s bruising defeats in the Kharkiv and Kherson sectors. At present, the critics are focusing their fire on the military. However, if Moscow’s battlefield losses continue to mount, it is surely only a matter of time before the Russian public acknowledges that the problem is Putin himself.

Peter Dickinson is Editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert Service.

Putin illegally annexes Ukrainian territory

On September 30, Russian President Vladimir Putin officially annexed four Ukrainian oblasts, including Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, effectively incorporating all of southeastern Ukraine into Russia. “There are four new regions of Russia,” he told the assembled audience at the Kremlin, and insisted that annexing the regions was “the will of millions of people.” After a brief history lesson in which he lamented the collapse of the Soviet Union as a “catastrophe,” he called for Ukraine to accept a ceasefire. Putin was open to negotiating a settlement, he continued, but added that he would defend the newly annexed territories “by all means available.” In reference to the possible use of nuclear weapons, he said the US “created a precedent” for their use when it bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Prior to the annexation ceremony, Reuters and the Guardian reported Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov discussing how Russia would “’de jure’ incorporate parts of Ukraine which are not under the control of Russian forces into Russia itself.” Russia would therefore consider Ukrainian attacks on annexed areas that Russia does not even control as an attack on Russia itself.

Response to today’s developments have been swift. UK Defense Minister Ben Wallace declared on Twitter, “The UK will never recognise Russia’s illegal annexations in Ukraine.”

The UK will never recognise Russia’s illegal annexations in Ukraine. Russia doesn’t even control some of these oblasts. The truth is Russia is losing in Ukraine and their incompetent Generals are sending thousands to their deaths to please President Putin’s imperialist fantasy.
— Rt. Hon Ben Wallace MP (@BWallaceMP) September 30, 2022

Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas lambasted the move as a “land grab” and put the annexation into stark geographic terms:

Let’s look at the magnitude of Russia’s illegal annexation. Russia will announce that around 20% of Ukraine’s territory is annexed to Russia. It is the size of 108 800 km2 – this is comparable to Austria and Belgium combined. Or Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands combined. Or 30% of Germany. Or the size of the Republic of Korea. If you add Crimea to it, the territory is comparable to three Belgiums and the Netherlands combined. And around 40% of Germany.

And let’s call things with the right names. Russia tries to rewrite the map of Europe. It’s a land grab. It’s theft. Putin hopes to add legitimacy to his invasion with this step. The international community will never recognize it.
Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas

US President Joe Biden also condemned Putin’s annexation move. “Make no mistake: these actions have no legitimacy,” he said in a statement. “The United States will always honor Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders.”

—Andy Carvin, Managing Editor, Washington DC

Ukraine attempts to encircle Lyman; civilian convoy hit in Zaporizhzhia

Russian and Ukrainian analysts on Telegram are predicting that Lyman could fall into Ukrainian control, as Ukraine continues its efforts to encircle the Russian-controlled city. A Ukrainian armed forces spokesman told Ukrainian outlet Suspilne that the encirclement of Lyman is “nearing its completion.” There are unconfirmed reports that Russian forces are attempting a pullback from the city.

https://twitter.com/IAPonomarenko/status/1575792380468658176

In recent days, Russian army shelling was most active in the front areas of the front near Bakhmut and Pokrovsk. In the Bakhmut area, Toretsk and Svitlodarsk came under fire. There is a Ukrainian breakthrough reported in Stavky, the liberation of Yampil which reportedly fell under Ukrainian control on this morning, and a blockade of Drobysheve, which is important for the Russian defense of the city.

Outside of Zaporizhzhia, a missile struck a civilian convoy of residents attempting to relocate. Initial reports from the scene suggest a death toll of more than two dozen people, but at the time of writing had not been confirmed.

The news from the front comes against the background of the Kremlin’s announcement to annex four more areas of Ukraine after self-styled referendums condemned by Ukraine and the West as a sham. It is worth noting that Russia does not fully control any of the four regions it has decided to annex. Although most of Luhansk remains under Russian control, Moscow only controls 60 percent of Donetsk. The capital of the southern region of Zaporizhzhia is under the control of Ukraine’s government while the frontlines in Kherson remain unstable.

—Ruslan Trad, Resident Fellow for Security Research, Sofia, Bulgaria

—Andy Carvin, Managing Editor, Washington DC

Russian men resist mobilization across the country

Against the backdrop of Ukrainian pressure on the front lines in the Donbas, signs of resistance in the Russian Federation against the announced mobilization continue to emerge. Authorities detained an individual after an arson incident took place at the military enlistment office in Uryupinsk. At least fifty-four arson incidents have been document documented in recent weeks, according to Russian independent media outlet Mediazona.

On September 26, a Russian man lit himself on fire at a bus station in Ryazan while yelling he didn’t want to take part in the Ukraine war. In another incident that same day, a commander was killed at a military enlistment office in eastern Russia. A video emerged of a Russian man opening fire and killing the commander in the city of Ust-Ilimsk, who was also the head of the local draft committee.

Meanwhile, the number of Russians attempting to leave the Russian Federation has increased since Putin declared a partial mobilization. The Finnish Border Guard, for instance, reported an increase of 37 percent on September 24 compared with the previous weekend at the immigration checkpoints Salla and Raja-Jooseppi in Lapland. Further south, where Finland has several cross-border roads to Karelia and the St. Petersburg region, traffic was reportedly higher. A total of 38,444 Russian citizens entered Finland at land border checkpoints last week, the Border Guards stated. Considering the mass exodus from Russia, Novaya Gazeta reported that 261,000 men had left the country since mobilization, according to the FSB; most had fled to Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia. Especially dire is the situation on the Georgian border, where the Russian army even established mobile barricades to stop those of military age from departing the country. Several outlets reported that Russian authorities could close the border for military-aged men as soon as this week. These reports also suggested that Putin will make the final decision on a departure ban and the possible introduction of martial law prior to addressing both chambers of parliament today.

Some Russian officials are going even further to convince more recruits. Kirill Kabanov, a member of the Presidential Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights, proposed to depriving residents from Central Asia of Russian citizenship if they refuse military service. This proposal would also affect people who had received citizenship within the last ten years, as well as their immediate family, thus raising the possibility that they would be stripped of their citizenship.

Russian Muslims announced protests against the mobilization on September 30 after Friday prayers. They also planned to express solidarity with Dagestan, whose population was among the first to protest earlier this month. In recent days, over 100 people have been arrested during protests in the Dagestani capital of Makhachkala, and tensions between residents and security forces continue to rise. Arrests were also reported in the Republic of Tuva following local protests.

—Ruslan Trad, Resident Fellow for Security Research, Sofia, Bulgaria

Russia-based Facebook operation targeting Europe with anti-Ukraine messaging revealed

In August 2022, the DFRLab discovered a network consisting of six inauthentic Facebook pages purchasing ads to promote posts about Germany’s impending energy crisis and called for the lifting of sanctions on Russian gas imports. An independent review of these assets by Meta, along with others separately identified by German media, led to the discovery of a much larger network consisting of 1,633 accounts, 703 pages, twenty-nine Instagram profiles, and one Facebook group. These assets promoted Kremlin interests beyond Germany, also targeting France, the UK, Italy, Ukraine, and Latvia.

It was “the largest [network] of its kind we’ve disrupted since the war in Ukraine began,” Meta said in its report.

The network exhibited an overarching pattern of targeting Europe with anti-Ukraine narratives and expressions of support for Russian interests. It manifested multiple indicators of previous Russian influence operations, including the amplification of pro-Kremlin and anti-Ukraine or anti-Western narratives; the paid promotion of content; calls for action on petition sites and other forms of audience engagement; amplification across multiple languages reflecting inaccurate and non-native grammar; impersonating real people or institutions or creating fake ones; and generating names with detectable patterns.

The timing and narratives of the posts coincided with policy decisions made by the targeted countries pages regarding the war in Ukraine. For example, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz went to Canada for talks about liquified natural gas supplies on August 21, 2022. On August 22 and 23, five pages in the network posted a cartoon portraying Europe as a character named “Dr. EuroReich,” who is seen cutting Russian gas to a patient representing Germany’s economy. Similarly, in June 2022, France completed its first delivery of Caesar self-propelled howitzers to Ukraine. At the end of that month, four pages posted an image of the howitzer and suggested that France was getting itself involved in war crimes allegedly committed by Ukraine.

Meta concluded that the network originated in Russia and spread out across multiple platforms beyond Facebook and Instagram. It spent the equivalent of about $105,000 in advertising on Facebook and Instagram, primarily in US dollars and euros.

Some of the Facebook pages within the network posted links to websites of Russian origin, as well as links spoofing the domains of legitimate media organizations, including Bild and Welt in Germany, 20minutes in France, ANSA in Italy, RBC in Ukraine, and the Guardian in the UK. EU DisinfoLab, together with the Swedish non-profit foundation Qurium Media Foundation, were able to identify fifty-six spoofed domains that were part of the network.

Read the full report

—Nika Aleksejeva, Lead Researcher, Riga, Latvia

Kremlin spins quotes from the Western leaders to blame the US in Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline explosions

Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), demanded on her Telegram channel that US President Joe Biden “answer whether the United States realized its threat on September 25 and 26, 2022, when an emergency occurred on the three lines of Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, which is tentatively qualified as a pipeline rupture, suggesting that they were blown up.” Zakharova referred to a press conference on February 7, 2022, when Olaf Scholtz visited the White House. During the that meeting, President Biden said, “If Russia invades, that means tanks or troops crossing the — the border of Ukraine again, then there will be — there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2.” After a journalist asked to clarify on how exactly the US will stop Nord Stream 2, which is under German control, Biden said, “We will — I promise you — we will be able to do it.”

Zakharova took out the video fragment of the press briefing and posted it on her Telegram. The post garnered more than 850,000 views, 85 shares to other Telegram channels and chats, 3,6000 forwards and 492 comments, according the TGStat.ru, a Telegram analysis tool.

Screenshot of Maria Zakharova’s Telegram post’s engagement data retrieved from TGStat.ru (Source: @nikaaleksejeva/DFRLab via TGStat)

Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), a German right-wing political party, used Facebook advertisements to promote the video fragment with Biden suggesting that the US might be behind the attack.

Screenshot of Facebook ad paid by AfD and translated to English from German by Google translate. (Source: Meta Ad Library)

Zakharova also used a tweet by Radek Sikorski, the former Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs, now Member of the European Parliament, in which he posted the bubbling surface of the Baltic Sea and wrote, “Thank you, USA.” Sikorski’s Tweet was amplified by the Russia’s MFA on Twitter to further suggest US involvement in the gas pipelines’ disruptions.

Screenshot of Russian MFA’s quote tweet of Radek Sikorski’s tweet. (Source: @mfa_russia/archive)

Sikorski later deleted this tweet but left another tweet celebrating the gas leak. Rafał Trzaskowski, the mayor of Warsaw, attempted to explain that what Sikorski might have meant was thanking the US for warning that such gas pipeline explosions might happen. Previously, on September 28, 2022, Spiegel, the German mainstream media outlet, wrote that the CIA warned Germany about possible attacks on the gas pipelines.

Russian gas deliveries to Western Europe through Nord Stream 1 pipeline were among the Kremlin’s leverage over sanctions put on Russia after Russia invaded Ukraine. On September 5, 2022, Russian state-owned Gazprom company shut down Nord Stream 1 due to “necessary repairs.” Nord Stream 2 was never in use, as Germany decided to freeze the project amid Russia’s recognition on two breakaway regions in Eastern Ukraine. Putting both pipelines out of order does not change much for Western European countries in terms of gas supply, while the Kremlin has lost direct access to a large part of the European gas market.

—Nika Aleksejeva, Lead Researcher, Riga, Latvia

Thousands of Russian citizens flee to neighboring Georgia, raising security concerns among Georgian civil society

Putin’s partial mobilization order on September 21 has led to a second wave of mass exodus from Russia. Tens of thousands of Russian citizens have left the country. According to statistics published by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia, up to 79,000 Russian citizens entered Georgia between September 17–26, out of which 53,000 Russian citizens entered Georgia since September 21, after the mobilization announcement in Russia. This is the second large wave of Russian influx in Georgia. The first wave followed shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 and peaked in summer. Between March and August, up to 800,000 Russian citizens entered Georgia. The visa-free regime was introduced by the previous Georgian administration. The Georgian Dream-led government has expanded the visa-free stay in the country from ninety days to one year.

Footage emerged on social media platforms depicting thousands of Russian citizens trying to cross the border with Georgia at the Upper Lars border crossing. Maxar Technologies published satellite imagery from September 27 depicting a sixteen kilometer traffic jam near the Lars border checkpoint. The Insider also published drone footage of long lines near the border crossing.

Our latest #satelliteimagery, from today, Sept 27, along the #Russia – #Georgia border and the extensive (~16 km in length) traffic jam approaching the Upper #Lars border checkpoint (lat/lon: 42.768, 44.631) as well as the Lars border crossing (lat/lon: 42.740, 44.627). pic.twitter.com/chG2ZzJYT6
— Maxar Technologies (@Maxar) September 27, 2022

What is going on in front of the Upper Lars border crossing: drone footage
Many kilometer traffic jams, drivers wait in front of the border for 40-50 hours. Scuffles keep sparking from time to time in the queue pic.twitter.com/1EReyhhyHs
— The Insider (@InsiderEng) September 26, 2022

The latest influx of Russian citizens has raised concerns among civil society actors and democracy activists in Georgia. On September 28, activists held a protest rally near the Georgia-Russia border demanding closure of the checkpoint. Citizens also started to mobilize on Facebook. A Facebook group called “ჩავკეტოთ ლარსის გზა“ (“Let’s block the Lars road”) was created on September 27 and garnered 9,300 members in two days. The group has already organized two events on Facebook to demand the closure of the Lars checkpoint.

The Georgian Dream-led government has not been responsive to the situation. Earlier in August, Georgian Dream party chairperson Irakli Kobakhidze accused opposition parties, media, and civil society actors of holding “xenophobic” and “chauvinistic” attitudes towards Russian citizens. On September 27, the Interior Minister Vakhtang Gomelauri stressed that about 60 percent of Russian entrants had already left the country. “Russians have always entered Georgia…why should this become a problem today?” – he added.

On Telegram, the increase in mentions of “Ларс” (Lars) following Putin’s September 21 “partial” mobilization announcement peaked on September 27, with 4,502 mentions and up to 88 million views.

Screengrab from a TGStat query showing the increase of mentions (gray) and reach (blue) of “Ларс” (Larsi) following Putin’s announcement of “partial mobilization.” (Source: DFRLab via TGStat)

Various Russian Telegram channels and groups with “Lars” in their titles have been growing audience and garnering engagement. The groups include “ВЕРХНИЙ ЛАРС ЧАТ” (Upper Lars chat), ВЕРХНИЙ ЛАРС ЧАТ | ГРУЗИЯ (Upper Lars chat | Georgia), ВЕРХНИЙ ЛАРС (Upper Lars ), among others. The subscribers of the channels and groups have been sharing information about where to get products, water, and petroleum; advertising the private services of transportation from Russia to Georgia; posting images and videos of people crossing Georgian border; and giving various tips to each other.

For instance, ВЕРХНИЙ ЛАРС ЧАТ | ГРУЗИЯ (Upper Lars chat | Georgia) had around 11,000 members at the end of August; by late September the number reached 36,000.

Screengrab from TGStat showing the participants number growth (top) and number of messages (bottom) in the Telegram group Upper Lars chat . (Source: EtoBuziashvili/DFRLab via TGStat)

—Sopo Gelava, Research Associate, Tbilisi, Georgia

—Eto Buziashvili, Research Associate, Washington DC

The post Russian War Report: Putin illegally annexes Ukrainian territory appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Putin threatens to increase attacks on Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure

Victor Kevluk — Tue, 27 Sep 2022 22:27:41 +0000

Russian President Vladimir Putin made global headlines on September 21 by threatening to use nuclear weapons if Ukrainians refuse to end their resistance to his invasion and continue to liberate Russian-occupied regions of their country. There has subsequently been much debate over whether Putin’s nuclear ultimatum is genuine or merely an attempt to intimidate the Western world into abandoning its support for Ukraine.

Many observers believe that a less publicized threat made one week earlier offers a clearer indication of Moscow’s likely next steps. Speaking on September 16 during a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Uzbekistan, Putin noted a recent series of Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure and warned of more to come. “Just recently the Russian armed forces hit some sensitive targets. Let’s consider these to have been warning strikes. If the situation develops further in the current direction, our response will be more serious.”

The strikes Putin was referencing to included missile attacks on Ukrainian power stations in Kharkiv, Zmiiv, Pavlograd, and Kremenchug on September 11-12, which left parts of the Kharkiv, Poltava, Dnipropetrovsk, and Zaporizhia regions temporarily without water and electricity. Two days later on September 14, Russia struck a dam at the Karachuniv Reservoir close to Kryvyi Rih, causing fears over possible flooding and disruption to local water supplies.

Attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure are not new and have been taking place regularly since the Russian invasion began on February 24. Nevertheless, the coordinated nature of the recent airstrikes indicates a change in tactics. This can also be seen on Russia’s Kremlin-controlled federal TV channels, which have recently began to actively promote the idea of destroying Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure.

Subscribe to UkraineAlert

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

Name
First Last
Email*
Email
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Calls for a new campaign against civilian infrastructure targets across Ukraine have emerged following the Russian army’s humiliating retreat from Kharkiv Oblast in early September. The rapid pace of Ukraine’s advance and the comprehensive nature of Russia’s collapse sent shockwaves through Moscow. For the first time, many Russians began to understand that they may be witnessing the early stages of an historic defeat. This appears to have further radicalized opinion in the Kremlin, leading to open demands for war crimes targeting the Ukrainian civilian population.

Russia’s actions are in clear violation of the 1949 Geneva Conventions that established international legal standards for humanitarian treatment in war. However, with UN investigators already confirming that Russia has committed war crimes in Ukraine, an isolated and cornered Putin seems ready to entertain increasingly drastic measures in order to prevent his faltering invasion from unraveling further.

A Russian campaign against Ukrainian civilian infrastructure would have thousands of potential targets to choose from including everything from power stations and energy supply networks to water, internet, rail, and transport hubs. Any attacks that succeeded in disrupting the supply of food or medicines could have a devastating impact on whole regions, especially if timed to coincide with the coldest periods of the coming winter season.

The targeting of Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure poses obvious and significant challenges to the country’s population. While some elements of infrastructure are protected, many possible targets are highly vulnerable to attack. This could lead to significant loss of life and may also trigger a new wave of refugees as Ukrainians seek food and shelter in neighboring EU countries.

Ukraine’s energy infrastructure is thought to be particularly at risk from Russian attack. Russia is well aware of Ukraine’s excessive dependence on energy imports as well as the country’s issues with inefficient energy use. Attacks targeting energy supply could plunge entire cities into darkness and spark panic among the civilian population, with negative consequences for a whole series of different sectors.

Eurasia Center events

After Vilnius: What’s next on Ukraine’s path to NATO?

Eastern Europe NATO Security & Defense Ukraine

With the winter heating season fast approaching, the Ukrainian authorities and the country’s international partners must waste no time as they prepare for Russian attacks on every element of the country’s civilian infrastructure. Likewise, ordinary Ukrainians should take measures in anticipation of possible coming disruption to basic services in the months ahead.

In military terms, this means enhancing and expanding Ukraine’s air defense capabilities. The best way to thwart Russian attacks is by preventing missiles from reaching their targets. Ukrainian leaders have been consistently requesting more air defense systems since before the Russian invasion began. Putin’s stated plans to target civilian infrastructure should now add a sense of urgency to these calls.

Cyber security must also be strengthened. Russia has previously demonstrated that it can disable vital infrastructure via cyber attacks. Such tactics are likely to be used in conjunction with airstrikes.

Ukraine must seek to increase energy efficiency and find alternative sources of energy supply in anticipation of possible disruption. Strategic reserves should be built up and preparations put in place to repair any damage. Encouragingly, drills are already taking place at key energy infrastructure objects.

Local authorities should consider establishing well-stocked community hubs offering warmth, electricity, and access to basic supplies such as food, water, and medicines in the event of massive infrastructure failure. Individual Ukrainians can take similar precautionary measures for their own households, and may also wish to stock up on specific items including torches, candles, canned food, and warm winter clothing.

Attempts to destroy Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure represent the latest escalation in Russia’s war against Ukraine. Moscow is now prepared to openly attack both military and non-military targets in order to achieve its goal of extinguishing Ukrainian statehood and erasing Ukrainian national identity. All the indications are that Ukraine will face an historically challenging winter of hardships as Russia seeks to break the country’s will to resist. It is vital that the necessary preparations are put in place without delay.

Victor Kevluk is an analyst at the Center for Defence Strategies in Kyiv.

India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh must increase diplomatic pressure in Gulf countries, build on-the-ground bureaucratic infrastructure there, and improve labor laws and standards in their own countries. These changes, some of which have already been successfully deployed by origin countries such as the Philippines, would dramatically benefit South Asian migrants in the Gulf.

Increase diplomatic pressure

Under the kafala system, workers are subject to highly uneven power dynamics as their employers gain control over their employment and immigration statuses. Such exploitation is pervasive at the institutional level, and combating its effects will require the highest level of diplomacy.

South Asian countries sending migrant workers can begin by ramping up their diplomatic presence in Gulf countries and harnessing all sources of diplomatic leverage. The Philippines has utilized multiple diplomatic tools to protect its citizens: establishing strong diplomatic missions in the Gulf and banning workers from migrating to some Gulf countries (and only lifting the bans after signing agreements and memoranda of understanding, or MOU, with the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia guaranteeing protections for migrant domestic workers from the Philippines).

India has signed similar MOUs with Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar, with a specific focus on domestic workers. Pakistan has likewise signed MOUs with Qatar and the UAE, but neither agreement explicitly mentions domestic workers or their rights. As domestic work is a highly feminized field, migrant women domestic workers (MWDWs) are especially susceptible to exploitation and abuse under the kafala system. Therefore, all three of these South Asian countries should sign an MOU explicitly addressing domestic-worker rights with each Gulf country with which they already have a migrant-worker MOU. And finally, given their significant migrant-worker populations in Saudi Arabia, both Pakistan and Bangladesh must also work toward signing MOUs with the Kingdom to solidify high-level commitments to ensuring the welfare of migrant workers.

To bolster their MOUs, South Asian countries should consolidate their diplomatic weight and strategic approaches by consulting with one another. For example, the Colombo Process and similar institutions gather countries—including India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh—to discuss common goals between sending countries, share effective strategies, and ultimately commit to protecting migrant workers abroad. Since joining the Colombo Process, South Asian member countries have revamped legislation surrounding migrant workers such as Bangladesh’s Overseas Employment Policy, Sri Lanka’s National Labour Migration Policy, and India’s Emigration (Amendment) Rules. Increased engagement with these interactive institutions can significantly help improve migration regulations and future diplomacy with Gulf countries.

Build infrastructure in destination countries

India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh should establish comprehensive bureaucratic-support systems in Gulf countries so that once migrant workers arrive to their destinations, they have reliable access to services such as employment-contracts verification and legal assistance, and even a safe haven in times of distress. The Philippine Overseas Labor Office offers such services to its migrant workers, whether documented or not, throughout the Gulf—and also provides cultural programming to foster a sense of community among workers and connect them to their host countries’ cultures.

In contrast, India’s embassies and consulates are the main source of support for migrant workers in the Gulf. But many Indian migrant workers are not aware of the services offered by their embassies, nor do they feel the current offerings adequately serve their needs in times of distress, especially when their sponsors take their identification papers. Countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh have overseas labor and employment divisions within their governments, but their physical offices are only located in sending countries and thus can only provide limited aid once workers are actually abroad.

India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh are all lacking a robust bureaucratic presence in the Gulf. With services (and awareness of them) lacking, South Asian countries must revamp their support systems and the methods through which services are promoted. Governments should also seek out partnerships with existing migrant-worker community spaces in the Gulf, such as places of worship. Building up on-the-ground aid, with physical spaces for support, can exponentially improve the lived experiences of migrant workers.

Improve laws and standards in sending countries

India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh must also build stronger systems at the point of departure, where South Asian migrant workers are often recruited through informal and under-regulated channels. Brokers, agencies, and other private intermediaries can charge both workers and employers sky-high prices for visas, flights, and post-arrival services. On top of this disjointed recruitment system, migrant workers are often not provided with adequate orientation about their rights and services available to them abroad before traveling to their destination countries. Despite these disadvantages, however, many migrant workers still prefer to work with private intermediaries due to perceptions that government-associated channels are inefficient.

Rather than restricting migrant workers to government-associated channels, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh should draw recruiting agencies into public-private partnerships. For example, in the Philippines, any hiring through a private-recruitment agency must be certified by the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration before the worker can depart the country. Using similar regulating recruitment tactics and practices while retaining the established recruitment networks can help South Asian countries eliminate redundancies in the system managing migration without sacrificing migrant workers’ safety and wellbeing.

Of course, it is not solely the responsibility of sending countries to guard against injustices occurring under the kafala system; Gulf countries must also work to remove the all-too-common practices allowed under this system that amount to modern-day slavery. But India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh shouldn’t wait. Beyond improving their own economies to make them equitable for those who have no option but to go abroad, South Asian countries should immediately improve policies specifically for migrant workers both at home and in destination Gulf countries. These steps cannot be taken in isolation, either: It is essential that these countries adopt all of these measures together to amplify their impact on the lives of South Asian migrant workers.

Elaine Zhang is a former young global professional with the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center.

The post How South Asian countries can protect their migrant workers abroad appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Shahid quoted in BehanBox: Navigating statelessness: How laws fail Bangladeshi trafficking survivors in India

Atlantic Council — Thu, 01 Sep 2022 16:29:00 +0000

Original sOURCE

The post Shahid quoted in BehanBox: Navigating statelessness: How laws fail Bangladeshi trafficking survivors in India appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Plitsas in the Daily Signal on the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan

Atlantic Council — Fri, 19 Aug 2022 12:52:19 +0000

On August 15, Alex Plitsas was quoted in the Daily Signal on the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan one year after the US withdrawal. He also commented on the merits of the “Afghan Adjustment Act,” a bill that was introduced to assist Afghans evacuated to the United States.

Last year, the United States brought about 74,000 Afghans over during the airlift, and they were brought here most often under humanitarian parole – a category that lets them stay for no more than a maximum of two years

Alex Plitsas

Fellow

Alex Plitsas

Afghanistan Crisis Management

Forward Defense, housed within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, generates ideas and connects stakeholders in the defense ecosystem to promote an enduring military advantage for the United States, its allies, and partners. Our work identifies the defense strategies, capabilities, and resources the United States needs to deter and, if necessary, prevail in future conflict.

The post Plitsas in the Daily Signal on the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Shuja Nawaz in Dawn: What went wrong in 1971?

Atlantic Council — Sun, 14 Aug 2022 17:30:00 +0000

The post Shuja Nawaz in Dawn: What went wrong in 1971? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Pakistan at 75: Learning from history to chart a better future

Uzair Younus and Ilhan Niaz — Fri, 12 Aug 2022 14:10:19 +0000

As it celebrates seventy-five years of independence, Pakistan today “requires a change in political thinking across the political class,” especially if the country is to chart a better future towards a hundred years of independence, says historian and author Dr. Ilhan Niaz. The alternative, he warns, may result in the “liquidation of the country” from which the elite political class draws their resources and identity.

Dr. Ilhan Niaz, chair of the history department at Quaid-i-Azam University and author of The State During the British Raj: Imperial Governance in South Asia 1700-1947 has extensive experience studying the long history of South Asia and the legacy of the British Raj on the Indian subcontinent.

In this interview with Uzair Younus, Director of the South Asia Center’s Pakistan Initiative, Niaz discusses the role of the political class and Pakistan’s long historical trajectory into what he denotes a “decaying orbit.” He showcases that the crisis in Pakistan is fundamentally a crisis of identity—in terms of modernity versus Islam and democracy versus authoritarianism.

Here are some key takeaways from the interview:

The struggle between modernity and religion

According to Niaz, the struggle for Pakistan and the creation of a separate Muslim homeland is rooted in a modernist discourse that argued Muslims failed to keep up with the knowledge, science, military arts, and the ideological and political developments that had swept through the western world.

However, after independence, he notes, the struggle for “Muslim modernism” as an approach to governance and organizing society withered away at an intellectual, administrative, social, and economic level.

As such, Niaz argues that the history of Pakistan since 1947 is “an amalgam of a kind of regression towards primordial identities” that attempts to pack together elements of modernity in a religious discourse. Ultimately, “this crisis of our world view,” he notes, is the source of many of Pakistan’s problems since 1947.

Pakistan’s great tragedy

Throughout Pakistan’s history there have been many key inflection points that shaped its trajectory. According to Niaz, this led Pakistan to a situation where even though Pakistani leaders have been well advised by their advisors or civil servants, the short-term goals of the political class—which consists of politicians, judges, military officers, and bureaucrats—have led to “unwise decisions” that continue to overshadow and overpower decisions that would have been better for the country in the long-term.

Ultimately, he argues, this is “Pakistan’s great tragedy.” The current trajectory was avoidable, especially considering that countries which started off in a worse position than Pakistan—and “inherited far worse from their colonial masters”—have done much better.

Military bureaucracy: A legacy of British colonial rule

The dominance of military elites in Pakistan did not start with colonial rule, but rather goes back to the Mughal empire and other smaller and less successful kingdoms. However, Pakistan did disproportionately inherit a large military class from the British.

This military class in Punjab and partly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Niaz adds, remains a “very strong source of support not only for military rule, but also for other types of authoritarian tendencies and experiments” that civilian leaders have opted for from time to time. In this regard, he argues that while the “authoritarian constituency” as a social group was something Pakistan inherited from the British, authoritarian tendencies in the region go back hundreds of years.

The situation today is as grim as it seems

While elite Pakistanis would like to believe that the country’s current situation is not as bad as it seems, that Pakistan has survived much worse, and that it will come out “alright” on the other side, Niaz showcases that this view is highly limited and flawed.

He argues that Pakistan survived Partition, the mass migration, and war with India over Kashmir because those crises were met with effective responses. The idea that Pakistan was “alright” after the 1971 crisis with East Pakistan is simply unimaginable. The impact of that loss left a chronic set of political, economic, and administrative problems that Pakistan continues to tackle to today.

Ultimately it is essential to realize that while there is no doubt Pakistan deserves credit for having staggered through seventy-five years, “Pakistan is running out of countries to fall behind,” says Niaz.

Jinnah’s vision for Pakistan’s governance structure

Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan’s founder and first governor-general, envisioned Pakistan as a parliamentary democracy with a relatively strong central government that would implement reforms necessary to modernize the country.

Pakistan, Niaz adds, has “paid an enormous price” for its continued attempts to tamper with the basic understanding of a parliamentary democracy. He argues that this debate surrounding Pakistan’s governance structure has produced a “very toxic political competition” where political elites spend the majority of their time with “unconstructive political conflicts” while the rest of the population, and their needs, remain neglected.

Silver linings and hope for the future

Looking back on the past seventy-five years, one source of pride and inspiration is Pakistan becoming a nuclear power. According to Niaz, the nuclear program gave Pakistan “a strategic weight” which continues to go well beyond what the country’s economic indicators otherwise merit.

Regarding hope for the future, he contends that it lies with the youth. Whether it is the athletes that succeed without any government support or students in universities, the youth of Pakistan is no longer waiting for the government’s support to make things better in the country. And, this desire of the people is perhaps why Pakistan continues to function and, to some extent, have any social and economic stability.

Watch the full interview below:

The South Asia Center serves as the Atlantic Council’s focal point for work on the region as well as relations between these countries, neighboring regions, Europe, and the United States.

#BritainDebrief – What future for Hong Kong? | A Debrief from Nathan Law

Ben Judah — Wed, 27 Jul 2022 20:42:58 +0000

What future for Hong Kong?

As the 25th anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong is marked by the ascension of John Lee to the position of Chief Executive, Senior Fellow Ben Judah interviewed Nathan Law, a Hong Kong democracy activist currently in exile in London. Was the current repression in Hong Kong inevitable under the Chinese Communist Party, or under Xi? How have Britain and the United States aid in the plight of Hong Kong against this repression? How has the UK’s visa offer to the majority of the population benefited Hong Kongers’ attempts to flee the territory?

You can watch #BritainDebrief on YouTube and as a podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

MEET THE #BRITAINDEBRIEF HOST

Fellow

Ben Judah

Economy & Business European Union

Europe Center

Providing expertise and building communities to promote transatlantic leadership and a strong Europe in turbulent times.

The Europe Center promotes the transatlantic leadership and strategies required to ensure a strong Europe.

Ukraine uses HIMARS effectively to hit Russian ammo dumps

The post #BritainDebrief – What future for Hong Kong? | A Debrief from Nathan Law appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Russian War Report: Ukraine uses HIMARS effectively to hit Russian ammo dumps

Digital Forensic Research Lab — Fri, 08 Jul 2022 18:13:01 +0000

Security

Tracking Narratives

Kremlin outlets amplify footage of Lysychansk residents greeting Russian troops

Pro-Kremlin Telegram channels amplify fake Bild video claiming self-propelled German howitzer captured

Kremlin media “predicts” disintegration of NATO and EU despite plans of expansion

Polish right-wing political party launches campaign targeting Roma people from Ukraine

Pro-Kremlin Telegram channel linked to inauthentic Facebook assets from Côte d’Ivoire

Ukraine uses HIMARS effectively to hit Russian ammo dumps

At the beginning of the month, the Biden administration announced it was sending a small batch of M142 HIMARS multiple rocket launchers. This decision was long awaited on the Ukrainian side, which lacked precision artillery systems that are able to hit Russian targets deep behind the frontlines. The first videos of HIMARS on the battle front appeared online as early as July 4.

Despite the limited numbers of HIMARS currently available to Ukraine, the impact on the field can already be felt. At the moment, Ukraine operates nine HIMARS; upon receiving the systems, Ukrainian military started systematically targeting Russian ammunition storage facilities behind the frontlines.

During the past week, a number of ammunition dumps were reported to be on fire all over the occupied Ukrainian territory. On July 4, Ukrainian diplomat Olexander Scherba claimed the system was already making an impact. Three days later, videos of a bombardment of the Donetsk Kamaz truck center started appearing online. Allegedly, this was the location where Russian troops were keeping their ammunition supplies in Donetsk.

(4)

Kamaz Center – #Donetsk #Ukraine #Камаз #донецк pic.twitter.com/9aRBoxr5qG
— Pierre Davide Borrelli (@PierreDBorrelli) July 7, 2022

The video of a Kamaz center in Donetsk on fire. (Source: @PierreDBorrelli/Archive)

DFRLab analysis of recent satellite imagery concludes that the Kamaz truck center was indeed damaged between July 2 and July 4. Due to a lack of visible damage among surrounding buildings, this was likely a precision weapon attack, such as newly acquired HIMARS.

Comparison of July 2 and July 4 satellite imagery on Planet.com. Satellite imagery reveal complete destruction of the Kamaz center in Donetsk, occupied Ukraine (marked in blue). (Source: Planet.com; coordinates on Google Maps)

Equipment that was believed to have been used in parades organized by the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic was also destroyed, according to the recently surfaced photos. Another hit on an alleged ammunition storage facility in Donetsk was reported on July 5 and July 7; at the time of publishing, satellite imagery to verify these claims is unavailable.

Additional reports of targeted Russian ammunition dumps include July 2 in Popasna, July 4 in Snizhne and Yakovlivka, July 5 in Kadiivka, July 6 in Makiivka, as well as other locations.

—Lukas Andriukaitis, DFRLab Associate Director, Brussels, Belgium

Kremlin outlets amplify footage of Lysychansk residents greeting Russian troops

Kremlin propaganda media outlets and social media accounts published numerous videos showing residents of Lysychansk greeting Russian armed forces upon upon entry into the city on July 3. The official Telegram and VK accounts of Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Chechen Republic, published videos with people hugging Kadyrov’s soldiers and thanking them for humanitarian aid and “liberating” them. Yuri Podolyaka, a pro-Kremlin Ukrainian blogger, amplified videos by both Kremlin-controlled media outlets like RIA Novosti, and independent western media outlets like France 24 showing some residents of Lysychansk happy with Russian troops entering the city and condemning Ukrainian troops. Other VK accounts that used pro-Kremlin letter Z as their avatar image or in their name also posted videos with elderly women from Lysychansk blessing Russian military and hugging them after coming up from a basement. Another popular video posted by the Operativnye Svodki Telegram channel showed a girl showing her pro-Kremlin drawings of Russia’s flag and the letters ZOV saying “she knew that [Russian troops] will come.”

While the footage is legitimate, the sentiment can be found among the small fraction of Lysychansk residents who chose to stay behind and not evacuate the city. There were 93,340 residents in Lysychansk as of January 1, 2022, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Economics. On June 29, Unian.net, a Ukrainian news agency, cited Sergey Gaidai, chairman of the Luhansk Regional Military Administration, saying that 15,000 still people remained in the city. On July 5, BBC Russian service reported that only 10,000 people remained in now-occupied Lysychansk; he same number of Lysychansk residents was mentioned by the Kremlin-controlled MK.ru on July 2.

—Nika Aleksejeva, Lead Researcher, Riga, Latvia

Pro-Kremlin Telegram channels amplify fake Bild video claiming self-propelled German howitzer captured

Multiple pro-Kremlin media claimed that Russians knocked out a Germany-provided PzH 2000 self-propelled howitzer and captured it for further study. All the articles referenced German media Bild as the source, but failed to provide a direct link to the material. The story was debunked by the Ukrainian fact-checking organization StopFake after it determined that Bild had not reported anything on the claim and had only published material on how Ukrainians started using those systems. StopFake also cited a German journalist who tried to find any confirmation but concluded it was Russian disinformation. To date, no evidence of a captured PzH 2000 has been provided by any verifiable source.

However, pro-Kremlin Telegram channel MediaKiller published a short clip with German subtitles claiming that a Bild video confirmed the system’s capture. While the footage mixes random clips of various military munitions with German subtitles on top of it, it does not provide any evidence of a PzH 2000 being captured. The DFRLab searched for videos published by Bild and could not find anything corresponding to Russia’s claims. Furthermore, the video amplified on Telegram does not follow Bild’s visual style and is far shorter than Bild’s usual social media videos. Finally, the text on the video contains mistakes, like the usage of the German definitive article ‘die’ twice in a row, which is a highly unlikely mistake for German news outlet.

The video was amplified by multiple pro–Kremlin channels, some of which claimed that it signals that the West is tired of “pointless” support of Ukraine. One of those channels is a personal channel of Alexey Pushkov, a former Russian senator of the Perm region.

The screengrab of the falsified Bild video featuring two definitive articles “die” in a row (Source: MediaKiller/archive)

It is not the first time MediaKiller has published faked video posing as reputable media. Previously, the channel promoted a fabricated BBC video that blamed Ukraine for shelling the Kramatorsk train station.

—Roman Osadchuk, Research Associate

Kremlin media “predicts” disintegration of NATO and EU despite plans of expansion

Kremlin-owned media outlets attempt to sow division among NATO and EU member countries by claiming that some members are willing to leave the alliances, and that the organizations are planning to remove them. These narratives come after both organizations have initiated plans to expand: NATO allies have signed accession protocols for Sweden and Finland, while the EU has granted candidate status to Ukraine and Moldova and recognized Georgia’s “European Perspective.”

The Kremlin media outlets reported that in Turkey, the Vatan political party has launched a campaign to leave NATO. The outlets cited the Turkish newspaper Aydınlık, a well-known pro-Russian platform in the country. Vatan is a fringe pro-Russian party that has been calling on the Turkish government to recognize Crimea as Russian territory.

According to Kremlin media, Vatan launched a large-scale campaign in major cities of Turkey on withdrawing the country from NATO. The articles claimed that an anti-NATO stance is important for the economic future of Turkey, and added that “citizens are actively signing the appeal.” In 2017, the DFRLab investigated how the Vatan party, bots, and Kremlin media were promoting #LetsLeaveNATO hashtag on Twitter that was trending on Turkish Twitter at the time. While Lenta.ru published the same article on the possibility of Turkish exit, the outlet also published a separate article claiming that NATO itself wants to force Turkey out the alliance. According to the second piece, NATO would want to remove the country because of Ankara’s “overly independent and categorical policy” and because “Turkey can destroy NATO from within.”

Russian websites predicted the disintegration of European Union along with NATO. Additional Kremlin-owned outlets also claimed that France might leave the European Union soon. According to the outlets, President Emmanuel Marcon’s “failure in parliamentary elections” increases the chances of holding the referendum in France on leaving the EU.

—Eto Buziashvili, Research Associate, Washington DC

Polish right-wing political party launches campaign targeting Roma people from Ukraine

On June 24, Przemyśl city councilmember Marcin Kowalski posted on his Facebook page that “hordes of Ukrainian Roma” had started to arrive in the city, allegedly brought to Poland on purpose in order to obtain a Polish identification number and receive financial aid from Poland as Ukrainian refugees. His post asserted that most of the Roma coming to Poland were women with small children; after filling out formal documents in Poland, he said, they planned to return to Ukraine and wait there to receive Polish state aid in their Polish bank accounts. In his post, Kowalski asked the Polish government whether they considered the potential for fraud while adopting a law for providing assistance to Ukrainian refugees in March, 2022. He alleged that he had been helping Ukrainian people ever since the war erupted, but he cannot indifferently watch how people used loopholes in this law.

Kowalski’s post was featured in articles published by far-right and regional local online media outlets, including Kresy.pl, wkraju24.pl, Dzieje się na Podkarpaciu, Ziemia-Przemyska and Lega Artis law firm. Posts about “hordes of Roma people from Ukraine” was shared in thirty Facebook groups and pages on June 24 and 25, garnering more than 900 interactions.

On June 27, the far-right National Movement party which currently has five members in Poland’s parliament, launched a campaign on Facebook claiming that Roma people were extorting social benefits intended for Ukrainian refugees. According to the campaign, “The government’s refugee aid policy turned into an immigration policy,” and its incompetence has allowed unentitled people to receive aid. The Facebook posts also contained banners with text repeating messages from Marcin Kowalski’s original Facebook post and asserted that Poland’s current immigration policy must be stopped. The DFRLab found that banner was posted on forty Facebook pages and public groups, garnering 880 interactions between June 27 and July 7.

A collection of Facebook posts published by National Movement’s assets on Facebook as part of its anti-Roma campaign. (Source: CrowdTangle)

On June 30, Marcin Kowalski posted on Facebook that his previous post about Roma people reached almost 100,000 users, and that he had received messages and calls from many sources, including reporters from TVN TV. But he wrote with disappointment that Polish lawmakers did not pay enough attention to this story and only Paweł Szramka, member of Polish parliament from the Polish People’s Party, had taken it into consideration. Kowalski published a screenshot of a request sent by Paweł Szramka to the Polish Ministry of Family and Social Policy. The request quoted Kowalski’s Facebook post and asked whether the ministry intended to tighten existing legislation in order to curb misuse of state refugee benefits.

Despite his claims, Kowalski’s post does not provide any evidence that Roma people are returning to Ukraine after registering for Polish government aid. A spokesperson for Poland’s social insurance agency ZUS stated that ZUS verifies the legal stay of Ukrainian citizens in Poland, both at the stage of granting benefits and during the period when they receive social aid. Moreover, ZUS has access to various state registers, including a special register of Ukrainian citizens made by the Border Guard, to verify the status of refugees. If people from Ukraine with refugee status leave Poland for longer than one month, they lose benefits offered by Polish state. Thus it is unlikely that anyone, Roma or otherwise, would continue to receive aid from Poland if they returned to Ukraine. The Central Council of Roma People in Poland wrote on Facebook that Kowalski’s post nurtures stereotypes against Roma and the organization would take legal steps in response to his post.

—Givi Gigitashvili, DFRLab Research Associate, Warsaw, Poland.

Pro-Kremlin Telegram channel linked to inauthentic Facebook assets from Côte d’Ivoire

A new investigation by the DFRLab has determined that a Facebook user in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire created a network of sockpuppets and duplicate profiles used to operate Facebook pages and at least one private group with over 62,000 followers to spread anti-Ukraine content and promote pro-Kremlin narratives in French.

One inauthentic profile was called “Igor Kadyrov” and used a picture of Chechen General Magomed Tushayev as its profile picture. Another shared content from Sputnik and encourage followers to subscribe to RT France.

Notably the Facebook assets were also used to promote a Telegram channel entitled “Marigo News – Opération ZOV.” The channel, which has gained over 11,600 followers in less than three months, appeared to be copying content directly from another channel called “Операция Z: Военкоры Русской Весны” (“Operation Z: War Reporters of the Russian Spring”) and auto-translating it from Russian into French. Although it is not the official channel of the pro-Kremlin propaganda website RusVesna, “Operation Z” contains links to RusVesna in the channel description, and the official RusVesna Telegram channel frequently shares content from it.

The French version of RusVesna content was spread across Facebook and to Twitter accounts that have subsequently been suspended.

—Tessa Knight, Research Associate, Cape Town, South Africa

The post Russian War Report: Ukraine uses HIMARS effectively to hit Russian ammo dumps appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Katz quoted in GZero on whether NATO should address migration from the Moroccan border

Atlantic Council — Tue, 28 Jun 2022 22:02:00 +0000

ORIGINAL source

The post Katz quoted in GZero on whether NATO should address migration from the Moroccan border appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Croatia’s remarkable national journey is a source of hope for Ukraine

Vladyslav Rashkovan — Sun, 19 Jun 2022 18:16:42 +0000

I recently had a fascinating chat with my colleague, Darjan Milutinovic. We discussed a country fighting for its freedom at a time when its independence was denied by a far more powerful neighbor. This adversary launched a full-scale invasion with a much larger army and occupied a quarter of the country while destroying entire cities and committing war crimes. People experienced mass murder, torture and rape, with citizens herded into camps. The country’s economy collapsed but the people fought on, buoyed by a strong vision of a brighter future.

This sounds exactly like Ukraine’s current experience, but it is actually the story of Croatia in the early 1990s.

In 1991, Europe’s biggest conflict since WWII erupted in the Balkans when the Yugoslavian military invaded Croatia after it declared independence. Serbia opposed the secession and sought to claim Croatian lands populated by ethnic Serbs. After an initial attempt to occupy Croatia failed, a self-proclaimed Serbia-backed entity was established within Croatia occupying 26% of the country.

In 1995, Croatia launched two major offensives and regained control over the occupied regions of the country. Despite this success, the cost of the conflict was huge. From a pre-war population of four million, around 15,000 civilians and soldiers were killed or missing. More than half a million people were displaced. Economic losses were equally severe, with GDP falling by half during the first year of the conflict alone. Meanwhile, infrastructure damaged was estimated at approximately EUR 250 billion, or five times Croatia’s annual GDP.

In every single category, these figures are strikingly similar to the costs inflicted on Ukraine during the first four months of today’s ongoing Russian invasion.

Subscribe to UkraineAlert

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

Name
First Last
Email*
Phone
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Since the end of the Balkan Wars, Croatia has made huge progress. It has undergone a transformation from war-torn country to a high-income EU member state and, after Slovenia, is now the most developed country in the region.

The celebration of Croatia’s Statehood Day this year coincided with a historic milestone for Croatia; the European Commission (EC) and the ECB published a Convergence Report which concluded that Croatia is the only non-euro EU country ready to implement the EURO from 2023. The EC also concluded that Croatia no longer suffers from macroeconomic imbalances and can be excluded from the Macro Imbalances Procedure (MIP). Croatia is now expected to join the Schengen zone and become an OECD member in the near future.

Reaching this point was not easy. For a quarter of a century, Croatian governments have had to tackle challenges including rebuilding the country, establishing a sensible monetary regime, and handling successive economic crises. Through it all, Croatia’s strong commitment to EU integration has served as a guiding light that has helped steer the country toward more prosperous times.

The parallels between Croatia’s earlier predicament and Ukraine’s current plight are immediately apparent. Both countries were forced to fight for their freedom, identity and independence against a more powerful neighbor. Thankfully, today’s Ukraine also shares the same sense of national unity and solidarity that proved so crucial in Croatia’s earlier success.

Eurasia Center events

After Vilnius: What’s next on Ukraine’s path to NATO?

Eastern Europe NATO Security & Defense Ukraine

Croatians have enormous empathy for Ukraine’s suffering because it is so painfully familiar. Indeed, this emotional bond has been evident ever since Russian aggression against Ukraine first began with the seizure of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2014. Following the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Croatia has provided humanitarian and military aid, with individual Croatians volunteering to help defend Ukraine.

While Ukrainians are very grateful for all this material and moral support, we believe Croatia offers something even more precious: hope. Croatia’s national journey is a source of inspiration for all Ukrainians. It tells us that victory over a far stronger adversary is possible. It gives us reason to believe that occupied lands can be liberated and reintegrated. And it allows us to look with growing confidence toward a future within the European family of nations.

Ukrainians expect to receive EU candidate nation status in the coming days, but nobody in Ukraine is under any illusions over the difficulties that lie ahead. The war with Russia is far from over. Ukraine is fighting not only for its independence but for its very existence. Once this existential threat is overcome, Ukraine must then meet the demanding criteria for EU membership. This historic process may take time, but the journey made by Croatia gives us hope and inspiration.

Vladyslav Rashkovan is Alternate Executive Director at the International Monetary Fund.

The vice-president noted that the European Union (EU) is changing its regulatory framework while at the same time building capacity. Specifically, he mentioned that the Commission has proposed two complementary directives: the Network Information Systems Directive and the Critical Infrastructure Directive. In addition to regulatory changes, the Commission has EU teams with experts to protect the institutions themselves and to work with member states on cybersecurity.
The vice-president outlines two concerns that the EU is facing: lack of trust in the institutions by member states as well as a lack of a talent pool with sufficient domain expertise.
Lastly, the vice-president applauded the efforts of Ukraine not only for its military operations but also its cybersecurity efforts, with successes achieved with the help of the EU and the United States.

New challenges for migration and asylum

“The French presidency is working very actively now on a draft agreement on the bulk of the pact asylum proposals. And I’m very confident that they will make it. But I also understand that the situation we’re having now, and with the Ukrainian [refugees] in the European Union, is also a de facto accelerator.
Margaritis Schinas

With almost six million Ukrainian refugees having escaped to other European countries, the vice-president elaborated on the blanket protections that offer access to the job market, education and health systems, and residence permits across the EU. He mentioned that the EU is currently working to create a system of validating the qualifications of Ukrainian refugees in Europe.
When asked about the different approach to the refugee crisis now and in 2013, the vice-president noted that geography and timing account for it, and reiterated that the principles of asylum in the EU remain the same.
Lastly, he mentioned that the Commission is working on a proposal for legal migration, with member states being ready to move forward with the idea once there is an agreement on the EU Migration Pact.

Where US-EU cooperation is headed

“Of course, the issues of international crime, migration, [and] cyber are at the heart of our cooperation, but we proposed, two weeks ago, a new initiative to fight child sexual abuse online, which is necessary, on which we would need the cooperation of the US government, but also the platforms—the companies.”
Margaritis Schinas

While in Washington, the vice-president is meeting with US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas to discuss transatlantic cooperation on various issues with a special focus on this new initiative to fight child sexual abuse. The EU will need the support of the digital platforms for this effort, and the technology companies seem open to the idea.
This issue is especially important to the EU since 70 percent of such content is hosted on EU servers. The challenge, however, is difficult to address since this is first time the Commission is venturing into issues of privacy and encryption following passage of EU privacy laws. He underlined that a transatlantic approach to this issue is crucial.

Watch the full event

Europe Center

Providing expertise and building communities to promote transatlantic leadership and a strong Europe in turbulent times.

The Europe Center promotes the transatlantic leadership and strategies required to ensure a strong Europe.

The post European VP Schinas: ‘We have never been closer with our American friends and partners as we are now’ appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center partners with State Department for US-Mexico border study

Angela Chavez — Fri, 03 Jun 2022 12:00:00 +0000

New research will examine the impact of enhanced technology on the US-Mexico border in line with US goals to create more secure and efficient borders

Washington DC – June 3, 2022 – The Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center today announced a new partnership with the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL), the Hunt Institute for Global Competitiveness at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), and Colegio de la Frontera Norte (COLEF) in Tijuana to enhance security and economic growth in the United States and Mexico. This year-long partnership will include an economic impact study of improved US-Mexico border management practices and tools, among other impact analyses about the security and environmental impacts of these technologies.

“As companies look at nearshoring and as global supply chains are being reconfigured to adjust to new commercial and geopolitical realities, the US-Mexico border is quickly becoming all the more critical for the economic competitiveness of both countries. With new technologies deployed, a more efficient, transformed border has the power to expedite legitimate trade and travel and reduce commercial bottlenecks while simultaneously improving border security. This new partnership will provide timely insights on steps that can be taken to improve the lives of millions along the border and beyond,” said Jason Marczak, Senior Director at the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center.

Mexico’s role as the United States’ largest trading partner, with over $661 billion in total trade between the countries in 2021, makes safe and efficient borders a shared priority for both nations. President Joseph R. Biden reinforced the importance of secure borders with increased detection and screening capabilities during his first State of the Union address. The high volume of movement of goods and people at the border, combined with current inefficiencies in border management practices, often leads to extensive wait times and the over-use of scarce management resources. The introduction of new technology-focused border management practices could positively impact the lives of millions of people in the United States and Mexico by creating safer and more efficient borders. This project will detail the economic, security, and environmental benefits that would stem from investing in a 21st century US-Mexico border.

“We are two nations with a shared future. If we want that future to be brighter, we need to modernize our border infrastructure, strengthen our cooperation on border security, and ensure the more efficient flow of goods, services, and lawful travelers,” said Ambassador Ken Salazar, United States Ambassador to Mexico.

In addition to the economic impact study, the Atlantic Council, the Hunt Institute, and COLEF will produce three short publications specifically focused on foresight, security, and the environment. The consortium will also host a series of consensus-building activities such as roundtables, consultations, and focus groups with stakeholders from the public, private, and civil society sectors in the United States and Mexico.

“As a research organization within UTEP, the Hunt Institute is intimately aware of both the economic possibilities of binational cooperation and the potential impediments to that cooperation posed by border security. Border management has direct economic impacts on national economies, not just within border communities. The Hunt Institute is excited to collaborate with the Atlantic Council and COLEF to generate widespread support for the economic benefits of enhanced screening procedures at the US-Mexico border,” said Mayra Maldonado, Executive Director of the Hunt Institute for Global Competitiveness at the University of Texas at El Paso.

The project will deliver new insights into the economic, security, and environmental impacts of enhancing detection and screening capabilities at the US-Mexico border to inform policy decisions that will determine the shared future of our countries for years to come.

“The commercial partnership between Mexico and the United States takes place within a very competitive economic regional framework. As we look to the future, the economic performance of both countries will be strengthened as more sectors participate in cross-border trade and as the benefits of US-Mexico commerce reach further into all parts of Mexico, in addition to northern border areas,” said Dr. Edgar David Gaytán Alfaro, Coordinator of the Master’s Program in Applied Economics and researcher in the Economic Studies Department at Colegio de la Frontera Norte.

Please email inquiries to achavez@atlanticcouncil.org

The post Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center partners with State Department for US-Mexico border study appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Support a holistic migration strategy

Andrew Selee and Diego Chavez-González — Tue, 31 May 2022 22:40:47 +0000

download pdf

Allies

Colombia hosts one of the largest displaced populations in the world, roughly 1.8 million Venezuelans, who have fled their country due to political conflict, economic turmoil, and the partial breakdown of the healthcare system.¹ Most of these displaced migrants arrived after 2017, when the underlying push factors accelerated. Another half-mil- lion Colombians living in Venezuela have returned simultaneously. More than two million Venezuelans have crossed through Colombia in transit to other countries, with Haitian, African, and Asian migrants increasingly moving through Colombia toward the United States. Their arrival has turned Colombia, once a country with few immigrants but many nationals living abroad, into an immigrant society.

Two elements have been particularly innovative in Colombia’s response to Venezuelan displacement. First, the country offered temporary, long- term legal status to Venezuelans arriving in the country before January 31, 2021. This decision was a first-of-its-kind move in Latin America and pro- vides a long-term path to permanent residence for a population increasingly likely to stay. In contrast to many countries receiving large-scale dis- placed peoples, Colombia has chosen to integrate Venezuelan migrants into the local labor market, education system, and national life instead of relying on the international community to shelter, feed, and care for those arriving.

Second, this approach has been an all-of-government effort directed by the presidency rather than a single agency or set of agencies. In many other cases, governments have implemented short-term legalization programs, but often with contradictory signals from different parts of government on whether the migrants are welcome.² The Colombian government has made it clear that it is the official government policy to receive, recognize, and integrate all Venezuelans who arrive. Most local governments have also engaged in this effort, and all political parties have sought to avoid politicizing the question of Venezuelan immigration, even if some individual politicians haven’t always toed the line.

The Colombian response represents an act of solidarity with people from a neighboring country, and a strong element of pragmatism, given Colombia’s real limitations to restrict irregular entries from Venezuela and the need to know who is entering and staying in Colombia. There is a realization that the arrival of so many Venezuelans will eventually produce economic benefits. At the same time, actual adjustment costs need to be paid upfront, including emergency services, implementing regularization campaigns, and, most importantly, expanding education, healthcare, and other services to deal with a rapidly growing population. The international community has helped defray some of these costs, but others are being borne by Colombian taxpayers in the short term.

Colombia’s emergency response evolves

Initially, no one could have imagined the number of Venezuelans who would eventually cross Colombia’s border. At first, in 2017, the Colombian government issued a temporary two-year stay permit, the Permiso Especial de Permanencia (Special Stay Permit or PEP), to Venezuelans who entered the country legally through official ports of entry. Other regularization programs followed for those who had entered without registering, and by November 2020, Colombia had regularized the status of 707,000 of the 1.72 million Venezuelans in the country.³ However, the measures never fully kept up with the demand, and the requirement to renew the PEP every two years created bureaucratic backlogs.

Finally, the government decided in February 2021 to conduct an even more ambitious effort by offering a ten-year stay permit to all Venezuelans who were already in the country, regardless of their legal status. The new permit, the Permiso de Protección Temporal (Temporary Protection Permit or PPT), sought to cover all Venezuelans who had entered the country by January 31, 2021, and would be available during the next year for those who entered Colombia legally from Venezuela. The PPT permit allows access to services and employment and creates a pathway for recipients to transition to permanent residence with time already spent in the country counting toward the five-year residency requirement.⁴

The Colombian government also offered a TarjetadeMovilidadFronteriza (Border Mobility Card or TMF) to Venezuelans living in the border region, allowing them to cross the border freely. This mechanism was introduced to dissuade migrants from moving to the country’s center by providing a border permit to allow access to emergency health services, education, and work.⁵

Also, all children born in Colombia of Venezuelan parents are citizens, even though Colombia’s constitution usually does not allow this unless the parents are legally domiciled in the country. The Colombian government got around this limitation by enacting a presidential decree, Primero la Niñez(Children First), noting its obligations under the International Convention on Statelessness of 1961.⁶

Since 2019, it has been made clear that all Venezuelans are eligible to enroll in primary, secondary, and tertiary education.⁷ Emergency medical assistance is also open to all, regardless of immigration status. However, Colombia’s healthcare system is not universal, making the incorporation of recent migrants into the healthcare system more complex; many are not yet affiliated.⁸

Despite these efforts to incorporate Venezuelan migrants through legal documentation and access to education and basic healthcare, according to a 2021 study, 97 percent of Venezuelan nationals in Colombia worked in the informal economy, compared to only 48 percent of Colombian citizens.⁹ A key obstacle to accessing the formal labor market has been credential recognition. Many Venezuelans arrive in Colombia with strong qualifications and professional experience but find it difficult to get their educational and professional credentials recognized, limiting their job opportunities while depriving Colombia of essential skills. Streamlining the credential recognition process would help Venezuelan migrants and the Colombian economy, which needs doctors, dentists, engineers, and teachers.

Colombia’s migration decision on the global stage

The other essential ingredient needed to continue deepening the integration process for Venezuelan migrants is public buy-in. Colombian political and social leaders have consistently tried to include average citizens in their efforts to welcome Venezuelans, but this is challenging in a society already divided along ideological, regional, and ethnic lines. September 2020 polling shows that more than one-third of Colombians believe facilitating migrant integration benefits Colombia more broadly, but most Colombians are less certain.¹⁰

Changing this perception is critical for getting the necessary public sup- port to integrate migrants and ensure that current efforts survive changes in government at a national and local level. Doing so will be even more challenging during pandemic recovery since people often feel they are competing over scarce resources and jobs and have had fewer opportunities to forge social connections during intermittent lockdowns. To achieve ambitious policy reform, the public must believe its best interests are being served and that there is a sense of common purpose between migrants and host communities.

This necessitates investing in basic public services, ensuring that schools, hospitals, and housing stock expand in cities hosting large numbers of Venezuelan migrants so migrants and native-born Colombians benefit equally. Some pushback against new arrivals has nothing to do with the migration itself but with the precarious nature of public services that were already overtaxed before Venezuelans arrived en masse.¹¹

But ensuring a mutual sense of purpose between Colombians and Venezuelans also requires building new narratives about Colombian society that emphasize why and how Colombia has responded by receiving and integrating Venezuelans and how they share a common future.¹² The current administration—and many local political and social leaders—have been adamant about finding a future together, but there are also increasing voices of hostility toward the Venezuelans living in Colombia, especially on social media and in local politics.

The international community can play a vital role in supporting Colombia’s efforts to integrate Venezuelan migrants in tangible and intangible ways. Among the most crucial international endeavors have been concessional loans from the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank, which have supported infrastructure development, healthcare access, and housing in parts of the country with significant immigration. However, moving from concessional loans to preferential interest rates and other mea- sures to support Colombia as a recipient of the hemisphere’s largest refugee and migration crisis would be a smart next step.

The Regional Platform for Venezuelan Refugees and Migrants, led by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration, which supports a regional response to the displacement crisis, has been a vital source of support for a range of initiatives from improving education access to combating xenophobia. And behind all these initiatives, the US government has been a particularly important partner, channeling funding and political support into these undertakings.

The US and Colombian governments have also worked closely on a broader regional strategy to promote safe, orderly, and regular migration across the hemisphere. The October 2021 ministerial summit hosted by Colombian Foreign Minister Marta Lucía Ramírez and US Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken in Bogotá was a critical step toward building a broader shared understanding of migration across the hemisphere, as was the April 2022 ministerial in Panama that followed. The main points of those two meetings—how to integrate migrant populations and create legal pathways that generate order in future migration movements—speak directly to Colombia’s current challenges.

The key question is how to ensure that Colombia’s commitment to integrating a large displaced population leads to positive gains for the country overall, not only in its international reputation and bilateral relationships but also in the everyday lives of Colombians. It is critical for the policy of the last two administrations to remain state policy as administrations change. This will require the ongoing commitment of the Colombian government and strong and consistent support from the international community. As a result, Colombia’s solidarity with displaced Venezuelans will also depend, at least in part, on the solidarity of other countries around the world. Here, no country could play a bigger role than the United States. Using its lever- age within financial institutions and its resources, it could help Colombia expand its education system, healthcare access, and infrastructure to incorporate the arrival of Venezuelan migrants and make sure that host communities benefit in the process.

In-Depth Research & Reports May 31, 2022

Prioritize internally displaced people

By Elizabeth Ferris

The history of internal displacement in Colombia, government responses, and the impact of the 2011 Victims Law and 2016 peace agreement provide the foundation for understanding recent challenges—and possible solutions— to continued and new displacements.

Colombia Latin America

In-Depth Research & Reports May 31, 2022

Build on shared global priorities

By Carolina Barco

As we celebrate the bicentennial of the US-Colombia relationship, we should focus on what lies ahead. Now is the time to develop new approaches and responses that will lead to more just, prosperous, and inclusive societies that can rebuild trust and confidence in our governments, democracies, and the ideals of freedom and the rule of law.

Colombia Latin America

In-Depth Research & Reports May 31, 2022

Construct the road ahead together

By Senator Ben Cardin

The US alliance with Colombia is rooted in our shared values of democracy, transparency, and accountability. We can celebrate this year’s bicentennial by reinvigorating bilateral, bipartisan, and bicameral support for the US-Colombia partnership to ensure our region’s stability and continued prosperity.

Colombia Latin America

May 26, 2022

Allies: Twenty-seven bold ideas to reimagine the US-Colombia relationship

As the United States and Colombia celebrate 200 years of diplomatic relations, it is time to think boldly and creatively about the future of this strategic partnership.

1 Only Turkey (and perhaps soon Poland) hosts a larger displaced population. Regarding Venezuelan displacement, see Andrew Selee and Jessica Bolter, “Colombia’s Open Door Policy: An Innovative Approach to Displacement,” International Migration, No. 60 (2022): 113-131, https://onlinelibrary. wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/imig.12839. Updated figures on the number of Venezuelans in Colombia (and other countries), compiled by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration, can be found at www.r4v.info.

2 Andrew Selee and Jessica Bolter, An Uneven Welcome: Latin American and Caribbean Responses to Venezuelan and Nicaraguan Migration (Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute, February 2020). There have been similar whole-of-government approaches from Argentina and Uruguay and, to a lesser extent, Brazil, but the numbers of arrivals compared to the overall population are a fraction of Colombia’s. The signals have been mixed across different government agencies in other countries receiving large numbers of displaced Venezuelan migrants, including Chile, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, and Trinidad and Tobago.

3 Selee and Bolter, “Colombia’s Open Door Policy,” 119-120.

4 Natalia Banulescu-Bogdan and Diego Chaves-González, “What Comes Next Now that Colombia Has Taken a Historic Step on Migration,” Migration Policy Institute, February 2021, https://www.migrationpolicy.org/news/colombia-historic-legalization-what-next.

5 Although the government discontinued using this permit in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this measure issued 5.2 million TMFs to Venezuelan nationals. Still, it is hard to determine how many of these holders remain in Venezuela, how many regularized their status under the PEP or PPT schemes, or how many transited to other countries. Selee and Bolter, “Colombia’s Open Door Policy.”

6 This decree allowed the National Registry of Civil Status to grant Colombian nationality to all children who had a Venezuelan parent and were born in Colombia as of August 19, 2015. This measure later evolved into a law expanding its validity for two more years.

7 Government of Colombia, “Welcome, Integrate and Grow, Colombia,” 2020: 92. Before 2019, one of the main challenges of integrating students into the education system was the documentation barrier. Migrants without legal status could not access or move through the different levels of education. The government established detailed instructions for Colombian educational establishments to overcome this obstacle. For Venezuelan students without a valid passport or foreign identity card—a requirement needed for taking the state exams or validating their high school diploma—the government passed a resolution that allowed them to do so.

8 There are two different healthcare regimes: subsidized and contributory, which have consistently remained restricted for migrants. Data from Colombia on access to public health insurance is limited, but official numbers from 2021 found that 60 percent of Venezuelan migrants did not have health insurance, and three out of four with health insurance were taking part in the subsidized regime since many migrants are not part of the formal economy, which would allow them to access the more robust contributory healthcare regime.

9 Diego Chaves-González, Jordi Amaral, and María Jesús Mora, Socio economic Integration of Venezuelan Migrants and Refugees: The Cases of Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador,and Peru (Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute, July 2021), https://www.migrationpolicy.org/research/socioeconomic-integration-venezuelan-migrants-refugees.

10 Proyecto Migración Venezuela, “Diferencias regionales en la percepción de los Colombianos hacia los migrantes,” Fall 2021: 5, https://s3.amazonaws.com/semanaruralvzla/documentos/1609184052_boletin_16_de_percepcion_regionalpdf.

11 Selee and Bolter, An Uneven Welcome.

12 Natalia Banulescu-Bogdan, Haim Malka, and Shelly Culbertson, How We Talk about Migration: The Link between Migration Narratives, Policy, and Power (Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute, Rand Corporation, National Immigration Forum, and Metropolitan Group, 2021).

The post Support a holistic migration strategy appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Putin’s Mariupol Massacre is one of the 21st century’s worst war crimes

Paul Niland — Wed, 25 May 2022 01:10:47 +0000

The Battle of Mariupol is over and Russia is busy proclaiming the liberation of the city. In reality, Mariupol has been murdered. This formerly bustling metropolis of almost half a million people now lies on the brink of extinction, pummeled into submission by a vicious campaign of Russian annihilation. The estimated 100,000 remaining residents of Mariupol find themselves reduced to living among the rubble without medicines, running water or electricity.

With Russia in control of the city, there is no way of knowing the final death toll or assessing the true scale of the catastrophe that has befallen Mariupol. During the final weeks of the fighting, Mariupol Mayor Vadim Boychenko estimated more than 20,000 civilians had been killed and noted that this was twice the number of deaths recorded in the entire two-year Nazi occupation of the city during WWII. “Putin is a bigger evil than Hitler and we must stop him,” commented Boychenko.

Global audiences have grown used to the apocalyptic scenes in Mariupol and are no longer shocked by the destruction of an entire city. In order to grasp the full extent of Putin’s crime, it is vital to remember Mariupol as it was before the outbreak of war.

Mariupol was always a special city with a diverse population included a large ethnic Greek community. Located on the Azov Sea in southern Ukraine, it was warm and sunny for most of the year. Though the air was thick from the heavy industry located in the heart of Mariupol, local residents tended to be proud of their city and fiercely loyal.

War first came to Mariupol in spring 2014 when Moscow attempted to seize control of the surrounding Donbas region during the initial stages of the ongoing eight-year conflict between Russia and Ukraine. The city was taken over by Russian forces but this occupation proved mercifully brief.

Following liberation, Mariupol gained in significance as the largest city in the Donbas still under Ukrainian control. Located just a few kilometers from the front lines of the simmering conflict with Russia, it became an administrative and economic focus as well as a showcase for the higher living standards and greater personal freedoms offered by Ukraine.

While regions of eastern Ukraine under Russian occupation withered and stagnated, Mariupol flourished. This city was a mirror providing a stark contrast to the atrophy of the Russian-controlled parts of the Donbas. After 2014, Mariupol welcomed a shiny new office of government interaction where people could go to marry and register births without the suffocating and corrupt old-style bureaucracy that Ukraine used to be famed for. Hipster cafes and bars popped up across town, along with sleek co-working spaces and IT hubs. A new highway linked the city to neighboring regions in southern Ukraine.

Mariupol was also a beneficiary of Ukraine’s successful decentralization reforms. The move towards giving local communities more say over how they live their lives and spend their budgets created genuine political competition between people who wanted to serve their communities and not just plunder them. This was strikingly different to the authoritarian model of paternalism promoted in Russia and Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine.

Subscribe to UkraineAlert

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

Name
First Last
Email*
Email
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Though almost every single building in Mariupol has now been razed to the ground, it is the people who really matter. The personal stories of Mariupol residents deserve to be heard.

By chance, I recently met some refugees who had made it out of the city. Together with a friend, we helped a family of three during the very last stage of their 1200km journey to temporary shelter in western Ukraine. The mother explained how she had escaped Mariupol with her 12-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son. They had made their way across Ukraine together, carrying their few most precious possessions with them including religious icons and a favorite teddy bear.

These survivors used the single word “hell” when attempting to describe what they had lived through in Mariupol. Once they had arrived at their accommodation and completed the check-in process, the mother came to the realization that she had finally brought her children to safety. Overcome with emotion, she let a few tears go before composing herself again. Similar scenes have been repeated countless times over the past few months. This is happening in Europe in 2022.

Those who made it out of Mariupol safely have wept tears of relief for their survival and tears of grief for those they left behind. They are also mourning the death of their hometown. The Mariupol you now see on your TV screens is a crime scene where tens of thousands of civilian lives have been extinguished.

This is not the Mariupol that survivors remember. Their memories are of a beautiful and vibrant place with a strong sense of community where families worked hard to build their dreams. As the location of one of the largest steelworks in Europe, the city was home to some very hard people who routinely did dangerous work and deserved to be respected. This traditional toughness was one of the reasons why Mariupol was defended so valiantly, despite the Russian terror unleashed upon it.

Eurasia Center events

Polish far-right influencers and Russian media capitalize on Warsaw murder to spread anti-refugee narratives

After Vilnius: What’s next on Ukraine’s path to NATO?

Eastern Europe NATO Security & Defense Ukraine

The Kremlin propaganda machine is now attempting to portray the destruction of Mariupol as a Russian victory. Instead, the long defense of Mariupol against overwhelming odds should be remembered as a powerful example of the Ukrainian heroism that has captured the world’s imagination.

The Ukrainian troops who held the vast Azovstal industrial complex for months did so knowing that they faced almost certain death or captivity. They fought on anyway, safe in the knowledge that their stand was pinning down whole units of the Russian army which would otherwise be unleashed elsewhere in Ukraine.

Mariupol must also be remembered as one of the worst crimes against humanity of the twenty-first century. The atrocities committed by Russian troops throughout Ukraine have horrified global audiences and have sparked an international war crimes investigation along with accusations of genocide. Even in this grim context, Mariupol stands out. Putin ordered the destruction of the city despite knowing hundreds of thousands of civilians were unable to flee.

The calculated nature of the onslaught was most immediately apparent in the targeted bombing of Mariupol Drama Theater, which was being used as a makeshift shelter by over 1,000 civilians. Despite large lettering placed on the ground outside the theater spelling out the word “CHILDREN,” Russia hit the building with a devastating and deliberate blast. Current estimates indicate that around 600 civilians were killed in that one attack alone.

Mariupol was destroyed in order to send a chilling message to all Ukrainians of the fate awaiting anyone who refuses Putin’s invitation to join the so-called “Russian World.” The fact that Mariupol was an overwhelmingly Russian-speaking city that had traditionally backed pro-Kremlin political forces only appears to have hardened Putin’s resolve to punish the city for its defiance.

After Mariupol, there can be no more illusions regarding the possibility of a compromise peace with Putin. A city that was once marked by the smells of heavy industry and seaside breezes is now enveloped in the stench of decomposing bodies trapped beneath the rubble. Unless Putin is decisively defeated, more towns and cities across Ukraine will suffer the same fate. The next city in line for such devastation is Severodonetsk in Luhansk Oblast. Others will surely follow. After Mariupol, no European leader can claim they were not forewarned.

Paul Niland is the Founder of Lifeline Ukraine.

Tracking narratives

Media

Russia plans to launch pre-installed app store on smartphones

International reactions

Russian-occupied South Ossetia sets date for referendum on Russian unification

Telegram channels and youth groups rally against Riga following Victory Day controversy

Russian forces use incendiary munitions in Mariupol

New photo and video evidence suggests that the Russian military continues to use incendiary and cluster munitions against Ukrainian forces. A video released on May 15 shows the Azovstal plant in Mariupol being shelled by what appears to be incendiaries.

Azovstal plant being shelled by what appear to be incendiary munitions. (Source: @faceofwar/archive)

The DFRLab analyzed the footage and found the strike targeted the western section of the plant.

Geolocation of the shelling of the Azovstal plant. The green color marks the industrial chimneys, while the orange marks the structures by the lagoon. (Source: @faceofwar/archive, top; GoogleMaps, bottom)

While warfare experts speculated on social media that the shells used in the bombardment were white phosphorus, it is more likely that Russian 9M22S incendiary munitions from Grad multiple launch rocket systems were used. The 9M22S shells are a more conventional incendiary munition that use a thermite mixture. These munitions have previously been used during the war in Ukraine. The same 9M22S munitions were also reportedly used in the eastern Ukrainian city of Izyum earlier this week. Meanwhile, a report from Ukrainian media suggests the city of Mykolaiv was also targeted by cluster munitions.

Hexagonal incendiary munitions photographed in the village of Novoiakovlivka on April 19, 2022 (top) are reported to be the same munitions used against the Azovstal plant. Visually, these munitions explode in a similar pattern, as seen in the video of the Azovstal bombing (bottom). (Source: armamentresearch.com/archive

On May 15, the Security Service of Ukraine released what it reported to be an intercepted phone call in which a Russian soldier confirmed using weapons that are banned by international treaties. “Phosphorous bombs, cluster munitions – they have allowed us to use everything that is banned,” he said in the recording.

Transcript of an intercepted phone call from a Russian soldier. (Source: @mdimitri91/archive)

—Lukas Andriukaitis, Associate Director, Brussels, Belgium

Polish far-right influencers and Russian media capitalize on Warsaw murder to spread anti-refugee narratives

On May 8, a Polish man in Warsaw was stabbed to death. A few days later, a graphic recording of the incident appeared online, filmed by an unidentified witness who spoke Ukrainian. Polish far-right actors, social media accounts, and Russian pro-Kremlin media outlets capitalized on the incident to push anti-Ukrainian sentiments.

Polish media outlet Oko.press reported that while the murder happened on May 8, claims accusing the murderers of being Ukrainian refugees didn’t emerge until four days later. The claims began circulating after Warsaw police released photos of the suspected perpetrator. The Twitter account @otwieramy complained that Polish media did not report that the perpetrators were “drunk foreigners speaking in Ukrainian.” The Twitter account also alleged that the victim’s family was pressured not to reveal the attackers’ nationality.

Right-wing Polish journalist Wojciech Sumlinski claimed without evidence that a group of Ukrainians “tortured a young boy in the center of Warsaw.” This is not the first time Sumlinski has accused refugees of being violent. The DFRLab previously reported on Sumlinski’s March 1 tweet that falsely claimed a group of “Arab-looking” men had attacked a pregnant Polish woman on a train. That claim was later amplified by the far-right political party Confederation, with members inciting violence against non-Ukrainian refugees in eastern Poland.

Piotr Panasiuk, a Confederation party member who ran for parliament in 2019, claimed without evidence that the perpetrator of the crime in Warsaw was a Ukrainian army defector who had escaped into Poland. Grzegorz Braun, the leader of the Confederation party, asserted during a press conference on May 13 that opening Poland’s borders to uncontrolled migration and mass displacement had resulted in negative social and political consequences. According to Braun, nobody in Warsaw was safe anymore.

Russian media outlets also amplified rumors about the Warsaw murder. News Front and EurAsia Daily asserted that a group of drunk Ukrainian migrants stabbed a Polish citizen because he interfered in their attempt to sexually assault a woman. The EurAsia Daily article quoted Katarzyna Sokolowska, chairwoman of the Polish organization Wołyń Pamiętamy (”We Remember Volhynia),” who claimed that Polish authorities were pressuring the family of the Polish victim, who died “at the hands of Ukrainian migrants.” The DFRLab has previously reported on an anti-Ukraine campaign launched on Facebook by Wołyń Pamiętamy prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

On May 13, Warsaw Police announced they were still investigating the crime but said that there was no evidence indicating that the perpetrators were citizens of another country.

—Givi Gigitashvili, Research Associate, Warsaw, Poland

Russia plans to launch pre-installed app store on smartphones

On May 25, Russia’s Ministry of Digital Development and the social networking company VK plan to launch a beta version of the RuStore, the Russian analogue of the Google Play store. Their goal is to include the Russian app store to come pre-installed on Android phones in the country.

The Kremlin has begun developing domestic smartphone services in response to Western sanctions. VK, which owns the social media platform VKontakte, is developing the domestic app store without government funds, according to Maksut Shadayev, Minister of Digital Development.

This week, the Russian ministry proposed a law titled “On a Single Application Store,” which would allow the RuStore to be included on the list of software required to be pre-installed on smartphones and tablets in Russia. According to the draft law, the Russian government will identify app developers who will be required to add their apps to the RuStore. The proposed law also states that these actions will “counter sanctions from foreign states.”

Russian anti-virus software developer Kaspersky Lab will manage the app store “in order to prevent malicious applications from getting into RuStore,” Russian media reported.

No information is available on whether the RuStore will work on iOS systems.

—Eto Buziashvili, Research Associate, Washington, DC

Russian-occupied South Ossetia sets date for referendum on Russian unification

The Russian-occupied Georgian breakaway region of South Ossetia will hold a referendum on joining the Russian Federation on July 17, 2022. The decree was signed on May 13 by the outgoing separatist president Anatoly Bibilov. “We are going home, we are heading to Russia,” he wrote on his Telegram channel. The referendum will ask voters, “Do you support the unification of the Republic of South Ossetia and Russia?”

The referendum has already led to tensions with some Russian politicians. State Duma Member Konstantin Zatulin, first deputy chairman on the parliamentary committee for Russian nationals living outside the country, said Bibilov’s referendum was “not very appropriate.” Noting the fact that Bibilov was about to leave office, he added, “If you lose elections, then the newly elected president should call a referendum.”

Anatoly Bibilov lost to Alan Gagloev, leader of the Nykhas party, during the second round of the presidential elections on May 8. Gagloev is set to take office on May 24. According to Civil.ge, Gagloev has expressed doubts about whether Bibilov coordinated his decision with Moscow. “I fully support the idea of reunification of divided Ossetian nation within the united Russia,” he said. “But the question is whether it is the moment in history when we should issue a decree on calling a referendum and forcing it to happen…In 2014, referendums on reunification were held in the Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics without Russian approval. Eight years have passed, and they have not yet achieved their goal.”

Gagloev added that he will take further steps “in compliance with international legal norms, consultations, and implementation of agreements with the Russian Federation.”

—Sopo Gelava, Research Associate, Tbilisi, Georgia

Telegram channels and youth groups rally against Riga following Victory Day controversy

Tensions between Latvia and Russia are on the rise after the city of Riga voted to demolish a Soviet monument and arrested pro-Kremlin supporters at an annual Victory Day gathering. In response, pro-Russian Telegram channels have rallied behind one of the arrested individuals, with posts garnering hundreds of thousands of views. Pro-Kremlin youth organizations in Russia also launched flash mobs to protest the actions in Riga. Read more in the DFRLab’s latest update on the controversy.

—Nika Aleksejeva, Lead Researcher, Riga, Latvia

The post Russian War Report: Russian forces use incendiary munitions in Mariupol appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Iran Initiative event on the Taliban was mentioned in Politico’s National Security Daily newsletter

Atlantic Council — Tue, 17 May 2022 17:58:00 +0000

The post Iran Initiative event on the Taliban was mentioned in Politico’s National Security Daily newsletter appeared first on Atlantic Council.

#BritainDebrief – Which Western leaders have done enough for Ukraine? A Debrief from Kira Rudik

Ben Judah — Mon, 09 May 2022 00:52:14 +0000

Which Western leaders have done enough for Ukraine?

As international support for Ukraine remains steady in the face of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Senior Fellow Ben Judah interviews Kira Rudik, member of the Ukrainian Parliament and leader of the Voice Party, about which of Ukraine’s allies have helped the most. Why does Ukraine view British Prime Minister Boris Johnson so positively? Why isn’t US President Joe Biden viewed as favourably in Ukraine despite consistent US military aid to Ukraine? How does Ukraine view French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz?

You can watch #BritainDebrief on YouTube and as a podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

MEET THE #BRITAINDEBRIEF HOST

Fellow

Ben Judah

Economy & Business European Union

Europe Center

Providing expertise and building communities to promote transatlantic leadership and a strong Europe in turbulent times.

The Europe Center promotes the transatlantic leadership and strategies required to ensure a strong Europe.

The post #BritainDebrief – Which Western leaders have done enough for Ukraine? A Debrief from Kira Rudik appeared first on Atlantic Council.

D’Anieri in the Hill: “The false promises of Biden’s Ukrainian refugee program”

Atlantic Council — Thu, 05 May 2022 18:09:00 +0000

The post D’Anieri in the Hill: “The false promises of Biden’s Ukrainian refugee program” appeared first on Atlantic Council.

#BritainDebrief – Are sanctions on Russia working? A Debrief from Ambassador Daniel Fried

Ben Judah, Daniel Fried — Sun, 01 May 2022 22:24:06 +0000

Are sanctions on Russia working?

As the chances of Europe imposing a full oil and gas embargo on Russia are becoming increasingly likely, Senior Fellow Ben Judah interviews Ambassador Daniel Fried, former US Coordinator for Sanctions Policy (2013-2017) for #BritainDebrief on how sanctions on Russia are impacting the Kremlin’s war chest, the Russian economy and third countries. How unprecedented is targeting the Russian central bank? What is the long view on Russia sanctions?

You can watch #BritainDebrief on YouTube and as a podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

MEET THE #BRITAINDEBRIEF HOST

Fellow

Ben Judah

Economy & Business European Union

Europe Center

Providing expertise and building communities to promote transatlantic leadership and a strong Europe in turbulent times.

The Europe Center promotes the transatlantic leadership and strategies required to ensure a strong Europe.

The post #BritainDebrief – Are sanctions on Russia working? A Debrief from Ambassador Daniel Fried appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Ukraine War Diary: “You can never really get used to the air raid sirens”

Vitaly Sych — Sat, 30 Apr 2022 17:11:11 +0000

Now in its third month, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has stunned the world and sparked the biggest international security crisis of the twenty-first century. Beyond the headlines, the war has plunged an entire nation of more than 40 million Ukrainians into a barely imaginable world of grief, fear and chaos. Leading Ukrainian media personality Vitaly Sych has kept a war diary recounting his experiences and observations during the past two terrifying and heroic months as Ukrainians have adjusted to the new realities of Vladimir Putin’s criminal invasion.

UKRAINE WAR DIARY: PART I

When my wife hurriedly woke me up in the early hours of Febuary 24 and I first looked out of the window, I could not believe my eyes. The familiar panoramic view from our apartment on the twentieth floor overlooking the Dnipro River was now dotted with huge columns of black smoke. Our entire building was shaking from explosions as missiles rained down on the outskirts of Kyiv.

The unthinkable had happened. Even though we all knew Russia had amassed a huge army on the Ukrainian border, I remained convinced until the very last moment that it was all a geopolitical bluff. Like so many Ukrainians, I could not believe anyone would launch a full-scale military invasion in the center of Europe. Such things simply did not happen anymore. Not in 2022.

I grabbed my phone and was immediately confronted by footage of Russian President Vladimir Putin proclaiming the start of a “special military operation” in Ukraine. His speech was completely unhinged and full of wild historical distortions. “This is war,” I said to my wife.

For weeks I had downplayed her concerns about a possible war, often while gently teasing her and making sarcastic remarks. Despite my apparent confidence, my wife had remained unconvinced. She kept the tank of the car full, evening purchasing and filling an extra petrol canister. She packed changes of clothes and personal documents for all the family and bought lots of dry food. I thought this was over the top and said so. Sadly, she turned out to be right.

The day had barely begun, but it was already time to get our eight-year-old twins Peter and Anna out of the city. We had read numerous reports from the British and US intelligence services describing in detail how Russian security forces had compiled kill lists of Ukrainian journalists, activists, and politicians hostile to Moscow who were to be rounded up and executed during the initial stages of the occupation. My wife and I knew my name must be somewhere on those lists.

A brief look at my Facebook profile or a glance through the magazine I manage would be enough to get me into trouble with the Russians. My magazine’s last cover page before we were forced to suspend publication due to the war had featured Putin alongside senile Russian dictators Lenin and Stalin. All three were portrayed in wheelchairs styled to invoke a well-known Soviet photo of Lenin’s last days. The headline read “Kremlin Madhouse.” This was entirely in keeping with the spirit of the publication. It was clearly unwise for us to stay in Kyiv.

We picked up my wife’s mother and tried but failed to leave town. By 9am, all roads leading out of the Ukrainian capital were at a standstill. A massive exodus was underway as terrified Kyivans looked to escape the city and head west away from the advancing Russian tanks.

After a couple of hours spent hopelessly stuck in traffic we gave up and went home, only to learn that the Russians were already trying to land troops at Gostomel Airport, which is located in the Kyiv suburbs to the northwest of the city. It was obvious that we had to evacuate urgently. This time we chose the southern highway instead of the jammed western route. As we moved slowly toward the city limits, jet fighters roared low above our heads. I still don’t know whether they were Russian or Ukrainian planes. Eventually, we managed to exit Kyiv.

We headed to Vinnytsya where my mother lives. A 250-kilometer trip that typically takes three hours took us 10 hours. We drove mostly along godforsaken backroads that would normally be empty except for the odd tractor or perhaps even a horse and cart. But today these roads were jammed with caravans of cars ranging from simple hatchbacks to luxury jeeps. It seemed as though half of Ukraine was on the move, carrying their worldly belongings with them.

My wife cried the whole way. With good reason, she thought we might never be able to go home again. We had left our entire lives behind us in a matter of minutes; our apartment, our house near Kyiv that we had spent so long saving up for, our jobs, everything.

We could not even take our beloved cat with us, who can barely cope with the one-hour trip out to our summer house and would have been unable to handle the long and stressful escape in a crowded car. Thankfully, we were able to save our cat by mailing our apartment keys to neighbors who now make sure he is well fed and cared for. During those first nightmare moments of the war when we were forced to make life-changing choices in an instant, the most difficult decision of all was the one to leave our cat.

It soon became clear that we had made the right decision as our journey evolved into a three-day marathon with six people crammed into one car. By midnight we reached my mother’s apartment in Vinnytsya. It was the first time we had felt relatively safe since that horrible day had dawned.

After a brief stopover, we decided to take my mother with us and head further west. The journey from Vinnytsya to Lviv is normally a five-hour drive but it now took more than three times as long. At some point during the night we lost our navigation signal while passing through a forest and found ourselves in complete darkness. As we tried to get our bearings, a nearby airbase was struck by a Russian missile. It was the kind of scene you expect to see in a horror movie and it will remain forever imprinted on my mind.

We eventually reached Lviv. By this point, I was completely exhausted. I had been driving for more than 24 hours and was running on pure adrenaline. Stress had robbed me of my appetite and I had barely eaten anything since leaving Kyiv.

The last leg of our journey still lay ahead and was perhaps the hardest. I had to get my family to the border but I would not be leaving Ukraine with them. Due to the imposition of martial law in the hours following Russia’s invasion, I could not exit the country. No Ukrainian men aged eighteen to sixy could. And to be frank, I would not have gone even if it had been possible. All of my male workmates and lots of female colleagues had stayed behind, some of them even remaining in Kyiv. I would never have forgiven myself if I had left.

After a short sleep in Lviv, we began exploring our chances of getting to the border. Poland is less than eighty kilometers from Lviv, but crossing into the EU in the first days of the war was no simple matter. All of the checkpoints were completely jammed with people and the delay times were insane. At some crossings, cars were advised that they could be waiting for up to a week.

We checked the train station and it looked like Kabul before the arrival of the Taliban, with women and children screaming and trying to squeeze onto trains departing for Poland. Many families had simply abandoned their suitcases on the platform.

This scene was enough to convince us against taking the train. Instead, we decided to head south toward the Slovak border where, according to reports, queues were significantly shorter. This last stretch took me a further 16 sleepless hours, with our journey regularly broken up by document checks at the many paramilitary block posts that had sprung up like mushrooms in those first few wartime days.

The plan was to get my family over the border into Slovakia where friends of friends would pick them up and drive them to Bratislava. From there, they would fly to Dublin. My sister is married to an Irishman and was waiting for them in the Irish capital.

After more than three days of almost non-stop driving that felt like three weeks, we finally reached the border. Our farewells were mercifully short. As we kissed and hugged our goodbyes, I had no idea if I would ever see my family again. They crossed into Slovakia and were finally safe. A week later, The Irish Times would publish an article about my family’s escape headlined “Now we have a chance to cry.”

I remained on the Ukrainian side of the border. I was now alone. Like everyone else still in Ukraine, I was facing a future of grave uncertainty. I returned to Lviv and my wartime life began.

UKRAINE WAR DIARY: PART II

“Are you still alive?” read the text message from my colleague and radio show partner Serhiy Fursa. I immediately understood that the noise which had woken me up minutes before was the sound of Russian ballistic missiles. I peered out of my window and saw smoke rising from somewhere in the downtown area of Lviv. Five Russian missiles had hit the city, leaving seven dead and dozens wounded. Serhiy said he actually watched three of the missiles from his balcony but failed to take a video.

This was the third Russian airstrike on Lviv, a city close to the EU border that is generally regarded as safe. “Are we still going to do our radio show today?” I asked Serhiy. “Why not?” he replied. So we did. Since settling in Lviv during the early days of the war, we have already broadcast more than 40 episodes of the show. We go on air every day, always around lunchtime.

My accommodation in Lviv is an apartment rented by a colleague of mine who is a partner in the investment banking firm that owns our media house. All of the partners in the company, including the Czech owner, have relocated to Lviv. Even though his Czech passport would have allowed him to leave Ukraine, he decided to stay with his people.

We soon learned that we had been very lucky to get an apartment for just the two of us. Others have had to cram four or five into a single apartment as internally displaced people from across Ukraine have flooded into Lviv. As a result, the city is now packed full and finding available accommodation is next to impossible. We have even begun to joke that we shouldn’t invite any colleagues over to our flat in case they stop talking to us when they see our luxurious living conditions.

There are only two problems with our flat. The first is actually more of an inconvenience. I have to share a bed with another man. We have bought separate pillows and blankets, of course. But the fact remains that I’ve been sleeping with a man for more than a month. Life will never be the same again!

The other problem is more significant. As with all real estate, location is the most important feature. And in our case, this is definitely a problem. The apartment we are renting is close to a huge military base and the local headquarters of the Ukrainian intelligence service. This makes it an obvious target for Russian missiles.

The threat of Russian airstrikes is no longer hyperthetical. Indeed, the ambassador of Kazakhstan was living just a few blocks away until recently but was advised by his security team to move out of the neighborhood. This apparent danger is a source of amusement to locals. When they find out where we live, they joke that our landlord should actually be paying us. To make matters worse, the apartment is on the top floor of the building. A prime location indeed!

The military base next door has an outdoor area with all sorts of old Soviet-era military equipment on display. There are tanks, artillery, and rocket launchers dating back to WWII and the Cold War. Given the often poor quality of Russian intelligence and satellite imagery, we wonder whether they might mistake these museum exhibits for the real thing and launch an airstrike. Such speculation would once have been amusing but it is now no longer funny.

After several deadly Russian missile attacks that killed dozens of Ukrainian soldiers, the Ukrainian military has introduced new protocols. When the sirens go off in the city, hundreds of military personnel with Kalashnikovs stream out of the military base next to us and disperse in order to make sure there are no concentrations of soldiers in any one place. They then hang out for hours on end in nearby parks and residential yards.

Air raid sirens come every day and every night, often at about three or four in the morning. You can hear the sirens throughout the city. It is ubiquitous and sticks in your head like the beat of a bad pop song. After a few hours, the second siren indicates that the danger has passed. I still can’t distinguish between the two. If you miss the first one because you are asleep, you think the second one is the start of an air attack. Sometimes we have to ask each other: is this the first or second siren?

To liven things up even more, my apartment mate has downloaded an application that notifies him of airstrikes with a tremendous alarm. He jumps up in bed and obviously I cannot avoid also hearing it. After that, nobody can sleep. Digital technology is not always helpful.

Living under the constant threat of Russian airstrikes is a chilling experience. The missiles themselves are accompanied by the distinct smell of death. Even though the Russians insist they only target military infrastructure, in reality they often hit civilian targets and kill ordinary Ukrainians.

In Syria, Russia fired a total of about 100 missiles over a five-year period. In Ukraine, the Russian military launched more than 1,500 missiles during the first month and half of the war alone. Some were launched from Belarus. Others were shot from bombers over the Black Sea. Their range leaves nobody in Ukraine immune. Nowhere in the country is truly safe.

Everybody in Lviv seems to have grown used to air raid sirens. I was out jogging in the park one morning when the siren sounded. It had almost no visible effect. Parents continued strolling with children and old people remained engrossed in their conversations on park benches. One elderly lady turned to her granddaughter and said calmly but firmly, “Don’t worry. We’ll be fine.”

I can’t help thinking that this sense of calm is false. We won’t be fine. In truth, you can never really get used to the air raid sirens. The first thing I’d like to do when this war is over is go somewhere abroad where I will not have to hear any airstrike warnings at all.

Subscribe to UkraineAlert

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

Name
First Last
Email*
Phone
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

UKRAINE WAR DIARY: PART III

The first days of the war were incredibly tough professionally as I attempted to somehow keep our media holding from collapsing. I lost contact with colleagues and had no idea whether they were being bombed in Kharkiv or were somewhere on the road trying to evacuate their families. Some people simply disappeared. Others struggled to cope with the emotional stress of the situation and were unable to work. One of our most prominent colleagues suffered a breakdown and began publishing crazy fake posts on social media.

I eventually had to accept that I could not help everyone and decided to focus on sustaining our operation and supporting as many colleagues as possible. Without exception, the war has been a personal crisis for all of us.

About a week after the war begin, the dust began to settle and we were able to get an idea of where we might be heading as a media organization. Nothing was straightforward. Our star reporter was sheltering from Russian airstrikes in Kyiv’s metro system. Our weekend editor was stuck in Kharkiv under heavy bombardment and we temporarily lost touch with him. Thankfully, we later learned he had survived.

The head of our English-language operation, a Scotsman, had to evacuate his family to Glasgow. This meant that responsibility for English-language coverage fell to a young Ukrainian editor who was also busy trying to help her grandmother cope in an apartment with poor wifi connection on Kyiv’s left bank.

Our financial and IT reporters had joined the Ukrainian army. Our chief designer and political editor weren’t planning to join the army but were drafted in Lviv when they arrived with their families. Our two most prominent radio presenters joined the territorial defense force in Kyiv. The procedure for signing up in wartime was so simple that they merely had to appear with their IDs in order to receive a Kalashnikov.

For a while, I feared we would not have enough people to run our company. Despite having been one of the largest news organizations in Ukraine on the eve of the war, it looked like we might not survive.

Then things stabilized. Or at least, we achieved as much stability as is possible during wartime. The Russians turned out to be far less sophisticated that everybody had expected and failed to knock out the Ukrainian internet. Dozens of our team reached safe places with decent internet connections in western Ukraine. Despite facing unfamiliar and often highly challenging living conditions, we gradually got back to work.

For obvious reasons, we ceased publication of our weekly magazine. Colleagues who normally focused on topics like sports, tech, auto news, entertainment and science were asked to forget about their previous lives and strengthen our war coverge. We went into 24/7 mode, pumping out non-stop content during night shifts and over weekends in Ukrainian, Russian and English.

We were soon producing 300 news items per day and ranking among the top two most visited sites in Ukraine. In March, our audience skyrocketed and reached 25 million unique users along with around half a billion page views.

In recognition of this success, we became the target of a major Russian cyber-attack. Despite being under physical Russian bombardment in Kyiv Oblast at the time, our chief programmer managed to get us back online. He was also able to upgrade our cyber security to levels that have prevented any repeat cyber-attacks.

While we cranked up our online coverage to a wartime tempo, we relocated part of our radio equipment to Lviv and organized an improvised new studio in a shopping mall where we were given two rooms free of charge. Before the war, our FM radio covered 44 major cities across Ukraine. This number has been slightly reduced by the Russian habit of taking down our transmitters in occupied Ukrainian cities like Kherson and Melitopol. Nevertheless, we continue to broadcast to more than 30 cities as well as via YouTube and online.

I started a daily radio show in tandem with a well-known investment banker and blogger who also relocated to Lviv. He speaks Ukrainian and I speak Russian on air. Our idea was not just to analyze key events but to support our audience. Working on the assumption that listeners already knew the most recent headlines and were aware of any bad news, we figured we would focus on positive developments such as Russia’s economic woes, international support for Ukraine, and signs of internal divisions in Moscow.

We are not fools and understand the gravity of the situation. At the same time, we want to provide a glimmer of hope and also some much needed humor. Russia’s top officials and propagandists are all legitimate targets and there is certainly no shortage of good reasons to ridicule them.

Air raid sirens can be very disruptive when you’re trying to do a live radio broadcast. Every time the sirens start up, the shopping mall shuts down and everyone runs to the shelter. We eventually decided to stay put and continue our broadcasts. The alternative would be to leave our radio frequency blank for hours on end.

Ukrainians seem to appreciate what we’re trying to do. Our YouTube audience grew fivefold in just one month, even though we have no cameras in the studio and only offer an audio stream.

The single most rewarding episode of our wartime broadcasting experience came from Bucha, the Kyiv suburb where Russian forces committed war crimes that shocked the world. One old lady emerged following the liberation of Bucha and recounted how she had spent weeks in a basement listening to nothing but our radio station. When she met our reporter, she hugged her and burst into tears. This tale alone made all our efforts seem worthwhile.

Eurasia Center events

After Vilnius: What’s next on Ukraine’s path to NATO?

Eastern Europe NATO Security & Defense Ukraine

UKRAINE WAR DIARY: PART IV

When I first arrived in Lviv in the last days of February, the city looked and felt like it was on the verge of an apocalypse. This usually vibrant hub of tourism, culture and history had become a ghost town. The streets were empty while only a few of Lviv’s famed cafes and bars remained open. There was a ban on alcohol sales and all shops were closed except for food stores and pharmacies.

Despite this eery quiet, Lviv was by then already packed with refugees from Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities. I often ran into acquaintances from the capital including restaurateurs, bankers, and fellow journalists. It felt as though we had all become part of a new chapter in Erich Maria Remarque’s classic WWII refugee novel “The Night in Lisbon.”

The many members of this displaced tribe tended to spend most of their time on the phone trying to help friends and family who were still under bombardment or stuck in occupied regions of the country. I was no exception.

My eldest daughter, Masha, who is twenty-six, was trapped in Kyiv with her boyfriend. By the time they had decided that they needed to leave the city, it was too late. Evacuation had become too dangerous. Their home district in the north of the city was the scene of shelling and street battles as Russian troops sought to advance into the heart of Kyiv.

Masha spent a week in a basement hiding from Russian bombs. She would call me regularly, crying and sharing reports about Chechen forces who were said to be closing in on Kyiv. The Chechens would soon enter the city and rape all the women, she said. As we later learned, these fears were justified. But at that point, I was more interested in trying to calm her down by telling her that the Chechens had already suffered catastrophic losses in Bucha, including the death of their most notorious general. This was also true. One week later, Masha and her boyfriend were eventually able to leave the city and head south. It was a huge personal relief for me. Millions of Ukrainians were not so fortunate.

Even though Lviv didn’t experience anything like the problems in Kyiv, food did become scarce. Buckwheat, rice and pasta were the first to disappear as people prepared for the worst and stocked up on long-lasting foodstuffs. I must admit that I was partly to blame, purchasing enough food for an entire month. Supply chains for things like chicken and dairy products also soon broke down, leaving shoppers with little to choose from except the most expensive brands of tea, coffee, delicacies and cookies. With all the empty shelves in the stores, it started to feel a little bit like going back to the USSR.

During the early weeks of the war, many people in Lviv feared that Putin would convince Belarusian dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka to join the invasion and launch an offensive into the Volyn region. This would bring the war right to the borders of Lviv. Despite at least four separate warnings of an imminent invasion, the Belarusians still haven’t ventured into Ukraine. Lukashenka is certainly a monster but he is not a complete idiot, it would seem. He also has access to reliable data on the sheer scale of Russian losses in Ukraine due to the fact that many Russian casualties have been brought back across the border to Belarusian hospitals and morgues.

When not doing my radio show, I found myself sharing an office with investment bankers who had also moved to western Ukraine from Kyiv. Like millions of their fellow Ukrainians, these finance professionals followed frontline military developments closely online and cheered the destruction of each successive Russian military convoy.

Monitoring Russian losses quickly became the most popular form of wartime entertainment for Ukrainians. The idea of deriving pleasure from footage of military carnage and dead soldiers would have seemed perverse or even obscene just weeks earlier, but graphic content now circulated in large quantities through a growing number of telegram channels, often accompanied by black humor. Many women discovered that they also enjoyed looking at such grim images.

You wouldn’t expect this kind of behavior from a healthy person during peacetime. But everything changes after you’ve read hundreds of reports about children bombed, ordinary Ukrainians executed and women gang-raped, especially when the crime scenes are so familiar and the victims are personal acquaintances.

The endless accounts of Russian atrocities have taken their toll on Ukrainians in many ways. Almost everyone I know has trouble sleeping. There is also much fury and hunger for revenge. One of our radio hosts asked listeners what they would do if presented with a button that could instantly kill all Russians, including friends and relatives. He was half-joking, of course, but was also honest enough to admit that he would personally press the button without hesitation. The general consensus among listeners seemed to be that such an opportunity would be tempting.

During our radio discussions, we also pondered the question of how much blame could be attached to ordinary Russians. Had they given Putin a mandate for the war and the mass murder of Ukrainians, or was it all his personal responsibility? After the first few weeks of the war, this debate became redundant when independent polls indicated that more than 80% of Russians supported the war.

Of course, it is difficult to find entirely objective opinion polls in a totalitarian country. But the figures emerging out of Russia as the war progressed were entirely in line with a wide range of anecdotal evident suggesting that a clear majority of Russians backed the invasion of Ukraine. Ukrainians are also well aware that it was not Putin who personally bombed Kharkiv or executed civilians in Bucha. These crimes were committed by Russian servicemen who received their orders from Russian officers. They could have refused but they chose not to.

My wife’s sister lives on Moscow. She moved there when she was 16 and is now a Russian citizen. She and her husband were terrified when the war began. They were ashamed and called many times to offer words of support. They followed news of the war closely and knew all the details about the horrors taking place in Mariupol, Kyiv and Kharkiv. This demonstrated once again that talk of Russians living in an information vacuum is wishful thinking. If the average Russian wants to access accurate information about the war, they can do so easily.

Three weeks into the war, my sister-in-law’s fourteen-year-old daughter came home from her Moscow school and asked whether it was true their country was killing children in Ukraine. They answered that yes, it was true, but asked her not to tell anyone. By then, the old Stalinist tradition had returned to Russian schools, with teachers asking kids what their parents were saying at home about the war and reporting any criticism to the authorities.

The reality is that the Russian public does not want to know the truth. The lies they are fed by the Putin regime make them feel good and they are afraid to leave their comfort zone. For years, highly emotional propaganda on Russian TV has fueled imperialistic sentiments among the Russian public while dehumanizing Ukrainians. Many Russians now simply refuse to believe information about atrocities in Ukraine and dismiss the overwhelming evidence of war crimes as fake. I am not at all surprised by such attitudes. It is extremely difficult to admit that you’ve been so comprehensively misled by your own leaders and convinced to support a criminal war.

Millions of extended Russian-Ukrainian families have been divided by the conflict. A former classmate of mine from Chelyabinsk, a Russian city in the southern Ural Mountains, moved to Ukraine many years ago. He recently tried to explain the realities of the war to his mother back in Russia. She refused to listen and declared that everything he said was fake. “Am I fake, too?” he asked. They have not been in contact since.

UKRAINE WAR DIARY: PART V

My taxi driver yesterday was Serhiy from Mariupol. He and his family had managed to leave the devastated Ukrainian port city just before the Russians encircled it. He had since become a taxi driver to make a living. Mariupol is not just a global news headline. It is a vast and unfolding human tragedy that casts a pall of sadness and terror over all Ukraine. If there is a hell on earth right now, it is Mariupol.

So it was only natural that I wanted to talk. Serhiy said 95% of residential buildings in the city, including his own, had been destroyed. Around 100 people among his personal acquaintances had been killed. He said that most of the information he had came from survivors, both those still trapped inside Mariupol and the lucky ones who had managed to escape. As he recounted these horrors, I was struck by the lack of emotion. Maybe he had become apathetic or didn’t want to offload the burden of his pain onto me.

What astonished me most of all was his plan to return home and rebuild Mariupol. “As long as it remains in Ukraine,” he added. I know plenty of people who have serious emotional reservations about going back to cities that have suffered much less destruction than Mariupol. His experience moved me deeply, but there was little I could offer him except a generous tip.

Russia has good reason for pushing so hard to take Mariupol. Putin desperately needs some kind of success for domestic consumption ahead of Victory Day on May 9. The annual celebration of the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany plays a central role in modern Russian mythology. This year’s holiday must be marked by a new triumph.

There is another less obvious but equally important reason why Russia is determined to seize Mariupol at all costs. The Kremlin simply cannot afford to let the world see what it has done to the city. Current estimates indicate a death toll of between 10,000 and 30,000 civilians during the two-month siege. In other words, the destruction of Mariupol dwarfs the atrocities committed in Bucha and is likely one of the biggest war crimes in Europe since WWII.

At the other end of Ukraine, life has returned to Lviv. The city’s population has grown by 30% since the start of the war. Shops and movie theaters are now open once again. The alcohol ban has been partially lifted with everything available except for hard liquor. As a result, restaurants and bars are full. The crowds are cosmopolitan and often include lots of foreign journalists as well as people who have relocated to Lviv from across Ukraine.

During the weekends, the shopping mall that serves as the Lviv base for our radio station is absolutely full of people. The main indication that life is still far from normal remains the ubiquity of air raid sirens. Most shoppers would probably be happy to stay, I imagine, but due to wartime regulations all stores close and everyone must take cover.

I have recently received news that my summer house north of Kyiv in the village of Nova Bogdanivka was pillaged by Russian soldiers. I invested so much of my time and energy there renovating, building a summer terrace, and planting a garden. It is also a home where my family spent most of our weekends and nine whole months during the height of the Covid pandemic. At least the Russians didn’t burn it down.

Nova Bogdanivka was on the frontline and was the scene of heavy fighting for a month. I learned about all the developments there from a Telegram channel that united all residents of our 250-house community. When the war began, most of us left for other parts of Ukraine or for the relative security of nearby Kyiv. A handful of residents stayed behind in the village. During the fighting, they were forced to hide in basements to survive and were very cautious about discussing their situation in case any of the details somehow leaked out and reached the Russians.

At some point, a village resident published a photo of my neighbor’s SUV dotted with bullet holes. His son recognized the car in the photo and begged everybody in our Telegram group for help. It was a terrifying moment. Nobody could do anything and everybody knew it was our neighbor. Later we learnt he had died.

On reflection, our village was actually lucky. One resident was killed and all of our houses were looted by Russian troops or “orcs” as they are universally referred to in our Telegram group. The neighboring village was far less fortunate. Every third house was completely destroyed by heavy artillery. The fate of this neighboring village became the subject of a harrowing feature-length report by independent Russian news site Meduza detailing multiple murders and rapes by Russian troops. Relatively speaking, we have nothing to complain about.

My neighbors from Nova Bogdanivka have begun uploading photos from their security cameras to our messenger group. It turns out that the Russians stole anything they could carry from carpets and vacuum cleaners to used clothes and kitchen cutlery. Some of them filled up suitcases with stolen items. I can understand why a soldier might decide to steal money or jewelry, but why would anyone want to take somebody else’s clothing or knives and forks?

“The second army in the world,” as my neighbors sarcastically describe the Russians, turned out to be a bunch of impoverished bums. Nova Bogdanivka residents who managed to talk to the invaders discovered that most came from the poorest regions of Russia including the North Caucasus, Siberia and the Far East. Some of them admitted that they had only previously seen asphalt roads on TV. Whether he intended to or not, Putin has conducted a “special operation” to show the whole world the poverty and degradation of the Russian military and modern Russian society as a whole.

I have not yet learned the full extent of the damage to our house. It is still too early to check as the retreating Russians left mines and booby traps throughout the village. I don’t know when we will be able to go back, but I am already terrified by the thought of our eight-year-old twins Peter and Anna going for a walk in the village or just playing in our garden. I fear this lingering sense of dread will be with us for many more years to come.

Vitaly Sych is Chief Editor of NV media house which includes a weekly magazine, national talk radio station, and news site (NV.ua). This war diary was originally published in the German language by Die Zeit newspaper.

Atlantic Council — Thu, 21 Apr 2022 11:42:00 +0000

The post Warrick quoted in Bloomberg Government on US admissions of Ukrainian refugees appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Asat mentioned in iNews on Saudi Arabia’s deportation of Uyghur migrants to China

Atlantic Council — Wed, 20 Apr 2022 20:13:00 +0000

The post Asat mentioned in iNews on Saudi Arabia’s deportation of Uyghur migrants to China appeared first on Atlantic Council.

UN: Ukraine refugee crisis is Europe’s biggest since WWII

Julian Vierlinger — Wed, 20 Apr 2022 15:32:36 +0000

As the war in Ukraine approaches the two-month mark, the UN has reported that over five million Ukrainians have now fled the country, making it Europe’s biggest refugee crisis since World War II. Over half of these refugees have crossed the border into neighboring Poland. With no sign of an end to the conflict and more refugees expected amid a major new Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine, it is vital to scale up and improve the coordination of aid efforts at the border.

The current response in the border regions of Subcarpathia and Lublin is largely grassroots-based. Volunteers from a diverse set of local and international initiatives are doing an invaluable job of keeping refugees safe, warm and fed. Local mayors and government officials are providing infrastructure such as shelter, transportation, water and energy. Coordination is ad hoc and largely informal.

While most arrivals only remain in the border area for a matter of hours or a maximum of a few days, the sheer size of the influx is putting a serious strain on local capacities. The type of caretaking required in the border region also produces its very own set of challenges that local responders are often understaffed and underequipped to meet.

There are four key issues for the international community to address that can help improve the situation.

Firstly, it is vital to disburse funding promptly and locally. There currently appears to be a serious disconnect between those receiving funds and the people actually in the field. This is likely due to the heightened sense of urgency among those working day-to-day with refugees, while those at more of a distance are inclined to adopt a business as usual approach.

During the time it takes to push information about local needs up the ladder, field operations suffer shortages. Those on the front lines of the aid effort also have a clearer view of requirements and need the capacity to respond directly. It is therefore imperative to cut red tape and enable prompt disbursal of funding at the local level.

Subscribe to UkraineAlert

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

Name
First Last
Email*
Email
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Second, international actors and organizations must also become active where local committees lack networks and institutional firepower. If given adequate funding to fill equipment and infrastructure gaps, local operations will likely be able to surmount immediate local challenges. However, there are systemic problems where international actors and organizations need to intervene and coordinate.

One such problem is evacuation and transportation. At present, this is taking place via a loosely connected pool of volunteers and Polish public servants, sometimes together with officials from receiving countries. A large share of refugees travel from reception centers to final destinations by private volunteer vehicles. There is no system in place to ensure their safe arrival at destination.

As the vast majority of refugees are women and children, this represents a blind spot that is vulnerable to exploitation by human traffickers and similar criminal groups. It is imperative to expand official transportation services and regulate volunteer travel options. For example, a system could be set up to oblige volunteer drivers to transport refugees to Red Cross offices that confirm safe arrival and the availability of local care.

Similarly, a more professional approach is necessary for the evacuation and relocation of highly vulnerable people such as unaccompanied minors, the elderly, and individuals with disabilities. At a minimum, a clear and easily operable Poland-wide scheme must be set up to handle such cases. Ideally, this system should cover relocation across Europe.

Eurasia Center events

After Vilnius: What’s next on Ukraine’s path to NATO?

Eastern Europe NATO Security & Defense Ukraine

Thirdly, local responders need immediate staffing support at the national and international levels. As the war drags on, the number of volunteers available to local initiatives will decrease. Accordingly, important gaps will arise in unexpected ways, as the current lack of central coordination makes it difficult to know which tasks are critical and who fulfills them.

There is no doubt that key volunteer positions will eventually have to be filled by salaried staff and professionals. However, local government and senior local organizations such as the Polish Red Cross will not be able to fill these positions by themselves even if given adequate funding. This is largely due to conditions on the local labor market.

In light of recruitment challenges, it is imperative for international organizations to dispatch qualified staff directly to local initiatives until permanent arrangements are possible. Ideally, these dispatched staffers would also represent the communication link between international organizations and local initiatives.

Fourth, International organizations in the field must interact better when setting up operations and realize their role in coordinating the international response. There is currently a systemic lack of coordination between actors in the field.

Field-based operations look to larger organizations such as the IOM, UNHCR, WHO and UNICEF for guidance. However, there appears to be a fair amount of dissonance between these organizations themselves when it comes to who plans to do what, where, when and with whom. This adds an unnecessary layer of complexity to local operations and distracts from the task of coordinating efforts, filling gaps in operations, and communicating with the international community.

Similarly, communication is currently unsatisfactory between local organizations active in the border region, those active in Ukraine, and the Polish and Ukrainian states. The same international actors should join forces in streamlining information flows to allow for more proactive and efficient operations.

At present, the fact that the crisis response is organic is both a blessing and a curse. Without it, this initial phase of population movement would have been catastrophic. Nevertheless, organic crisis responses are limited in scope and duration.

As the crisis moves forward, volunteers will tire and funds will run out. Shocks such as local disease outbreaks have already severely tested local capacities and may do so again. Significant surges in border crossings caused by the renewed Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine will challenge and possibly overrun current capacities. It is high time for the international community to act together towards the goal of creating synergies between the resources already in the field and those waiting for deployment.

Julian Vierlinger is a researcher and PhD Candidate at the European University Institute. For the last month he has been volunteering with the Polish Red Cross at the Ukrainian border.

Alex Plitsas

Afghanistan Crisis Management

The post Plaks in Arise News on the Russian tech brain drain appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Asat in Foreign Policy: China’s Transnational Repression Gets Saudi Backing

Atlantic Council — Thu, 14 Apr 2022 13:46:00 +0000

The post Asat in Foreign Policy: China’s Transnational Repression Gets Saudi Backing appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Plaks in the National News on Russian exiles

Atlantic Council — Wed, 30 Mar 2022 15:32:00 +0000

On March 30, Forward Defense nonresident fellow Irina Plaks was quoted in an article in the National News titled “West urged to ‘back brain drain from Russia’ by taking in dissenters.” Plaks asserts that the West can (and should) benefit from highly-skilled Russian exiles and should utilize their expertise.

A low-cost policy option with a high impact on Russia, welcoming high-skill immigrants would dent Russia’s economy and stifle its burgeoning technology and defence industries.
Irina Plaks

Fellow

Alex Plitsas

Afghanistan Crisis Management

The post Plaks in the National News on Russian exiles appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Plitsas in CT Insider on Ukrainian evacuation

Atlantic Council — Tue, 29 Mar 2022 16:28:00 +0000

On March 29, Forward Defense nonresident senior fellow Alex Plitsas was quoted in an article in the CT Insider titled “Fairfield vet coordinates evacuations, supply deliveries for Ukraine.” Plitsas continues to aid Ukrainian refugees’ journey to the United States and has coordinated the donation of ballistic armor from police departments to support Ukraine’s war effort.

Because people [Ukrainians] are, in many cases, able to travel across those European borders, there’s not as many people who need rescuing.
Alex Plitsas

Fellow

Alex Plitsas

Afghanistan Crisis Management

The post Plitsas in CT Insider on Ukrainian evacuation appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Pavel in NBC News on Biden’s trip to Poland

Atlantic Council — Fri, 25 Mar 2022 19:09:00 +0000

On March 25, Atlantic Council senior vice president and Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security director Barry Pavel was quoted in an NBC News article titled, “Biden travels to Poland as the country struggles with Ukrainian refugee influx.” In the article, Pavel emphasizes the importance of Biden’s recent trip to Poland amidst the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

Fellow

Alex Plitsas

Afghanistan Crisis Management

The post Pavel in NBC News on Biden’s trip to Poland appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Qaddour mentioned in Politico National Security Daily on her testimony at the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Syria’s humanitarian situation

Atlantic Council — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 18:08:00 +0000

The post Qaddour mentioned in Politico National Security Daily on her testimony at the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Syria’s humanitarian situation appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Ukraine’s exodus escalates as millions more prepare to flee Putin’s invasion

Andrew D’Anieri — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 12:25:11 +0000

Many Ukrainians first heard the explosions of Russian missiles on the news or via online video footage. But as Putin’s war continues to escalate, the horrors of the conflict have moved closer and closer to families living in more isolated towns and villages across Ukraine.

These families are now making agonizing decisions about whether to remain together in their homes or send women and children abroad to avoid Russian atrocities against the civilian population and Moscow’s increasingly indiscriminate bombing campaign. Over three million have already fled the country. As the invasion advances, millions more are expected to seek sanctuary in the EU.

One particularly traumatic aspect of the war has been the separation of Ukrainian families as men aged 18-60 stay to fight Russian forces while women and children flee abroad or elsewhere in Ukraine. This results in heart-wrenching conversations around dinner tables and in text message groups about when to leave and where to go.

Tragically, the bombing and shelling of large cities like Kharkiv and Mariupol by Russian forces have robbed many citizens of these choices. While large numbers of Kyiv residents evacuated as quickly as they could when Russian forces first bombarded the city on February 24, those in eastern Ukraine have at times been forced to remain in place as Russian troops attack. The Russian military’s encirclement of Mariupol has left the city without food, water, electricity and heating for over a week while Moscow’s forces have relentless bombed civilian targets including the city’s maternity hospital.

The situation in small towns and cities across Ukraine is uneven, prompting millions of Ukrainians to make impossible choices. Many towns far from strategic military points have so far fared better than large cities but this may not last. Ukrainians outside of major urban centers are now being forced to wonder if fleeing their homes makes sense when the war is still some distance away.

Evacuating from a small town or village poses challenges of its own. Despite a major push by President Zelenskyy and his government to improve roads, transportation infrastructure away from major urban areas often remains poor. It is difficult enough to leave one’s home in wartime. This becomes even harder when bumpy roads and bombed out bridges slow down your journey, making you a potential target for Russian forces.

The cold logic of war also means that the Ukrainian government is more likely to allocate forces to protecting major cities and strategic military chokepoints. As heroic as the Ukrainian military has been in defending the country, scarce resources mean it cannot defend every town and village.

Subscribe to UkraineAlert

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

Name
First Last
Email*
Name
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Family situations also weigh on Ukrainians’ evacuation calculus. Lera, a nineteen-year-old student living in Warsaw, says her family’s ties to their home in Odesa Oblast have complicated their decision to evacuate. “My parents don’t want to leave our town because my grandmothers live with them, and it will be very difficult for them to flee. My parents also don’t want to leave the house they built with their own hands and have lived in for over 20 years.”

For others, the stresses of war and the desire to keep families together prompted them to leave. After living in a makeshift bomb shelter in her apartment building basement for three days, Elena, a translation freelancer from Zhytomyr Oblast, says she decided that “my children shouldn’t have to suffer this much. I had to make the very difficult decision to move my family abroad.”

It can be difficult for individuals already living abroad to convince their family members to leave. “Russia destroyed my parents’ business. And now they are discussing whether to stay at home or flee,” says Andrii, a university student in Poland originally from Vinnytsia Oblast. “I have insisted that they flee Ukraine immediately. But I understand this is their decision. Just imagine never going back to your hometown because you don’t have a home anymore.”

Eurasia Center events

Listen to the interview here

After Vilnius: What’s next on Ukraine’s path to NATO?

Eastern Europe NATO Security & Defense Ukraine

Many also fear what life would look like under Russian occupation. Ukrainians who have lived near the line of contact in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region know this all too well. “At this point, we know that the development of the region under Russian control stopped at its 2014 level. This is a fact,” says Irina, a mother who recently fled her home in Donetsk Oblast 10 kilometers from the line of contact. Russian occupation in Donbas has bred instability, violence and repression. Ukrainians are loathe to see their homes terrorized by the same forces.

Fortunately, citizens in more isolated areas of Ukraine have taken in their fellow Ukrainians hoping to escape from the senseless violence of the Russian invasion. Internally displaced people from large cities have made their way south and west and have found shelter. Newcomers help pitch in by setting up territorial defenses, preparing medical kits for soldiers, and making homemade camouflage. The war has indeed brought compassion and unity to the fore among Ukrainians, which may help explain why the country has so effectively slowed Russian advances.

Ukrainians would like to see the country’s Western partners match these qualities with increased arms supplies. Putin’s forces are increasingly turning their attention to vulnerable civilian targets including towns without sophisticated air defense systems. To guard against these terror tactics, the West should urgently provide Ukraine with greater anti-air and anti-tank capabilities.

While Western policymakers dither in calibrating military and humanitarian support, Ukrainians will continue to make difficult choices about their futures and the lives of their loved ones. It would be a relief for millions of Ukrainians if the country’s small cities and towns avoid the worst of Putin’s invasion. But the country desperately needs peace, says Lera. “We all want to lead peaceful lives without missiles flying over our heads. Doesn’t my country deserve that?”

Andrew D’Anieri is an Assistant Director at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. From 2019-2020, he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in southern Ukraine. Find him on Twitter @andrew_danieri.

The relatively low cap on the number of annual H-1B temporary visas—65,000 plus 20,000 for those with advanced degrees—can make it difficult for startup companies to hire new personnel in their fast-growing businesses or for international students to remain in the United States. Moreover, restrictions on H-1B immigration have caused multinational companies eager for talent to hire US-educated foreign scientists and technologists at their foreign affiliates when these individuals cannot attain H-1B visas for employment in the United States. In these situations, the other countries where the affiliates are located reap the benefit. Many of the companies facing the most difficulty in obtaining H-1B visas for their employees are concentrated in highly H-1B-dependent and R&D-intensive sectors operating offshore tech service sectors. In most cases, the affiliates to which the new hires are sent are in Canada, India, or China.

Without more skilled immigrants, US businesses run the risk of not being able to expand and remain competitive in the global economy.

Distinct from nonimmigrant foreign workers with H-1B visas, another important avenue for immigrants coming to the United States has been as international students. A quarter of the “unicorn” founders in the NFAP study originally enrolled in top US universities. Like foreign jobseekers requiring a work visa, international students have faced hurdles in the past few years. In 2018, the Trump administration reduced the duration of student visas from five years to one. Even more harmful was President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, which many experts believe dampened international students’ interest in studying in the United States (while raising parental fears for their children’s safety). “After years of phenomenal expansion starting in the mid-2000s, enrollment growth [of international students at US universities] slowed to less than 1 percent by 2019-2020.” Arguably, the pandemic—which led to a halting of immigration for a time—took a bigger toll on the number of international students coming to the United States than Trump’s anti-immigrant policies. Some 2 million fewer working-age immigrants are living in the United States today than in 2019. Pandemic restrictions also caused “a staggering 15-percent decline in international students in the 2020-21 academic year.” Fortunately, enrollment partially rebounded in fall 2021 with a 4-percent increase over last year’s earlier level. If enacted by Congress, proposals to reduce the number of Chinese students coming to US shores could substantially affect US universities because the Chinese comprise the largest group of foreign students in the United States, approximately 30 percent.

Going forward, the economic damage to universities from lowered enrollment could be substantial. International students represented nearly 60 percent of all student population growth in 2000–2018. Today, with a declining youth population in the United States, the concurrent drop in the number of international students studying at US universities will be an extra burden on academic budgets. Many science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) PhD programs depend on international students for their survival. A pre-pandemic study found that 70.3 percent of all full-time graduate students in electrical engineering; 63.2 percent in computer science; 60.4 percent in industrial engineering; and more than 50 percent in chemical, materials, and mechanical engineering, as well as in economics, were international students. If US immigration law is not overhauled to attract more international talent to study in the United States, university funding will not only decrease, but US innovation will stall as well. A World Bank report warned that any reduction in the number of “foreign graduate students” could significantly reduce US innovative activities; conversely, the report assessed that a 10-percent increase in the number of foreign graduate students would raise patent applications by 4.7 percent, university patent grants by 5.3 percent, and non-university patent grants by 6.7 percent. Although the United States remains a top destination for international students, other countries are increasingly competing for such students, particularly those in the STEM field. In trying to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada has opened additional pathways for enticing older graduates with work experience and others who are French-speakers to apply for permanent residency. Australia—another popular destination for Indians and others—offers permanent residency possibilities for postgraduates, although the process is considered more complex than in Canada. Germany, which has an active program for attracting and retaining highly skilled workers in areas experiencing shortages, is providing a fast track to permanent residency for both international graduates (after two years) and those recruited for their skills (four years). With such competition, US complacency could spell a slow decline in attracting the best and brightest.

Why now?

Trump cited the hardships suffered by American workers who lost their jobs because of the pandemic as justification for suspending new work visas. Today, unemployment is low, and companies are facing a new crisis in trying to fill vacancies: too few skilled workers for the number of jobs. Shortages exist at all levels: lower-skilled workers are in high demand in the agriculture, construction, hotel, restaurant, and hospitality sectors.

Even before the pandemic, tech-skilled workers were scarce. A New American Economy report found that “computer-related jobs . . . made up 69.6 percent of all foreign labor requests in FY 2020, a slight increase from FY 2019 despite the COVID-19 pandemic.” Despite lingering criticism that foreign workers threaten to take jobs away from Americans, “The unemployment rate for computer- and mathematics-related occupations was 2.3 percent. By 2020, that had only increased by 0.7 percentage points, to 3.0 percent. By March 2021, the unemployment rate for workers in these occupations was 1.9 percent, lower than it was before the pandemic.” Computer and highly skilled mathematics-based jobs have traditionally been filled in high proportions by immigrants on H1-B and other temporary worker visas. Business groups, such as the US Chamber of Commerce, assess that the need to increase immigration is urgent. Without more skilled immigrants, US businesses run the risk of not being able to expand and remain competitive in the global economy. Angering many traditional Republican supporters, US Chamber of Commerce CEO Suzanne Clark, has, in fact, called for “doubling the number of legal immigrants.”

Despite sharp partisan differences, public views of immigrants have shifted toward greater acceptance, according to a mid-2021 Pew Research Center survey. The share of people who see being Christian and being born in the United States as critical for being “truly American,” Pew found, “has significantly decreased between 2016 and November 2020.” Moreover, this has been the case regardless of a respondent’s party leaning, although less so for Republicans.

How to make it happen

Most every immigration reform has been controversial and has required a modicum of bipartisanship to secure passage. While the post-COVID recovery, tight labor market, and growing worries about competitiveness with China on technology make today a propitious moment for reform, the sharp partisan divide in Congress, as well as the upcoming midterm elections, make even limited legislative efforts parlous. The Biden administration still has some means to address the tech-worker shortage and the declining number of international students coming to the United States and could lay the groundwork for more substantial immigration reform over the long term.

Short-Term Expedients: The Biden administration downplayed H-1B visas in its original Citizenship Act in favor of increasing the number of green cards from 140,000 to 170,000, exempting STEM doctoral candidates. Biden hoped to make H-1B visas less attractive to employers, while promoting the chance of permanent residency, which has traditionally been more appealing to students and workers. The Citizenship Act, which included these changes, has stalled, prompting the administration to expand the types of degrees qualifying for STEM recognition and to allow STEM graduates to remain in the country for up to 36 months. University officials have commended the executive measure, which will help them re-attract the world’s STEM talent.

Under the House’s COMPETES Act, holders of doctorates in certain STEM fields would be exempt from numerical caps on green cards, regardless of whether they earned their degree in the United States or abroad. Whether those provisions will survive the reconciliation process is unclear: the bill’s Senate counterpart contains no analogous STEM immigration provisions and, to become law, at least 10 Republican senators would need to support it to avoid a filibuster.

The Biden administration should consider asking Congress to raise the cap on the number of H1-B visas. The base number of 65,000 was set more than 30 years ago, in 1990, and the additional 20,000 visas for advanced-degree-holders from US universities was added in 2006. Last year’s (FY 2021’s) H1-B lottery attracted more than 300,000 candidates, representing a 12-percent increase from FY 2020. Raising the cap is not unprecedented: it was raised to 115,000 in 1999–2000 and to 195,000 in 2001-2003. Encouraging more temporary visas can help keep the channel open for needed skilled immigrants in case the provisions favoring STEM PhD candidature for green cards in the COMPETES Act fail. Even if those provisions were enacted, more technically skilled workers would be required than those with PhDs. Expanded H-1B visas would provide such an avenue for a wider spectrum of highly skilled workers to come to the United States.

Needed Long-Term Solution: Close observers of the immigration debates on Capitol Hill believe that Democrats should invest more in building a consensus because there have been potential opportunities to forge common ground with Republicans. In March 2021, the House passed two bipartisan immigration bills to legalize the so-called DREAMers (individuals living in the United States illegally, but who first came to the United States as minors) as well as farmworkers. Nine Republicans joined Democrats to pass the Dream and Promise Act by a vote of 228-197. The Farm Workforce Modernization Act also passed, by a vote of 247-174, backed by 30 Republicans.

The need for immigration reform is more pressing than ever. During the past decade and a half, demographers, economists, and other experts have grown increasingly worried about the declining birth rate and accelerating aging in the United States. Many had believed that the United States, with its large number of immigrants—who typically have higher birth rates than native-born Americans—would not see its birth rate decline so precipitously. The United States’ birth rate is now more in line with the low birth rates found among US allies and partners in Europe and Asia. Meanwhile, since 2008 the birth rates for immigrant groups in the United States have also dropped. In 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the general fertility rate in the United States was about 56 births per 1,000 women—the lowest rate on record and about half of what it was in the early 1960s. Moreover, the decline in birth rates is seen across all measured racial and ethnic groups. Births dropped by 4 percent among white, black, and Latina women; 9 percent for Asian women; 3 percent for Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders; and 7 percent for Native American and Alaska native women.

Beginning in 2030, immigration is projected to overtake natural increase as the principal driver of US population growth, according to the US Census Bureau. In the absence of any immigration, the US population would stagnate, if not decline starting in 2030. With no population growth, the United States could experience permanently lowered economic growth; this is already occurring in rural counties, whose populations are shrinking. Not only is there a strong argument to allow an increased number of immigrants, but there is also a need to attract immigrants with special skills that could help the United States sustain its competitive edge. Conservative Republicans have been particularly vociferous in calling for skills-based immigration, which could help form the basis for a compromise on other issues that Democrats support—and Republicans largely oppose—such as providing a pathway for the United States’ 11 million undocumented immigrants to obtain citizenship.

The question is: how long does Washington want to wait to reform US immigration policies? The year 2030—when the US population could begin to decline—is only eight years away, and the last major reform of US immigration law was in 1990. Congress needs to better understand the demographic implications of inaction and consider the effects of a shrinking population on the United States’ ability to compete globally. With public attitudes becoming more accepting of immigrants, the Biden administration should begin educating the public on the demographic and economic future awaiting the United States if its immigration policies are not reformed soon.

Photo by Go Nakamura. Migrants seeking asylum in the US from India, walk to turn themselves in to the US border patrol after crossing the border from Mexico at Yuma, Arizona, US, January 23, 2022. REUTERS

Explore NAEI

Assumptions Testing Series

The New American Engagement Initiative’s Assumptions Testing series explores some of the foundational beliefs that guide US foreign policy. By questioning the conventional wisdom, and exposing these assumptions to close scrutiny, the series aims to open a new seam in the policy debate and generate a more lively, fruitful, and effective strategic dialogue – one that is capable of producing a sustainable, nonpartisan strategy for US global engagement.

Reality Check Series

The New American Engagement Initiative’s Reality Checks are short briefs dedicated to exploring a particular policy or set of policies, assessing their efficacy, and, where appropriate, proposing alternatives. Reality Checks are published regularly and tied to the news of the day or derive from NAEI’s Assumptions Testing series. All are succinct and straight-to-the-point. The briefs are designed for busy professionals anxious for pragmatic and timely policy options.

Engagement Reframed Series

The New American Engagement Initiative’s Engagement Reframed policy briefs reimagine and reframe the US approach to the world beyond traditional, narrow notions of US military dominance to fashion an achievable and sustainable form of US leadership in a world of many capable actors.

The post Engagement Reframed #4: Securing America’s demographic and economic future appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Amb. Fried interviewed in Bloomberg’s Balance of Power podcast on the Ukrainian refugee crisis

sbusch — Mon, 07 Mar 2022 21:52:00 +0000

The post Amb. Fried interviewed in Bloomberg’s Balance of Power podcast on the Ukrainian refugee crisis appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Quel avenir pour le Sahel?

Richard Cincotta and Stephen Smith — Mon, 07 Mar 2022 19:44:57 +0000

Télécharger le rapport complet

To read the English version of this report, click here.
Un enregistrement du lancement de rapport est disponible ici.

La donne démographique dans la région et ses retombées à l’horizon de 2045 2045

Le Sahel – soit, dans le cadre de cette étude, la région au sud du Sahara qui s’étend du Sénégal au Tchad en y incluant les douze états septentrionaux de la Fédération nigériane appliquant la charia — est dans une impasse démographique. Loin de produire un « dividende », la croissance rapide d’une population dont le profil d’âge est très jeune et dont le taux de fécondité reste très élevé submerge la capacité des états à produire des biens publics en quantité nécessaire. Cette donne démographique ralentit, voire bloque la croissance économique ; elle limite le progrès social et obère l’urbanisation par l’extension des bidonvilles. Au fil des décennies, ces conditions, qui se renforcent mutuellement, ont sapé la légitimité des gouvernements centraux et rendu les états de la région vulnérables à la propagation d’un populisme islamique radical et, plus généralement, à l’instabilité.

La période 2040-2045 est l’horizon temps de cette étude. D’ici à là, du fait du profil d’âge très jeune de leurs populations (quatre sur dix Sahéliens ont moins de quinze ans), les états de la région devront se doter de nouvelles infrastructures, augmenter la productivité agricole et élargir le marché du travail de façon à pouvoir répondre aux besoins pressants de cohortes de jeunes adultes toujours plus nombreuses qui, d’année en année, rivaliseront pour des emplois rémunérateurs au sein d’une main d’œuvre déjà largement sous-employée. En même temps, les gouvernements devront maintenir la sécurité collective. Leurs efforts pour y parvenir, quand bien même ils seraient sous-tendus par la meilleure volonté et une parfaite expertise, ne pourront s’approcher de leurs objectifs qu’à condition de s’attaquer en priorité à l’entrave majeure au développement, à savoir les taux de fertilité persistant à des niveaux très élevés.

S’ils veulent sortir de l’impasse actuelle, les gouvernements sahéliens devront réorienter une partie importante de leurs efforts de développement et moyens financiers vers des politiques et programmes visant à améliorer la condition féminine : en prévenant les mariages et grossesses précoces chez les adolescentes, en promouvant l’éducation des filles et en garantissant la pleine participation des femmes dans tous les secteurs publics et privés, à commencer par les lieux de travail. Car l’amélioration tous azimuts de la condition féminine est la condition sine qua non pour l’avènement de familles de taille plus réduite et aux membres mieux instruits. Or, l’insurrection djihadiste dans la région complique la mise en œuvre, en toute sécurité, de programmes promouvant les femmes, du moins en dehors des grandes villes sous le contrôle des gouvernements ; elle comporte aussi le risque que les bailleurs de fonds extérieurs du développement, notamment l’Union européenne et les États-Unis, se désengagent de la région pour ne plus chercher qu’à contenir de l’extérieur — à l’instar de ce qu’ils font déjà en Somalie — la menace djihadiste et la pression migratoire montante au Sahel.

Un forum de débat associé : perspectives politiques et projets régionaux

Pour prolonger Bette étude et ouvrir le débat à d’autres expertises, initiatives et projets menés dans le Sahel, le Conseil Atlantique a demandé à l’ONG américaine Organizing to Advance Solutions in the Sahel (OASIS), dédiée à l’accélération de la transition démographique dans la région, d’inviter à collaborer des experts ouest-africains en santé publique et en éducation. Dans une série de débats organisés à cette fin, ces professionnels ont confronté leurs idées quant aux mérites des approches politiques actuelles et des projets en cours dans la région, ainsi que des obstacles rencontrés et de leurs recommandations en la matière. Sous le titre « Accélérer la transition démographique », le synopsis de ces consultations est accessible ici. Par ailleurs, une note d’accompagnement d’OASIS dresse le tableau de l’aide internationale en matière de santé reproductive et pour l’éducation des filles dans le Sahel. La version intégrale de cette note, dont les principales informations ont été intégrées dans la présente étude, peut être consultée via le lien que voici.

Photo: Yvonne Etinosa.

Les résultats en un coup d’œil

Le profil d’âge d’une population et la « fenêtre démographique ». Pris dans leur ensemble, les pays du Sahel abritent parmi les populations les plus jeunes du monde. Qui plus est, selon la projection moyenne de fécondité de la Division de la population des Nations Unies (ONU), aucun pays sahélien ne devrait atteindre au cours des vingt à vingt-cinq années à venir — soit la période couverte par le présent rapport — la « fenêtre démographique », c’est-à-dire une période propice à la croissance économique et au développement du fait d’un profil d’âge favorable de la population (on parle à ce propos aussi de « dividende démographique »). Au cours des soixante-dix dernières années, c’est dans cette « fenêtre » — qui s’ouvre à partir d’un âge médian d’une population entre 25 et 26 ans — que d’autres pays ont généralement atteint des niveaux de développement moyens supérieurs (correspondant à cette catégorie de revenus, telle que définie par la Banque mondiale, et les niveaux plus élevés d’éducation et de survie des enfants qui y sont associés). D’ici à 2045, seuls la Mauritanie et le Sénégal s’approcheront de cette « fenêtre démographique », à en croire la projection actuelle de l’ONU à faible taux de fécondité — le scénario le plus optimiste de la série standard de la Division de la Population.

La croissance démographique. Les démographes de l’ONU estiment que la population totale des six états du Sahel est passée de près de 21 millions d’habitants, en 1960, à environ 103 millions en 2020, soit presque un quintuplement en soixante ans. Pour le nord du Nigéria, leurs estimations aboutissent à une trajectoire de croissance similaire, avec près de 78 millions d’habitants en 2020. Les populations combinées des six pays du Sahel et du nord du Nigéria devraient ainsi passer de l’estimation actuelle — 181 millions d’habitants — à une fourchette comprise entre 370 millions et 415 millions d’habitants en 2045. Une grande partie de cette croissance sera le résultat de l’actuel profil d’âge très jeune de ces populations et de l’élan démographique qui en résulte (en anglais, on parle à ce propos de age-structural momentum ou population momentum).

La baisse de la fécondité. Les taux globaux de fécondité de la région varient actuellement entre 4,6 enfants par femme au Sénégal et en Mauritanie et des taux de pré-transition démographique — plus de 6,5 enfants par femme — au Niger et dans les douze états du nord du Nigéria. Dans tout le Sahel, les taux de procréation chez les adolescentes restent extrêmement élevés, et la taille de la famille perçue comme étant « idéale » est généralement égale ou supérieure à la fécondité réalisée. Dans le passé, jusqu’aux séries de données de l’ONU en 2010, les projections de baisse de fécondité de la Division de la Population pour les pays du Sahel se sont toujours avérées trop optimistes. Cependant, des enquêtes locales plus récentes indiquent que la version actuelle de sa projection de fécondité moyenne n’est pas hors de portée. Ce scénario prédit qu’entre 2040 et 2045 la fécondité diminuera pour atteindre entre 4 et 3,4 enfants par femme dans la plupart des états du Sahel, et près de 4,7 au Niger. Il y a déjà des écarts significatifs dans l’utilisation de contraceptifs modernes et entre les modèles de procréation chez les femmes rurales au Sahel et les femmes urbaines plus instruites. Mais ces différences ne sont pas encore aussi prononcées qu’en Afrique de l’Est ou en Afrique australe, où la baisse de la fécondité est plus avancée et se poursuit à un rythme plus rapide.

La santé maternelle et infantile, ainsi que l’éducation des filles. Alors que la mortalité infantile a constamment diminué au Sahel, un enfant sur dix meurt encore avant l’âge de cinq ans au Mali et au Tchad. Par ailleurs, selon des estimations récentes de l’Organisation mondiale de la santé (OMS), plus de 40 pour cent des enfants de moins de cinq ans présentent un retard de croissance au Niger et au Tchad. Toujours selon l’OMS, le taux de mortalité maternelle au Tchad est le deuxième plus élevé du monde, tandis que la Mauritanie, le Mali et le Niger figurent parmi les vingt pays de la planète où la grossesse et l’accouchement sont les plus dangereux. Au Tchad et au Niger, seule une fille sur cinq en âge de l’être est en réalité inscrite dans un établissement d’enseignement secondaire ; ailleurs dans la région, le taux net de scolarisation des filles ne dépasse pas 40 pour cent dans le secondaire. Partout, les mariages d’adolescentes restent le principal obstacle à l’augmentation de leur niveau d’éducation.

L’autonomie et les droits des femmes. En dépit des conseils prodigués par des professionnels locaux de la santé et les exhortations des agences de l’ONU, les gouvernements sahéliens successifs n’ont, jusqu’à présent, pris aucune disposition effective pour faire appliquer les lois déjà existantes qui permettraient de réduire les mariages d’adolescentes, d’éliminer l’excision, de protéger les femmes contre les mariages forcés, de restreindre la polygamie ou, encore, de donner aux femmes des droits égaux de succession et la garde de leurs enfants en cas de séparation conjugale ou de veuvage. Alors que les défenseurs des droits des femmes considèrent que ces mesures sont indispensables pour faire évoluer les préférences vers des familles plus restreintes et mieux éduquées, les dirigeants craignent un retour de flamme politique. L’ampleur de la résistance organisée — comme, par exemple, lors des manifestations d’organisations islamiques au Mali en 2009, qui ont fait reculer les droits des femmes — a même convaincu certains professionnels du développement que, dans plusieurs états du Sahel, la seule voie de changement actuellement ouverte passe, à moyen terme, par un soutien financier accru à l’éducation des filles, aux réseaux des soins de santé pour les femmes et aux organisations de la société civile qui luttent pour l’égalité des femmes.

L’agriculture. Malgré le changement climatique, la hausse des températures locales et le récent ralentissement de l’expansion des terres cultivées, la croissance de la production céréalière a, depuis 1990, dépassé le rythme de la croissance démographique dans la région, qui est de l’ordre de 3 pour cent par an. Cependant, en raison de récoltes erratiques sur des terres exploitées de façon peu productive, de conflits armés et d’un grand nombre de personnes déplacées, les états de la région sont restés tributaires d’une aide alimentaire importante. Alors que l’irrigation par les eaux souterraines est susceptible de prendre de l’ampleur, les effets combinés de la croissance démographique future, du réchauffement climatique continu, de l’insurrection persistante et de la sécheresse périodique dans le Sahel rendent l’autosuffisance alimentaire très improbable dans un avenir prévisible.

Le pastoralisme. Après trois décennies d’augmentation relativement régulière des précipitations dans certaines parties de la région, le nombre de têtes de bétail (ajusté en fonction des différences de taille des espèces) a considérablement augmenté depuis les années 1990. Pourtant, les zones de pâturage les plus productives ont diminué parce qu’elles ont aussi été mises à contribution par des populations croissantes d’agriculteurs dans les zones plus arides. En même temps, le nombre des détenteurs de droits de pâturage a été multiplié et la végétation des zones convoitées s’est sensiblement dégradée, au point où la moins bonne qualité du fourrage a précipité le passage des bovins aux moutons et aux chèvres. Dans tout le Sahel, les agro-écologistes ont noté l’émergence de ce qu’ils appellent des systèmes de production « néo-pastoraux », lesquels se caractérisent par de riches propriétaires de grands troupeaux absents du terrain, la prolifération d’armes légères mais sophistiquées et, sur place, une sous-classe pastorale paupérisée et politiquement marginalisée qui est de plus en plus vulnérable à la radicalisation.

La sécurité. Depuis 2009, le Sahel fait face à des insurrections islamistes en pleine expansion. Cette tendance est susceptible de s’aggraver étant donné qu’aucun état de la région ne devrait atteindre, d’ici à 2045, la « fenêtre démographique » qui, selon les modèles fondés sur l’analyse du profil d’âge d’une population, inaugure une baisse substantielle du risque de conflits non-territoriaux (ou révolutionnaires) persistants. D’après ces modèles, les conflits en cours au Mali, Burkina Faso et Niger, ainsi qu’au Tchad et dans le nord du Nigéria sont ainsi statistiquement susceptibles de se poursuivre, à un certain niveau, pendant les vingt-cinq années à venir. Ce qui retardera d’autant l’amélioration de la condition féminine dans la mesure où, contrairement aux insurrections d’inspiration marxiste dans l’Asie du Sud-Est et en Amérique latine au cours de la seconde moitié du XXe siècle, la présence djihadiste dans les zones rurales du Sahel limite les progrès de l’éducation des femmes, leur autonomie et la fourniture de services de planification familiale..

L’urbanisation. Dans les six pays francophones du Sahel, la population urbaine — en croissance rapide — représente actuellement environ un tiers de la population et devrait s’approcher de la moitié d’ici à 2045. Les investissements dans le logement ont permis de réduire sensiblement la proportion des personnes vivant dans des bidonvilles, mais ces efforts ont été dépassés par une croissance urbaine telle qu’en chiffres absolus, la population des bidonvilles dans la région a presque doublé depuis 1990. À mesure que les opportunités génératrices de revenus se font rares dans les secteurs de l’agriculture et de l’élevage, les espoirs des hommes jeunes reposent sur le marché du travail urbain et les possibilités d’éducation susceptibles de les rendre aptes à l’emploi. Toutefois, l’emploi dans le secteur formel de l’économie demeurera l’exception rare dans la région, et l’urbanisation rapide continue ne manquera pas de poser de nouveaux problèmes de logement, d’accès à l’eau potable et à l’énergie, d’assainissement, de santé publique et de sécurité. Pour relever ces défis, les gouvernements locaux et les bailleurs de fonds étrangers devraient investir massivement dans l’aménagement urbain afin de stimuler les transitions vers une plus grande autonomie des femmes et vers des familles plus réduites, mieux nourries et mieux éduquées. Ce faisant, ils ouvriraient aussi de meilleures perspectives pour trouver un emploi en ville.

La migration. Entre 1990 et 2015, plus de 80 pour cent des flux migratoires à partir des six pays francophones du Sahel ont abouti au-delà des frontières de la région. Au cours de cette période, six migrants sur dix ayant quitté le Sahel se sont installés ailleurs en Afrique, alors que les quatre autres sont partis en Europe, en Amérique du Nord ou vers d’autres destinations. Le Sénégal et le Nigéria ont été les principales portes de sortie vers l’Europe et l’Amérique du Nord. À ces flux migratoires se sont ajoutés, dans la période 2015-2020, d’importants flux de réfugiés du fait de l’escalade des conflits dans le bassin du lac Tchad ainsi qu’au Mali, Niger et Burkina Faso. Pour les jeunes Sahéliens réduits à la précarité aussi bien dans les zones rurales pratiquant l’agriculture de subsistance que dans des bidonvilles, la sécheresse épisodique, les conflits persistants et les difficultés économiques durables représentent des facteurs d’incitation au départ. Dans cette partie aride et peu développée du monde, la taille de la population est importante au regard des ressources disponibles — d’où une pénurie de facteurs d’attraction pour rester sur place. La croissance démographique ne cesse de grossir les rangs des personnes dont les moyens de subsistance sont marginaux et qui pourraient être poussées à partir en cas de désastres naturels ou politiques pour aller chercher de meilleures opportunités ailleurs.

Modèles d’une transition accélérée

Ce rapport met en exergue les voices empruntées par trois états qui, par des politiques et programmes non-coercitifs, ont réussi à accélérer leur transition démographique en baissant leur taux de fécondité et en transformant le profil d’âge de leurs populations: la Tunisie, le Botswana et le Bangladesh. Bien que ces pays diffèrent géographiquement, culturellement et économiquement des pays sahéliens, les points de départ démographiques étaient similaires et sont comparables avec la situation actuelle dans les pays sahéliens. En effet, dans les trois états cités en exemple, l’âge médian de la population était inférieur à vingt ans (ce qui correspond à une pyramide d’âge très élargie à la base) et l’indicateur synthétique de fécondité se situait entre six et sept enfants par femme. Par ailleurs, mention est également faite des politiques et programmes en cours pour changer la donne démographique en Éthiopie, au Rwanda, au Kenya et au Malawi.

La Tunisie. Dans ce pays d’Afrique du Nord, la sortie accélérée de la transition démographique doit beau- coup au leadership inspiré de Habib Bourguiba, le pre- mier président de la Tunisie. Il a fait passer un ensemble de réformes favorables aux femmes, notamment des lois obligeant les parents à envoyer leurs filles à l’école, relevant l’âge légal du mariage, interdisant le port du voile et la polygamie, réduisant le pouvoir des imams locaux, autorisant les femmes à travailler en dehors de leur foyer, leur donnant plein droit à l’héritage, faisant du divorce un processus judiciaire et mettant en place dans tout le pays des centres de planification familiale volontaire.

Botswana. D’emblée, le professionnalisme des soins mis à disposition et leur coût abordable ont été les éléments-clés de l’effort de ce pays en matière de santé reproductive. Proposés gratuitement depuis 1970, les services de planification familiale ont été intégrés aux soins de santé maternelle et infantile dans tous les établissements de santé primaire locaux. En outre, le Botswana est l’un des rares pays d’Afrique subsaharienne où le taux de scolarisation des filles dans l’enseignement secondaire dépasse celui des garçons. Le Botswana a partagé avec les pays du Sahel le défi initial des taux élevés de mariages et de grossesses précoces. Mais sa bonne gouvernance et son utilisation judicieuse de ses rentes minières (diamantifère, notamment) le distingue de la plupart des pays du continent.

Le Bangladesh. La remarquable transformation démographique de ce pays est due à une administration sanitaire dévouée. Celle-ci a su mobiliser des dizaines de milliers d’agents de santé communautaires et de bénévoles en faisant équipe avec une organisation non-gouvernementale locale, le Comité pour le Progrès Rural au Bangladesh (BRAC). Elle a également utilisé à bon escient les fonds d’aide et les produits de santé apportés par les donateurs étrangers. Lancée en 1975, cette approche, soutenue par une campagne de communication en matière de santé publique à l’échelle du pays, a contribué à déclencher la demande de nouvelles méthodes de contraception à long terme (par exemple, des injectables et des implants), l’élargissement au niveau national du programme des travailleurs de village et la mise en place d’une chaîne d’approvisionnement en matière de santé publique.

Programmes ailleurs en Afrique. Forts du soutien de leurs dirigeants politiques et en s’inspirant des expériences en Asie et en Amérique latine, les programmes de santé reproductive en Éthiopie, au Rwanda, au Kenya et au Malawi ont gagné une grande visibilité et des soutiens importants de la part des bailleurs de fonds étrangers. Au cours des trois dernières décennies, une meilleure attention prêtée à l’éducation des filles, les efforts organisés pour accroître les droits des femmes en matière de procréation et leur participation politique, de même qu’une communication efficace en matière de santé publique, ont amélioré l’efficacité de ces programmes ciblant, à la fois, la santé maternelle et infantile ainsi que la planification familiale. Toutefois, d’importants problèmes de prestation de services et d’acceptation des contraceptifs modernes subsistent dans chacun de ces pays où les taux d’abandon de la contraception sont élevés et les écarts dans l’utilisation des contraceptifs restent grands entre les ménages ruraux à faible revenu et les familles urbaines plus riches.

Photo: Doug Linstedt.

Scénarios

Dans des situations de crise et d’incertitude, bâtir des scénarios d’avenir aide à réduire le champ des possibles et à déceler des éventualités peu visibles qui pourraient prendre les décideurs au dépourvu. Ces futurs fictifs permettent aux analystes de s’écarter des trajectoires d’événements les plus attendus et d’explorer d’autres possibilités sans avoir à imaginer des discontinuités ou à expliquer des enchaînements d’événements complexes qui, au cours de l’histoire, ont parfois conduit à des surprises. Dans un souci didactique de concision, notre étude présentera les trois scénarios suivants sous la forme de dépêches d’agence de presse (évidemment fictives mais plausibles), des coups de projecteur sur la situation du Sahel au début des années 2040

Du pareil au même. Lors d’un sommet interrégional tenu en 2043, l’Union Européenne (UE) et l’organisation des états sahéliens conviennent d’une nouvelle convention quinquennale sur la migration. L’accord contrôle et limite les flux de migrants en provenance et à travers le Sahel en échange d’une forte augmentation de l’aide financière de l’UE à la région. Ce scénario repose sur l’hypothèse que les inscriptions des filles à l’école ont continué à augmenter dans le Sahel et que l’utilisation de contraceptifs modernes y a lentement progressé en s’étendant des zones urbaines en plein essor aux villes de province, puis dans les villages. Cependant, les gouvernements n’ont guère mené d’actions soutenues pour renforcer les droits des femmes ou atténuer l’ordre patriarcal, qui tolère, entre autres, les mariages et grossesses précoces. En même temps, au nom d’une gouvernance islamique, les états du Sahel ont institué des compléments de revenu en espèces pour les mères à la maison, à la fois pour maintenir les femmes au foyer et pour leur offrir une relative indépendance financière. Par ailleurs, ces états ont mis en commun leurs ressources militaires afin de mieux contenir les groupes djihadistes, qui sont restés actifs, notamment, dans les zones rurales du Sahel.

La percée. Également en 2043, un sommet des états sahéliens regroupés au sein du G7 Sahel débat, sur la base d’un rapport parrainé par l’ONU, du retour- nement de situation en matière de santé reproductive dans plusieurs de ses pays membres et des progrès significatifs enregistrés dans d’autres. Un représentant local du Fonds des Nations Unies pour la Population (UNFPA) présente les résultats d’une grande enquête démographique et sanitaire. Il en ressort qu’au Sénégal et au Burkina Faso, l’indicateur synthétique de fécondité est passé sous la barre des trois enfants par femme, et que même le Niger semble emboîter le pas à la région dans sa marche vers une baisse de la fécondité. Des enquêtes locales menées dans plusieurs grandes villes du Sahel révèlent que la fécondité y est déjà proche du seuil de remplacement de deux enfants par femme et que l’afflux dans les maternités, ainsi que la taille des classes d’école, ont considérablement diminué. Mais, du fait de l’accroissement continu de la population (dû à l’élan démographique qui résulte de son profil d’âge très jeune), de la hausse des températures, de mauvaises récoltes périodiques et de la violence sporadique des djihadistes, les importations de céréales et l’aide alimentaire restent des éléments essentiels pour la sécurité alimentaire au Sahel.

Le décrochage. Lors d’une session du Conseil de sécurité de l’ONU en 2043, le Représentant spécial pour le Sahel du Secrétaire général appelle à une action internationale d’urgence pour faire face à une crise multiforme dans la région. Il décrit la faillite de plusieurs états sahéliens et les luttes territoriales entre seigneurs de la guerre. Il cite notamment la détérioration des conditions de sécurité dans le pays haoussa tant au Nigéria qu’au Niger, où des groupes djihadistes prophétiques ont proliféré et, dans certains cas, assis leur autorité politique. Il relève également que les aérodromes dans le Sahel sont devenus des plaques tournantes pour toutes sortes de trafics, y compris d’êtres humains. Il interpelle le Conseil de sécurité au sujet du Niger en proie à une famine d’une ampleur comparable à celle, catastrophique, du début des années 1980. Or, cette fois, ce pays doit nourrir une population de près de soixante millions d’habitants, au lieu des 7 millions à l’époque. Ce défi est d’autant plus grand que la porte d’entrée régionale qu’est le Sénégal pour l’aide alimentaire et d’autres formes d’assistance humanitaire est tout juste entr’ouverte, le gouvernement sénégalais n’étant guère coopératif, pas plus pour l’acheminement de secours que dans la lutte contre la migration illégale vers l’Europe.

Recommandations

Pour les donators d’aide internationale au Sahel, cette étude contient une recommandation d’ordre général: au cours des vingt à vingt-cinq années à venir, les transitions démographiques dans la région devraient comporter au moins une ou deux réussites exemplaires pouvant servir de réservoir d’expertise locale et de modèles pour la mobilisation communautaire susceptibles de se propager ailleurs. Le Sénégal semble être le meilleur candidat à l’accueil d’un tel effort concerté. Parmi les pays enclavés du Sahel, c’est peut-être encore le cas du Burkina Faso, à condition que ses zones rurales retrouvent paix et sécurité. Au Niger, au Mali et au Tchad, les interventions les plus efficaces seront sans doute celles qui améliorent la situation des femmes, développent à grande échelle les infrastructures dans les villes et forment des agents de santé suffisamment dévoués pour qu’ils acceptent de travailler dans les périphéries urbaines et les camps de réfugiés où les demandes d’éducation, de planification familiale et d’autres services de santé reproductive sont généralement élevées. Voici aussi les recommandations plus spécifiques de notre étude:

Mettre à profit l’urbanisation. Les gouvernements de la région devront redoubler d’efforts pour améliorer le niveau d’éduca- tion des filles et, avec le concours des bailleurs de fonds étrangers, augmenter considérablement les dépenses consacrées à la planning familial et aux autres services de santé reproductive. Ils devront par ailleurs élever le statut administratif de la planification familiale au rang de responsabilité ministérielle et renforcer sa visibil- ité par des campagnes d’information. De surcroît, les administrations chargées de l’éducation nationale et Dans ces villes en expansion, il sera également impératif que l’éducation des filles et la planification familiale sur une base volontaire, ainsi que des services de santé maternelle et infantile, se mettent en place, et que les femmes y aient un accès de plein droit aux emplois, tant dans le secteur privé que public.

Renforcer l’éducation des filles et la planification familiale. Les gouvernements de la région devront redoubler d’efforts pour améliorer le niveau d’éduca- tion des filles et, avec le concours des bailleurs de fonds étrangers, augmenter considérablement les dépenses consacrées à la planning familial et aux autres services de santé reproductive. Ils devront par ailleurs élever le statut administratif de la planification familiale au rang de responsabilité ministérielle et renforcer sa visibil- ité par des campagnes d’information. De surcroît, les administrations chargées de l’éducation nationale et de la santé publique devraient éliminer les obstacles bureaucratiques, traditionnels et religieux à la scolarisa- tion des filles et permettre un accès facile et abordable aux services de planification familiale aux personnes mariées aussi bien que célibataires. La mise à dispo- sition de ces services devrait être décentralisée pour être accessible dans les quartiers urbains comme dans les foyers ruraux ; à ce titre, des agents de santé villa- geois et des cliniques mobiles paraissent particulière- ment bien adaptés aux conditions sahéliennes. Il serait également utile que des organisations professionnelles de la santé créent une bibliothèque en ligne pour ren- dre accessibles des exemples de réussite locales dans les domaines de l’éducation des filles — leur éducation sexuelle et en matière de santé reproductive — et du planning familial.

Travailler avec des chefs religieux et politiques, ainsi que d’autres personnalités publiques; impliquer et informer les hommes. L’utilisation plus générale de contraceptifs modernes est souvent liée à des prises de position publiques de la part de chefs religieux, qui jugent le planning familial compatible avec la foi. Par ailleurs, des études récentes accréditent l’idée que les programmes qui informent et impliquent les hommes et s’appuient sur le soutien de dirigeants locaux ont les plus grandes chances de réussite dans le Sahel. Enfin, depuis des décennies, les communicants de la santé y travaillent déjà avec des producteurs de télévision et de radio, ainsi qu’avec des artistes — en particulier des acteurs connus de feuilletons ou talk-shows populaires — pour mieux diffuser des messages de service public concernant la santé maternelle et infantile, la nutrition, l’éducation sexuelle, le VIH/Sida, les droits des femmes ou le planning familial.

Renforcer les droits des femmes. Dans le Sahel, de grands progrès peuvent être accomplis en protégeant les filles et les femmes contre de multiples formes de discrimination et de violence, et en renforçant leurs droits dans le cadre du mariage. Cet effort commence par l’application des lois nationales déjà existantes, qui interdisent l’excision, les mariages forcés et le mariage précoce, avant l’âge de dix-huit ans. Une fois mariées, les femmes devraient avoir le droit d’obtenir un recours contre la violence conjugale, de demander le divorce et de se voir confier la garde des enfants en cas de séparation, de divorce ou de décès du conjoint. Les femmes devraient aussi jouir d’un plein droit de recours en justice et d’un traitement égal devant les tribunaux aux affaires familiales gérés par l’État ; elles ne devraient pas rester tributaires des jugements rendus par des tribunaux religieux et traditionnels, qui n’ont généralement pas su les protéger, pas plus que leurs enfants, contre des préjudices physiques, psychologiques et économiques. Là où la résistance politique a fait reculer les efforts législatifs visant à accroître les droits des femmes (comme, par exemple, au Mali, comme déjà indiqué), le soutien qui est leur apporté par des coopératives ou des organisations professionnelles ou éducatives peut ouvrir des voies alternatives aux femmes sahéliennes pour accéder à une plus grande autonomie et à des fonctions dirigeantes.

Apporter des services aux minorités marginalisées. Les ministères de la santé et de l’édu- cation devraient veiller à ce que les minorités marginalisées, quel que soit leur isolement géo- graphique ou culturel, bénéficient de leurs pro- grammes de planning familial ou en faveur d’une meilleure éducation des filles et du renforce- ment des droits des femmes. Les expériences antérieures dans d’autres parties du monde portent à croire que les disparités régionales, socio-économiques, ethniques ou de caste en matière de fécondité tendent à se solidifier en des inégalités difficiles à effacer et génératrices d’animosités et de tensions politiques.

Promouvoir des efforts au bénéfice des femmes dans tous les projets de développement ou d’équipement. Qu’ils soient gouvernementaux, privés ou financés par des bail- leurs de fonds étrangers, tous les projets de développement ou d’équipement au Sahel, dans le domaine agricole ou d’autres secteurs économiques, devraient contenir des clauses pour promouvoir une meilleure instruction des filles et des femmes, pour leur aménager un accès plus facile aux services de santé reproductive et pour renforcer leurs droits et leur indépendance financière. Aucun projet soutenu par des donateurs internationaux ne devrait permettre aux pouvoirs publics, partis politiques ou chefs religieux ou traditionnels d’entraver l’émancipation des femmes.

Gérer les tensions autour du partage des res- sources entre agriculteurs et pasteurs. Dans une région aride de plus en plus peuplée, l’avenir des moyens de subsistance agricoles et pastoraux dépendra du développement de l’irrigation, de l’intensification de l’agropastoralisme (soit une intégration plus poussée des utilisations agricoles et pastorales des terres) et de l’accès aux marchés urbains. En vue de ce futur plus peuplé, les gouvernements sahéliens devraient limiter le nombre des grands propriétaires de troupeaux de bétail ne résidant pas sur leurs terres de pâturage, protéger les pâturages de l’empiètement par des agriculteurs et aider les éleveurs à lutter contre le vol de bétail. En parallèle, les pouvoirs publics devraient favoriser l’industrie agro-alimentaire de transformation génératrice de valeur ajoutée, promouvoir la coopération entre agriculteurs et éleveurs et améliorer les moyens de transport et voies d’accès aux marchés urbains.

Protéger les acquis du développement par des investissements dans la sécurité locale. Des groupes djihadistes tendent à se multiplier dans le Sahel et à étendre leur emprise. De ce fait, les poches géographiques où des responsables locaux et une majorité de la population soutiennent l’éducation des filles et le renforcement des droits des femmes deviennent les cibles de choix des militants armés. Aussi, ces communautés locales et leurs dirigeants devraient-ils bénéficier d’une protection spéciale par la police ou les unités antiterroristes.

Télécharger le rapport complet

Read the report in English

Report

Nov 4, 2021

What future for the Western Sahel?

By Richard Cincotta and Stephen Smith

The Western Sahel is in a demographic impasse. To work their way out of this dilemma, Sahelian governments must shift a significant part of their development focus and funding to policies and programs aimed at preventing adolescent marriages and childbearing, promoting girls’ education, securing women’s participation in public- and private-sector workplaces, and achieving small, healthy, well-educated families.

Africa Energy & Environment

The Foresight, Strategy, and Risks Initiative (FSR) provides actionable foresight and innovative strategies to a global community of policymakers, business leaders, and citizens.

EXPLORE THE INitiative

The post Quel avenir pour le Sahel? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Asat quoted in Radio Free Europe on asylum-seeker from China fleeing Ukraine amidst Russian invasion

Atlantic Council — Thu, 03 Mar 2022 16:16:00 +0000

The post Asat quoted in Radio Free Europe on asylum-seeker from China fleeing Ukraine amidst Russian invasion appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Plitsas in Voice of America on Afghan evacuation

Atlantic Council — Wed, 02 Mar 2022 15:14:00 +0000

On March 2, Forward Defense nonresident senior fellow Alex Plitsas was cited in an article in Voice of America titled “US Urges Taliban to Allow Free Passage of Afghans.” Plitsas estimates that 10,000 Afghans have escaped the Taliban in the last six months and that NGOs have spent approximately $100 million in the evacuation process.

Fellow

Alex Plitsas

Afghanistan Crisis Management

The post Plitsas in Voice of America on Afghan evacuation appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Qaddour quoted in the New York Times on correlations between Middle Eastern and Ukrainian refugee crisis

Atlantic Council — Sat, 26 Feb 2022 14:18:00 +0000

The post Qaddour quoted in the New York Times on correlations between Middle Eastern and Ukrainian refugee crisis appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Qaddour joins What Are You Going To Do With That to discuss the experience of being an immigrant and her lessons from policy and research

Atlantic Council — Thu, 17 Feb 2022 14:53:00 +0000

The post Qaddour joins What Are You Going To Do With That to discuss the experience of being an immigrant and her lessons from policy and research appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Evacuating noncombatants from Ukraine will be a mess. The West needs to ditch the blame game this time.

Thomas S. Warrick — Wed, 16 Feb 2022 16:46:39 +0000

Noncombatant evacuation operations (NEOs) are among the most complex non-lethal operations the United States carries out. They call on US military, diplomatic, humanitarian, and homeland-security capabilities to swiftly get civilians away from an active war zone or natural disaster to safety—prioritizing US citizens and those of allies.

Scenes of displaced Americans, allies, and refugees fleeing a possible further Russian invasion of Ukraine will cause outrage and heartbreak. As we saw with the US withdrawal from Afghanistan last August, some in the news media and political partisans will cast blame on their favorite political punching bags.

This would be wrong.

The Biden administration has been planning for the consequences of an offensive since November. But as a national security professional who was involved in most US NEOs over the past twenty years, I can confidently state: Even with the best planning in the world, a Russian invasion of Ukraine, if it happens, will result in images of chaos on cable news and social media. But it’s crucial to keep in mind that this chaos is the responsibility of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Somewhere between seven thousand and thirty thousand Americans are currently in Ukraine, and although they’ve been told to leave immediately—because US forces will not evacuate them if Russia moves in—many will likely stay until the tanks start rolling, if previous NEOs are a guide. The United States has sent six thousand troops to Poland to help receive Americans and others who make it that far.

Within hours of any Russian missiles landing and tanks crossing the border, a mass migration will begin. Many Ukrainians will head west, likely in harsh winter weather, toward western Ukraine, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania. Most people will have only the clothes they wear and what they can carry or fit into a car. Airports will shut down, roads will be jammed, and supplies of gasoline and diesel will dry up. Some drivers will have no choice but to abandon their vehicles by the roadside, and food deliveries will stop.

None of this chaos is unique to an evacuation from Ukraine. But it will be more challenging than previous evacuations for five reasons.

First, a Russian military operation will shut down Ukraine’s airports, especially if it includes, as Atlantic Council experts predict, precision long-range missile attacks. If any airports remain open, Putin would probably be unwilling to shoot down a US evacuation flight during a Russian offensive, but recklessness cannot be ruled out. Therefore, most people will try to travel overland.

Second, winter weather complicates humanitarian operations. Snow and mud cause civilian vehicles to get bogged down more than military ones. Most previous NEOs happened in desert countries or in the summer, such as during Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia. If temperatures stay below freezing, those fleeing outdoors face health hazards which people in temperate climates do not. That not only endangers people’s health but also threatens deliveries of water and other necessities.

Third, Russian cyberattacks, which will occur in concert with a ground offensive, are likely to shut down much, if not almost all, of Ukraine’s critical infrastructure. Water treatment plants could falter, electricity could be cut, and millions of people would be forced to shelter in place if they don’t head west.

Fourth, Russia’s clearly documented disinformation campaign could sow disunity among Western partners in an effort to slow or limit the Western response. In the United States, Russian disinformation could force the administration to spend time getting sufficient congressional support for assistance efforts. Meanwhile, the reluctance of some European countries to help Ukrainian refugees could leave many in dire straits—or force the Ukrainian government to expend scarce resources on internally displaced people instead of defending Ukrainian territory from invading Russian troops.

Fifth, the United States has suffered a brain drain of expertise when it comes to NEOs. Operations of the scale required to get thousands of Americans out of eastern Poland are relatively rare. Many of the most experienced US diplomats and planners left during the Trump administration, when their expertise was disparaged, and many felt pressured to quit.

There’s still much the United States can do to take care of its citizens and reduce the widespread suffering of a potential Russian invasion. Humanitarian aid will need to flow generously to millions of Ukrainians whose livelihoods will be torn away until they can re-establish themselves. The world’s refugee assistance funds are already low as a result of addressing the needs of refugees from Syria and Afghanistan, as well as war-torn Yemen. Any parts of Ukraine not under Russian assault or occupation—for example, around the western city of Lviv—could serve as Ukrainian government distribution points for that aid.

Otherwise, we are looking at the prospect of tent cities in eastern Poland until thousands of refugees can be assimilated elsewhere. Those populations should be relocated as quickly as possible, because while a Russian occupation of Ukraine can be reversed, it will not be reversed overnight.

For its part, United States will need to accept its own share of refugees, as it has done many times before. Indeed, history shows that the American experience is enriched by refugees escaping oppression to find freedom.

Another vital step for the United States and the West is to show unity against Russian aggression. Astonishingly, some current and former US officials and media figures seem unaware that by blaming anyone other than Putin for this chaos, they’re actually playing into Russia’s disinformation campaign. Somewhat ironically, Vladimir Lenin himself is believed to have written about Westerners who “will close their eyes” to “reality and will thus transform themselves into men who are deaf, dumb and blind.”

A Russian invasion of Ukraine will test Western resolve and values, including the coordination of a necessary humanitarian response. But the Russian disinformation campaign is an equally important test: Western leaders and the public need to understand that in a further invasion of Ukraine, Putin—and no one else—would be to blame for any chaos that follows.

Thomas S. Warrick is a senior advisor with the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative and a nonresident senior fellow at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security’s Forward Defense practice. Prior to joining the Council, he was the deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism policy at the US Department of Homeland Security.

The post Evacuating noncombatants from Ukraine will be a mess. The West needs to ditch the blame game this time. appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The Afghan refugee crisis: How to resurrect the global refugee resettlement coalition

Rory Stewart — Tue, 15 Feb 2022 17:00:00 +0000

DOWNLOAD PDF

Attaching revised PDF and ISSUU code below:

Six months after the fall of Kabul, the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated at an alarming rate. The threat of famine and economic collapse looms over the entire country. Consequently, many Afghans are fleeing both these appalling conditions and the oppressive Taliban that now control the country.

However, Afghan asylum seekers will be facing difficult circumstances even after they leave their country. The global resettlement order remains severely atrophied after the refugee crisis of the mid-2010s, leaving it unable to face the challenge in a rise in Afghan refugees or for other future refugee crises. As the humanitarian tragedy in Afghanistan intensifies, a new global refugee resettlement coalition has to be formed to address the escalating refugee crisis.

The primary objectives of this report, written by Rory Stewart, Senior Fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute and former UK development minister, are to:

outline the ways in which states have already attempted to respond to the Afghan refugee crisis
discuss realistic and measured ways to address the refugee crisis without undermining border security
improve transatlantic and global coordination in reinvigorating standards on refugee resettlement across the world.

This report outlines how the refugee resettlement coalition can be restructured. Beginning with the United States, United Kingdom, and coalition of likely EU member states (such as France, Germany, Benelux, and the Nordic countries), these countries can resettle approximately 320,000 refugees annually. This would happen if each country committed to taking in 0.05% of their respective populations each year: 33,026 for the United Kingdom, 166,400 for the United States, and 120,000 for the likely coalition of willing EU member states.

The report also explains how the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated significantly since the fall of Kabul, why Afghans are leaving their home country in increasing numbers, and why the international community must reinvigorate the global resettlement coalition to address this crisis and future refugee crises.

Event Recap Feb 3, 2022

Event recap: Women’s role in the future of Afghanistan

By Atlantic Council

On January 19, the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center and the US-Afghan Women’s Council co-hosted a conversation on women’s role in the future of Afghanistan.

Afghanistan Civil Society

SouthAsiaSource Feb 1, 2022

Afghanistan needs a political roadmap to reduce economic hardship

By Omar Samad

Afghans in general are aware that inside the country the Taliban are in the driver’s seat, but the vehicle cannot go far without having other major constituencies onboard as part of a new social contract.

Afghanistan Economy & Business

New Atlanticist Dec 13, 2021

Afghanistan is about to collapse. Here’s what the US must do about it.

By John F. Campbell, Ryan Crocker, James Cunningham, James Dobbins, Hugo Llorens, P. Michael McKinley, John Nicholson, Ronald E. Neumann, Richard Olson, David Petraeus, and Earl Anthony Wayne

Eleven former US ambassadors and commanders issue an urgent warning to Washington and its allies.

Afghanistan Civil Society

The post The Afghan refugee crisis: How to resurrect the global refugee resettlement coalition appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Cooper in Inkstick: Planning for a Ukrainian refugee crisis

Atlantic Council — Fri, 11 Feb 2022 14:08:00 +0000

New American Engagement Initiative Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

On February 11, Cooper was published in Inkstick advocating for the creation of a comprehensive Ukrainian refugee strategy. In light of the potential for millions of Ukrainians to become refugees if war breaks out, Cooper argues that the West needs to be ready to assist with humanitarian aid.

“Refugee resettlement is a complex process, particularly at the potential scale of millions of refugees, but it is doable with proper planning and coordination between the countries and organizations involved. While the United States is protected by geography from the immediate consequences of war in Ukraine, it has an opportunity to help Ukrainians and its European partners by being proactive in its approach to a refugee crisis. Doing so will help to prevent severe problems further down the road.”

More about our expert

Former staff

Evan Cooper

Africa National Security

The post Cooper in Inkstick: Planning for a Ukrainian refugee crisis appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Warrick joins NBC News to discuss the Afghan refugee crisis and the SIV program

Atlantic Council — Thu, 03 Feb 2022 20:25:00 +0000

The post Warrick joins NBC News to discuss the Afghan refugee crisis and the SIV program appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Future of DHS Project identifies the challenges and opportunities to using biometrics at US borders

Madison Littlepage — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 00:49:00 +0000

On January 31, the Scowcroft Center’s Forward Defense practice and its Future of DHS Project launched an issue brief and hosted a virtual event exploring how the US Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Customs and Border Protection (CBP) can safely utilize biometrics—identification through individual characteristics like fingerprints and facial recognition—to secure US ports of entry.

The event featured keynote remarks by CBP deputy commissioner Troy A. Miller, framing the event by outlining how biometrics can support CBP’s mission. The ensuing panel, moderated by Future of DHS Project director Thomas S. Warrick, considered the challenges and opportunities to integrating biometrics into CBP operations. Featured on the panel were managing director of immigration and cross-border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center Theresa Cardinal Brown; SAIC’s vice president of DHS, CBP, and TSA border security solutions Craig P. McIntire; Forward Defense nonresident senior fellow Seth Stodder; and former CBP official John Wagner.

Troy Miller: How can biometric systems support CBP’s mission?

In 2021, CBP processed approximately five hundred thousand passengers daily-only half the number seen pre-pandemic. The agency is congressionally mandated to inspect and verify all people and cargo entering and exiting the United States. With travel and trade levels rising, Miller explained the challenges for CBP to meet inspection requirements.
According to Miller, “biometric facial comparison technology is a key tool in CBP’s long term vision for secure, seamless travel, and for streamlining identity verification.” CBP has already implemented biometric facial comparison technology at multiple points of entry, processing over 131 million travelers.
Miller emphasized that biometric technology benefits both the airlines and travelers, reducing passenger processing times by almost 90 percent, and that CBP is committed to safeguarding privacy and maintain transparency throughout the process.

Seth Stodder: Can biometrics enhance security and facilitate lawful trade?

Stodder reflected on post-9/11 homeland security challenges – with maximized security leading up to fourteen-hour delays at US borders-he highlighted the role of biometrics in meeting what CBP commissioner Robert Bonner coined as the “twin goals” of security and the facilitation of lawful travel and trade.
CBP cannot eliminate all risks, but to achieve these goals it has taken steps to improve identification and mitigation of threats. Stodder pointed to three key elements of CBP’s risk management: 1) CBP collects and analyzes information on travelers and cargo, focusing its efforts on higher and unknown risks; 2) CBP utilizes biometric technology to scan cargo and people more efficiently; and 3) strengthens its partnership with the private sector, US allies and partners, and international organizations.

John Wagner: What existing requirements and processes are in place for CBP’s use of biometrics?

While DHS was mandated to collect biometric data from foreigners entering and exiting the nation following 9/11, Wagner asserted that US travel infrastructure was not built to accommodate this requirement. In 2013, CBP inherited this responsibility due to its ability to implement biometrics and other key technologies into preexisting processes.
In response to the hesitation of some Americans embracing biometrics, Wagner stressed that, while all individuals traveling and out of the country must go through security, anyone is able to opt for a manual inspection. Furthermore, he warned that the US passport remains vulnerable to imposter and criminal manipulation without a biometric component.

Craig McIntire: How should biometric systems be designed and implemented at US borders?

In designing new biometric applications, companies should strive for operational efficiency and effectiveness, speeding up processing times while also increasing accuracy. According to McIntire, facial recognition technology takes less than a second to verify a passenger-as opposed to an officer manually checking documents-and is best equipped to handle high travel volume.
McIntire also stated that agencies and companies must comply with privacy impact assessments (PIAs), which regulate requirements for data retention and biometric use. Moreover, during the testing phase of any application, stakeholders must resolve security vulnerabilities to limit malign access to and use of passenger data.

Theresa Cardinal Brown: How can the US government communicate the value of biometrics?

Brown explained that the lack of public trust in the government’s use of biometrics mainly stems from a lack of understanding the technology. To counter these fears, the government must be transparent about the technology it employs and how individual information is used. Congressional and external oversight might prove helpful in building trust here.
While CBP is committed to using biometric data only for its expressed purposes, Brown recognized the importance in holding these organization that data is shared with to the same high standard.

You can watch “Biometrics at the Border: Balancing Security, Convenience, and Civil Liberties” here. To learn the latest on the Future of DHS, visit here. For more information about the Atlantic Council’s Forward Defense practice, visit the website here and subscribe for more.

Madison Littlepage is a Young Global Professional for Forward Defense in the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

Read the issue brief

Issue Brief

Jan 31, 2022

Biometrics at the border: Balancing security, convenience, and civil liberties

By Seth Stodder, Thomas S. Warrick

Forward Defense nonresident senior fellows Seth Stodder and Tom Warrick consider how US Customs and Border Protection can employ biometrics for safer, more efficient border operations.

Defense Policy Defense Technologies

Explore Forward Defense

The post Future of DHS Project identifies the challenges and opportunities to using biometrics at US borders appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Warrick on NBC to discuss Afghan refugees

Atlantic Council — Mon, 31 Jan 2022 21:16:00 +0000

On January 31, Forward Defense and Rafik Hariri Middle East Programs nonresident senior fellow Thomas Warrick joined NBC to assess the White House’s progress in bringing over Afghan refugees since August 2021. Warrick discusses the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program for Afghans and how DHS scans through thousands of refugees for potential terrorist threats.

Most of the [Afghan] people who apply for the [SIV] program have clean records and can be admitted without any problems…What we have seen so far out of the statistics that DHS released is only eighty-eight people turned out to be really problematic out of one thousand.
Thomas Warrick

Fellow

Alex Plitsas

Afghanistan Crisis Management

The post Warrick on NBC to discuss Afghan refugees appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Biometrics at the border: Balancing security, convenience, and civil liberties

Seth Stodder, Thomas S. Warrick — Mon, 31 Jan 2022 15:22:31 +0000

FORWARD DEFENSE

ISSUE BRIEF RELEASE

Download pdf

Technological advances in biometrics—which include everything from fingerprints to facial recognition—hold the key to unlocking safer, more efficient US border operations.

In the aftermath of the tragic attacks of September 11, 2001, and following the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), inaugural Customs and Border Protection (CBP) commissioner Robert Bonner set the “twin goals” of border security and facilitation of lawful travel and trade. In this issue brief, Forward Defense nonresident senior fellow Seth Stodder and director of the Future of DHS Project Thomas Warrick argue that DHS must safely integrate biometrics into US border operations to reach these goals in an evolving security environment.

A new era of border security

For centuries, border agencies worldwide have leveraged biometric data to track the movement of people across geographies. Now, in alignment with clear mandates, governing bodies have access to advanced facial recognition capabilities that make cross-border travel more efficient, seamless, and secure. For example, US CBP’s Traveler Verification System (TVS) pilot program is already in place at ports, crossings, and transportation hubs across the United States—operationalizing comprehensive biometric entry and exit processes—and similar systems are being deployed around the world.

Government agencies and private industry are beginning to use [biometrics] to develop and deploy “smart borders,” to both increase security and process lawful trade and travel faster than before.

Seth Stodder & Thomas S. Warrick

At the nexus of technology and human rights

Yet, despite the success demonstrated by the TVS pilot and similar programs, the Biden administration faces hesitation and distrust from Americans in expanding biometric data collection. Concerns include:

Fear of a surveillance state – Autocratic states weaponize biometrics to achieve persistent surveillance, fueling valid calls for data-use safeguards. Congressional action must provide essential checks against this misuse of data and technology.
Data protection standards – CBP must be capable of protecting against cyber hacks, an issue broadly applicable to federal government and resolved through strong governance, oversight, and cybersecurity funding.
Accuracy and bias issues – Biometric algorithms must rate high in accuracy and low in bias, as CBP’s TVS pilot does. Nonetheless, transparency and continued supervision is vital.

These considerations can be managed with appropriate regulations, oversight, and funding.

Recommendations & next steps

CBP’s use of biometrics at the border is an essential tool in achieving the “twin goals” of security and facilitation. Recommended steps forward include the following:

The Biden Administration should continue with CBP’s facial-biometric programs and move to finalize permanent expansion.
CBP should continue improving facial recognition algorithms in coordination with the Transportation Security Administration’s Pre-Check program. CBP should continue its pilot version of Simplified Arrival for vehicle traffic at land borders.
DHS should carefully consider and adopt most of the recommendations of the Homeland Security Advisor Council’s Biometrics Subcommittee. DHS should empower its Office of Strategy, Policy, and Plans to lead the development of DHS-wide policies on biometrics.
DHS and CBP should expeditiously move to spend funds and expand biometrics capabilities at the borders. Congress should appropriate additional funds for operations of biometrics systems.

With strategic technological investment and deliberate safeguards, CBP can evolve to keep pace with growing traffic at US borders.

Generously sponsored by

About the authors

Fellow

Seth Stodder

Forward Defense Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Coronavirus Cybersecurity

Fellow

Thomas S. Warrick

Nonresident Senior Fellow, Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative

Forward Defense Rafik Hariri Center & Middle East programs

National Security Terrorism

Watch the event

Online Event Mon, January 31, 2022 • 2:00 pm ET

Biometrics at the border: Balancing security, convenience, and civil liberties

Homeland security experts discuss how US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) can leverage biometrics to improve operations at US entry points with Forward Defense and its Future of DHS Project.

Crisis Management Mexico Migration National Security

About the Future of DHS Project

The Future of DHS Project

Providing recommendations to assist US national security officials as they transform the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to protect the homeland from coronavirus, threats to democracy, and other future threats.

Explore the project

Sign up for updates from Forward Defense to hear the latest on the trends, technologies, and military challenges shaping tomorrow.

Name
First Last
Email*
Email
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

The post Biometrics at the border: Balancing security, convenience, and civil liberties appeared first on Atlantic Council.

#BritainDebrief – Crisis Special: Are the UK and EU ready for Ukrainian Refugees? A Debrief from Gerald Knaus

Ben Judah — Fri, 28 Jan 2022 16:34:05 +0000

If Russia invades Ukraine, what about the refugees?

As last minute negotiations between NATO and Russia continue, Europe Center Senior Fellow Ben Judah interviewed Gerald Knaus, founding chairman of the European Stability Initiative, for this week’s #BritainDebrief for the Atlantic Council. If Russia invades, is it possible to predict how large the refugee wave may be? Can Germany and Poland handle a potential wave? How would Ukraine’s existing 90-day visa free travel arrangement with the EU but not the UK impact a potential refugee crisis? How can London help?

You can watch #BritainDebrief on YouTube and as a podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

MEET THE #BRITAINDEBRIEF HOST

Fellow

Ben Judah

Economy & Business European Union

Europe Center

Providing expertise and building communities to promote transatlantic leadership and a strong Europe in turbulent times.

The Europe Center promotes the transatlantic leadership and strategies required to ensure a strong Europe.

The post #BritainDebrief – Crisis Special: Are the UK and EU ready for Ukrainian Refugees? A Debrief from Gerald Knaus appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Stodder in the New York Times on international perceptions of US migration policy

Atlantic Council — Thu, 27 Jan 2022 20:29:00 +0000

On January 27, Forward Defense nonresident senior fellow Seth Stodder was quoted in the New York Times article titled “A surge at sea: Migrants seek entry to U.S. aboard flimsy boats.”

The perception among migrants and smugglers is that Biden has essentially loosened the rules [regarding border security].
Seth Stodder

Fellow

Alex Plitsas

Afghanistan Crisis Management

The post Stodder in the New York Times on international perceptions of US migration policy appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Can Honduras’ new leader spark hope for the troubled Northern Triangle?

dpeleschuk — Wed, 26 Jan 2022 17:47:45 +0000

Hobbled by widespread corruption and a pervasive drug trade that fuels a seemingly endless cycle of violence, Honduras will swear in its first female head of state on Thursday.

But President-elect Xiomara Castro, who has pledged to clean up her country, won’t be the only powerful woman drawing attention that day: She’ll take office as US Vice President Kamala Harris—the White House point person for the Northern Triangle—looks on.

Both face the daunting challenge of helping to reverse the root causes of outward migration from the region of around thirty-three million people. Jason Marczak, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center, weighs in on how they plan to tackle that task—and whether they’ll succeed.

How did Castro pledge to reform Honduras, and what expectations does she face?

Castro enters office following a campaign in which improving transparency and combating corruption were her top priorities. She has already committed to reaching out to the United Nations for help setting up an anti-corruption commission. Success here is fundamental to the country’s future, since Honduras ranks among the world’s most corrupt countries—on par with Iraq and Zimbabwe—according to Transparency International. Corruption is pervasive across government, with pandemic procurement offering further opportunities for crooked officials. The outgoing president, Juan Orlando Hernández, even faces possible extradition to the United States for drug trafficking. Hopes are high that she will make inroads, but a political feud in congress may present roadblocks for her agenda.

What role has Honduras played in contributing to broader regional instability—and how much will Castro feel pressured to reverse those dynamics?

The greatest threat to stability in Central America is currently in Nicaragua, just south of Honduras. There, President Daniel Ortega—who fraudulently assumed another term in office this month—is systematically dismantling democratic freedoms and civil liberties. Nicaraguans are fleeing, partly through Honduras, in hope of reaching the United States. US action beyond individual sanctions is needed to quell the crisis there and to provide additional financial and technical assistance to help ease the migration pressures on both Honduras and Costa Rica (which is south of Nicaragua). But providing economic opportunity and greater security in Honduras will also directly alleviate pressure at the US southern border: Last year, more Hondurans arrived there than from any of the three northern Central America countries. Honduras is also a stop along the migrant journey for many Haitians, Cubans, and others.

Harris has been designated as Biden’s point person in the region. How can she leverage that role to help tackle the root causes of migration?

This has been a priority for the Biden-Harris administration from the outset—but it’s not a short-term fix. The problems are entrenched in societies like Honduras. But US partnership has the potential to put willing countries on the right track: Harris is using her role to lead a US government-wide strategy to address economic insecurity, corruption, and criminal violence, as well as to advance efforts to improve human rights and gender-based violence. For example, her Call to Action for private-sector investment in the region, announced last May, has yielded $1.2 billion in commitments. What Harris now needs is more willing partners in the region; Castro has the opportunity to be one.

To what extent can any single country (whether Honduras or others) lead the charge in addressing the collective ills of the Northern Triangle?

The challenges of northern Central America cannot be resolved by any one country. Each country has its own history and set of challenges—as well as an opportunity to address them. But while domestic political circumstances require a country-by-country approach, the region does share overarching challenges that require sustained, committed US support and partnership. Seismic political differences in the region mean that leaders rarely come together to talk; investment is also more attractive from a regional vantage point. In the past, the United States has found opportunities to cajole Central American countries to find common ground when otherwise not possible. But that will be an uphill battle: Besides dealing with stubborn autocrats such as El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, Washington must also contend with an increasingly assertive China in Central America.

The post Can Honduras’ new leader spark hope for the troubled Northern Triangle? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Slavin quoted by the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI) on Biden’s Middle East Policy

Atlantic Council — Thu, 20 Jan 2022 20:06:00 +0000

The post Slavin quoted by the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI) on Biden’s Middle East Policy appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Infographic: What’s ahead for Venezuela after January 5, 2022

ibernhard — Wed, 05 Jan 2022 20:01:17 +0000

Three years since the interim government came to be, Venezuela’s political crisis remains unresolved. Opposition forces continue to face deep challenges – both internal and external – to restore democratic institutions. The Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center at the Atlantic Council created an infographic that looks back at the interim government’s trajectory since 2019 and offers key opportunities to watch in 2022 and beyond.

Download infographic

Venezuela’s interim government: 2019-2021

Looking back on the past three years of Venezuela’s interim government.

Opportunities in 2022 and beyond

Challenges and opportunities for the interim government in 2022, as well as updated data on Venezuela’s humanitarian and economic crisis.

Note: If you are downloading the infographic on a handheld device, please rotate your screen horizontally for an optimal view. Screen zooming is encouraged as you scroll through the text and figures.

Sources

https://www.icj.org/es/venezuela-falta-de-acceso-al-agua-potable-agrava-la-pandemia-por-covid-19/

https://www.eltiempo.com/mundo/venezuela/cual-es-el-estado-actual-del-sistema-electrico-de-venezuela-573379

http://caritasvenezuela.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Boletin-SAMAN_Caritas-Venezuela_Abril-Julio2020-r1_compressed.pdf

https://reporting.unhcr.org/sites/default/files/UNHCR%20Venezuela%20situation%20fact%20sheet%20January%202021.pdf

https://assets.website-files.com/5d14c6a5c4ad42a4e794d0f7/6153ad6fb92e4428cada4fb7_Presentacion%20ENCOVI%202021%20V1.pdf

https://assets.website-files.com/5d14c6a5c4ad42a4e794d0f7/6153ad6fb92e4428cada4fb7_Presentacion%20ENCOVI%202021%20V1.pdf

https://www.cinco8.com/periodismo/rumbo-a-la-hiperinflacion-mas-larga-de-la-historia/

https://www.imf.org/en/Countries/VEN

https://observatoriodefinanzas.com/indice-de-remuneracion-del-trabajador-venezolano-es-47-mensuales-en-el-sector-publico/

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-venezuela-cafe-con-leche-index/?terminal=true

Warrick in Bloomberg Government on DHS Office of Strategy, Policy, and Plans

Atlantic Council — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 20:22:00 +0000

On December 13, Forward Defense nonresident senior fellow Thomas S. Warrick was quoted in Bloomberg Government in an article titled “Homeland Security ‘Nerve Center’ Chief Seeks Broad Policy Sway.” The article explored the growing importance of the Department of Homeland Security Office of Strategy, Policy, and Plans under the leadership of the new under secretary Robert Silvers. The DHS has been criticized in the past for a lack of central direction and decision making. Warrick argued that the Office of Strategy, Policy, and Plans should play a bigger role in setting priorities for the department.

When it comes to figuring out what the American people need DHS to do, the perspective that the office of policy has is the one that is most focused on helping the American people be more secure

Thomas Warrick

Fellow

Alex Plitsas

Afghanistan Crisis Management

The Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security works to develop sustainable, nonpartisan strategies to address the most important security challenges facing the United States and the world.

read the full article here

The post Warrick in Bloomberg Government on DHS Office of Strategy, Policy, and Plans appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Dungan quoted in The Washington Post on migration dispute between France and UK

Nicole Meir — Fri, 26 Nov 2021 17:02:00 +0000

The post Dungan quoted in The Washington Post on migration dispute between France and UK appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Embracing Afghan refugees is a strategic opportunity for the US

Sarah Dawn Petrin — Wed, 24 Nov 2021 14:47:20 +0000

While helping evacuees from Afghanistan at a US government facility in Virginia in September, I was struck by the excitement of the families gathered around women as they signed work authorization forms. Husbands and children clapped as the most important women in their lives claimed their own identity and took an important step toward a brighter future.

A new day is coming for them. Soon, they’ll be signing agreements for housing, sending their children to school, and accepting offers of employment. Many of these women are signing their names for the very first time.

And once they recover from their arduous journey, these refugees will start sending money home, finding one another—and slowly organizing the future of Afghanistan. US decision makers would be wise to seek their wisdom about what to do next.

Although Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described the August US withdrawal from Afghanistan as a “strategic failure,” that’s not how the story ends. The war may be over, but the evacuation of Afghan allies presents US officials with a new strategic opportunity by helping them rebuild their lives and, eventually, make significant contributions to both the United States and their homeland.

The Vietnam example

History is revealing: The more than 140,000 Vietnamese refugees who were resettled in the United States after the fall of Saigon in 1975 offer a glimpse of what refugee populations can do.

Today, the Vietnamese-American community owns more than 310,000 businesses and generates an estimated thirty-five billion dollars for the US economy each year. There have been Vietnamese representatives in Congress and high-ranking military officials. Gen. Lapthe Flora, a former refugee who served as the commanding general of Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa and is now a special assistant to the director of the US National Guard, has cited his own experience as an example of how American power can transform lives and foster stability in partner nations.

Vietnamese communities are also at the forefront of supporting a new State Department model for refugee resettlement that allows private citizens to support refugees on the community level. On the government level, funding for this measure was included in a recent emergency supplemental appropriations bill signed into law by US President Joe Biden. It includes resources for government agencies to provide essential services to Afghan arrivals who entered the United States as parolees—a discretionary Department of Homeland Security status that allows people to enter the United States without immigration status (and that normally would prevent them from receiving refugee benefits). Most of the Afghans who got out of the Kabul airport arrived in the United States as parolees, so sponsorship will provide an additional mechanism for communities to fill gaps in services.

The Afghans’ future

Now is the time to start considering the strategic impact of Afghan refugees.

As someone who has interviewed them, I can attest that they’re former government officials, military officers, and pro-democracy activists—in other words, potentially the future leaders of Afghanistan, if the Taliban regime were to crumble. They are also teachers, business owners, and others who make up the fabric of Afghan society. Each one has something to say about what it means to build a nation, and by listening, the United States can help forge a better path forward in Afghanistan.

Their stories will not be the same as those from national leaders who failed to make good on their promises. Their insight will be more genuine, reflecting an honesty that comes only from people with nothing left to lose.

Resettlement also offers these Afghans a chance to reimagine the future of their country while living in peace and security. Although integrating into US society will take time, evacuees have an enormous opportunity to prosper in the United States. Many of the Afghans I spoke to are ready to engage, including by attending—and teaching at—local schools, and perhaps even joining the military if possible.

An unprecedented interagency effort is currently underway at eight US military bases to temporarily house some fifty-three thousand Afghan guests until they can be placed in new homes. This effort is more than a humanitarian gesture; it represents the best possible continuation of US foreign policy—not least because it offers the United States a fresh perspective on how to work toward peace in Afghanistan.

As millions of Americans gather around the Thanksgiving table, tens of thousands of Afghan refugees who have already left US military bases will also be celebrating. Whether they’re making Kibuli Pilau, the national dish of Afghanistan, or roasting a turkey doesn’t matter. Rather, what matters is remembering the shared story of how the United States and Afghanistan came together in common cause for decades—and how that experience will evolve in the weeks, months, and years ahead.

Sarah Dawn Petrin is a nonresident senior fellow with the Transatlantic Security Initiative in the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. She is also a former advisor to the US military and NATO on developing strategy, policy, and doctrine for the Protection of Civilians and Women, Peace, and Security and has worked with refugees in conflict zones for more than twenty years.

The post Embracing Afghan refugees is a strategic opportunity for the US appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Lukashenka, Putin, and the art of geopolitical extortion

Brian Whitmore — Tue, 23 Nov 2021 23:07:25 +0000

Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s manufactured crisis on the Belarusian border with the European Union achieved one key result the illegitimate dictator in Minsk has long been seeking: a degree of international recognition.

Outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s two phone calls with Lukashenka were an effort to ease the crisis. But they drew a harsh rebuke from the exiled Belarusian opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya.

Speaking at a conference in Vienna on November 22, Tsikhanouskaya said the calls “looked very strange” from the perspective of the Belarusian people and urged EU leaders to “refrain from any contacts” with Lukashenka, who was seeking international legitimacy through diplomatic dialog.

Lukashenka also used the call to attempt to blackmail Germany into taking in 2,000 of the migrants that Belarus had flown from the Middle East to Minsk and bused to the country’s borders with Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, sparking a months-long crisis.

While one crisis on a border in Eastern Europe appeared to ease, another quickly took its place. While Lukashenka was removing migrants from his western frontier, Russia was intensifying a military buildup on its nearby border with Ukraine.

As Russia massed troops and moved ballistic missile systems towards the Ukrainian border, Kremlin leader and Lukashenka patron Vladimir Putin accused the United States and its NATO allies of “aggravating the situation by supplying Kyiv with modern lethal weapons” in a bellicose speech at the Russian Foreign Ministry on November 18. Putin vowed that Moscow would “adequately” respond, sparking fears of a possible new Russian offensive in Ukraine.

Putin also claimed, without any confirmation from Washington, that a second summit between Putin and US President Joe Biden was in the works.

Putin said Russia would use the purported summit with Biden to push for “serious long-term guarantees that ensure Russia’s security” in the region. Days later, on November 21, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov described the importance of the still unconfirmed meeting between the Russian and American leaders as “huge.”

Eurasia Center events

After Vilnius: What’s next on Ukraine’s path to NATO?

Eastern Europe NATO Security & Defense Ukraine

The mounting crisis on the Russian-Ukrainian border has a strong sense of deja vu about it. We went through all this before, when a menacing Russian troop buildup on Ukraine’s border in April 2021 was followed by a Putin-Biden summit in Geneva in June.

Does anybody notice a pattern here? It goes something like this: a dictator orchestrates a manufactured crisis; said dictator then pushes for dialog to resolve the crisis; the ensuing dialog is then leveraged to extract concessions.

It’s the exact same script whether we are talking about the dictator in Minsk or the autocrat in the Kremlin. Whether or not Putin and Lukashenka are acting in concert, and it certainly appears that they are, the underlying strategy is the same: first you play arsonist, then you play firefighter.

In a further indication that the twin border crises are related, Ukraine has announced plans to build a barbed-wire fence along its 2,500 kilometer border with Belarus and Russia and to deploy an additional 8,500 troops there.

Ukraine is also consulting with Poland and Lithuania to defend against any potential threats from Minsk. Given the rapid expansion of Russia’s military footprint in Belarus and Lukashenka’s recent bellicose rhetoric against Ukraine, that threat is far from theoretical.

Despite Merkel’s legitimizing phone calls with Lukashenka, she and other European leaders resisted giving in to his extortion attempts. Germany rejected Lukashenka’s proposal to accept 2,000 migrants, calling it “not a solution that is acceptable.”

Likewise, Austrian Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg said the EU “must not give in to blackmail from Lukashenka,” adding, “we have to respond united and very clearly to this state-sponsored hybrid attack on the European Union.”

The United States should also resist Vladimir Putin’s efforts to leverage a crisis entirely of his own making in order to gain a summit with President Biden and to use that meeting to extract concessions from Washington.

The Putin-Lukashenka axis of autocrats is engaging in repeated and brazen acts of geopolitical extortion. Rewarding this with phone calls, summits, and concessions will only encourage the dictator in Minsk and his patron in Moscow to continue this dangerous behavior.

Brian Whitmore is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, an Assistant Professor of Practice at the University of Texas at Arlington, and host of The Power Vertical Podcast.

This objective was most recently spelled out by former Russian president and prime minister Dmitry Medvedev. In a provocatively-worded October 2021 op-ed published by Russian newspaper Kommersant, Medvedev argued that engaging with the current Ukrainian leadership was pointless and called on the Kremlin to wait for “sane” leaders to assume power in Kyiv. “It is only such leaders that are worth dealing with. Russia knows how to wait. We are patient people,” he stated. Given the overall menacing tone of his article, Medvedev’s comments were widely interpreted as a veiled threat and an indication that Moscow is committed to bringing pro-Kremlin proxies to power in Ukraine.

Medvedev’s anti-Ukrainian attack article followed on from Putin’s own remarkable 5,000-word essay on Russian-Ukrainian relations, which appeared three months earlier in July 2021. Entitled “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” Putin’s lengthy treatise read like a declaration of war against Ukrainian independence. The article questioned the legitimacy of Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders and implied that Ukrainian statehood itself depends on Moscow’s consent. “I am confident that true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia,” wrote the Russian leader.

Subscribe to UkraineAlert

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

Name
First Last
Email*
Comments
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Putin’s efforts to end Ukrainian independence and his recent support for provocations on the EU border reflect his rejection of the post-Cold War settlement and resentment over the West’s alleged disregard for Russia’s legitimate geopolitical interests. This anger has been smoldering since the Soviet collapse and the humiliations of the 1990s, which saw Russia reduced from great power status to grinding poverty and international insignificance practically overnight.

Putin’s hunger for geopolitical respect and his desire to avenge perceived historical injustices help to explain his apparent obsession with Ukraine. Fueled by chauvinist stereotypes inherited from the Soviet and Czarist eras, Putin continues to insist that modern Ukraine’s natural place is with Russia and rejects overwhelming evidence demonstrating the Ukrainian population’s preference for Euro-Atlantic integration. Rather than addressing the factors behind Ukraine’s civilizational choice, he blames the widening divide between Russia and Ukraine on Western meddling and dismisses the current Ukrainian authorities as US puppets.

The Russian leader’s judgement on Ukraine is so clouded by his own wishful thinking that he is unable to digest the painful lessons of 2014. During the spring and summer months of 2014, the Kremlin attempted to orchestrate a series of uprisings against the Ukrainian authorities in towns and cities throughout the predominantly Russian-speaking south and east of the country. The aim was to partition Ukraine and create a new state which was to be given the Czarist-era name “New Russia.” However, this campaign met with unexpectedly strong local opposition that derailed Moscow’s plans and left Russia with only a comparatively modest foothold in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.

Despite this setback, Putin has refused to acknowledge the reality of Russian-speaking Ukrainian patriotism and remains in denial over the transformation that has taken place in Ukrainian society over the past 30 years. Instead, he clings to the convenient but demonstrably false notion that a majority of Ukrainians see themselves as part of the so-called “Russian World” and are only prevented from reuniting with Mother Russia by a minority of extremists and their Western puppet masters.

Eurasia Center events

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

After Vilnius: What’s next on Ukraine’s path to NATO?

Eastern Europe NATO Security & Defense Ukraine

The current Russian leadership attaches little weight to the agency of the Ukrainian people and prefers to view the struggle for Ukraine as part of their wider confrontation with the West. Crucially, they regard today’s Western world as weak and see this as a window of opportunity for Russia.

Many in Moscow believe the present geopolitical conditions are uniquely favorable. America is perceived as domestically divided and in a state of foreign policy disarray following the Afghanistan debacle. They also point to the Biden Administration’s prioritization of China and apparent desire to avoid further confrontation with Russia, as seen by President Biden’s accommodating approach to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and readiness to meet Putin personally in summer 2021.

In Europe, Germany is undergoing a complex generational change in political leadership while France is preparing for elections and Britain remains preoccupied by the Brexit fiasco. Meanwhile, the entire continent is increasingly vulnerable to Russian energy blackmail as the Nord Stream 2 pipeline edges closer to certification.

The underwhelming international response in recent years to repeated Russian acts of aggression has also helped fuel perceptions of Western weakness. Despite Moscow’s ongoing military intervention in Ukraine and a long list of hostile acts against Western countries including cyber attacks, election interference, disinformation campaigns, and weaponized corruption, many in the democratic world continue to advocate renewed engagement with Russia.

With Russian forces now concentrated along the Ukrainian border and potentially poised to launch a major new offensive, Putin’s hybrid war against the Western world could be about to enter a dangerous new phase.

Western leaders must wake up to the magnitude of the challenge and recognize that they face an adversary who has been waging war against them since at least 2014. Indeed, some commentators would argue that Putin has been actively hostile towards the West for far longer, and regard his landmark speech to the 2007 Munich Security Conference as the starting point of today’s hybrid war.

As the recent migrant crisis on the Polish border indicated, Russia’s revisionist agenda is not limited to Ukraine. On the contrary, the Kremlin will continue to attack the institutional foundations of the democratic world and work to undermine NATO and the EU until the West finally brings its overwhelming economic, political and military superiority to bear.

At present, Moscow has little fear of such consequences and remains confident that the West has no appetite for confrontation. In this climate, attempts to appease Putin will only serve to further convince Russia of Western weakness and encourage additional acts of aggression.

It may require a dramatic new international security crisis to finally convince Western leaders of the need to contain the Kremlin. That crisis is most likely to take place in Ukraine. In order to avert disaster, it is therefore vital that the democratic world urgently sends an unambiguous message to Moscow spelling out the crushing costs it will impose if Russia chooses to escalate its war against Ukraine.

Taras Kuzio is an Associate Research Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society and Professor in the Department of Political Science at the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy.

Neither the United States nor its European allies were willing to fight Russia over a peripheral US interest like Ukraine in 2014, and I don’t think they’re willing to do so now.

Emma Ashford

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

Former staff

Emma Ashford

New American Engagement Initiative Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Conflict Economic Sanctions

The post Kroenig and Ashford debate Russia’s military buildup near Ukraine and discuss solutions to the Belarus-Poland border crisis appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Infographic: Why North America matters?

Eva Lardizabal — Thu, 18 Nov 2021 18:03:57 +0000

DOWNLOAD PDF

This week’s North American Leaders’ Summit will focus on opportunities for deepened collaboration on issues such as health, commerce and investment, security, and migration. The Leaders’ meeting – following a five-year hiatus – reaffirms the importance of US-Mexico-Canada cooperation. A vibrant and more economically integrated North America is fundamental to advance common interests.

This new Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center infographic highlights North American leadership across the aforementioned issues

The post Infographic: Why North America matters? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Belarus border crisis: Putin acts as Lukashenka’s willing enabler

Brian Whitmore — Wed, 17 Nov 2021 20:10:23 +0000

Vladimir Putin has decided to pour gasoline on the fire.

As Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s manufactured migrant crisis on Europe’s eastern frontier continued to escalate, Russia began flying nuclear-capable bombers over Belarus as a demonstration of support for its client in Minsk. And in case anybody failed to get the message, Moscow also launched joint military exercises with Belarus near the Polish border.

These do not appear to be the actions of a man that would like to see the mushrooming crisis on the European Union’s border with Belarus deescalate, as some media reports have suggested. And with Moscow also building up its military forces on its border with Ukraine, there is growing alarm in Western capitals that Putin might also be preparing a fresh offensive there.

These disturbing developments come as the EU and the United States prepare a fresh round of sanctions against Belarus. Additionally, Belarus’s three western neighbors Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland are considering invoking NATO’s Article 4, which calls for consultation when “the territorial integrity, political independence, or security of any of the parties is threatened,” in response to the current border crisis.

Recent developments like Russia’s bomber overflights, joint military exercises, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s suggestion that Europe pay off Lukashenka to end the crisis have sparked a debate over whether Moscow is the true mastermind behind the crisis.

Barring some form of smoking gun that is unlikely to materialize, it is virtually impossible to confirm if this is true. But whether Putin is the ultimate architect of the crisis is also irrelevant.

As Lukashenka’s sole international patron, Putin has facilitated the conditions that have allowed the tense situation on the EU border to escalate, and is therefore responsible. And by doubling down on Lukashenka with a recent show of military support, the Kremlin is now actively contributing to a further dangerous escalation of the crisis.

As I have written in this space, for the past year Lukashenka has been playing a similar role internationally for Putin to the role played at home by Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, who is widely believed to have been behind the assassinations of Putin critics like Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov and investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya. By allegedly acting as Putin’s willing executioner, Kadyrov provides the Kremlin leader with plausible deniability and distance from operations he wants carried out without his fingerprints.

Lukashenka now appears to be playing a similar role in the Kremlin’s confrontation with the West. If Kadyrov is Putin’s willing executioner, Lukashenka is his willing instigator and provocateur. At the same time, Putin is acting as Lukashenka’s willing enabler.

Eurasia Center events

After Vilnius: What’s next on Ukraine’s path to NATO?

Eastern Europe NATO Security & Defense Ukraine

To understand the Kremlin’s role in this crisis, one needs only ask the age-old Russian question: komu vygodno, or who benefits?

Lukashenka does have more agency that he is often given credit for. His actions, like the recent threats to cut off Russian gas supplies to Europe, can be a headache for the Kremlin. Nevertheless, the Putin regime is still clearly benefiting from Lukashenka’s bellicose behavior toward Europe.

Most importantly, the more Lukashenka misbehaves and the more isolated he becomes, and the more dependent he is on Moscow’s support. This advances the Kremlin’s political goal of turning Belarus into an increasingly pliant and obedient client, along with its strategic goal of turning the country into a de facto extension of Russia’s Western Military District.

The Putin regime is not seeking to outright annex Belarus in a shock-and-awe Crimea-style operation. Instead, it is meticulously carrying out a soft, stealthy, and surreptitious annexation, steadily expanding its political, economic, and military footprint until Kremlin control is a fait accompli.

Additionally, Lukashenka’s provocative actions dovetail with, mimic, and provide a force multiplier for Putin’s broader political war with the West. They also add to the atmosphere of impunity and disregard for international rules and norms that Putin has long pursued. In fact, the Belarusian dictator’s current manufactured migrant crisis imitates tactics Russia has been accused of using against Europe in the past.

And finally, Lukashenka’s antics provide a window of opportunity for Putin to adopt his preferred pose as both arsonist and firefighter.

As the Minsk-based Center for Strategic and Foreign Policy Studies wrote in a recent confidential and unpublished report: “The Russian side is benefiting from the current escalation of the crisis by acting as the only potential “solver” of the Belarus issue. In this context, Putin’s statements about Russia’s non-involvement in the crisis and Belarusian sovereignty sound like a hint of the need to officially “invite” Moscow to exert influence on Minsk.”

Imperial powers are not complete puppet masters and client states always have some degree of agency. But Putin and his inner circle understand Lukashenka’s psychology well and know how to push his buttons to get the desired result. In this sense, the autocrat in the Kremlin bears as much responsibility for the current crisis as the dictator in Minsk. Western policymakers need to bear this in mind when formulating their response.

Subscribe to UkraineAlert

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

Name
First Last
Email*
Name
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Recent developments in Belarus have exacerbated Ukraine’s already precarious security predicament. An undeclared war with Russia is now in its eighth year, with Crimea and parts of the industrial Donbas region in eastern Ukraine under Russian occupation.

In recent weeks, Moscow has once again engaged in apparent scare-mongering tactics. Washington has warned its European partners about the threat posed by the latest concentration of Russian military force near to the borders with Ukraine and Belarus. Moreover, Lukashenka has asked Russia to deploy Iskander missile systems on the Belarusian border with Ukraine and to patrol the border zone from the air.

Against the broader background of the Kremlin’s diverse hybrid war against the West with its mixture of military bluster, energy blackmail, disinformation, and cyber attacks, the cynical use of trafficked migrants as battering rams against Europe’s borders calls for a firm and united European response. This has not happened. The EU has finally rallied against the current threat, expressing solidarity with Poland and Lithuania while imposing additional sanctions against the Lukashenko regime. Nevertheless, the reaction to the crisis has been noticeably slow and somewhat ambivalent. Crucially, while targeting Minsk, European leaders appear to be letting Moscow off the hook.

Eurasia Center events

After Vilnius: What’s next on Ukraine’s path to NATO?

Eastern Europe NATO Security & Defense Ukraine

Some aspects of the European response have also raised eyebrows in Ukraine. On November 9, the foreign policy spokesperson for the Social Democratic Party in the German parliament, Nils Schmid, made what many in Kyiv saw as a tactless and cynical proposal to involve Ukraine in solving the migrant standoff. How? By getting Kyiv to agree on the temporary admission of migrants into Ukraine to process their applications for asylum. “This way we can make it clear that not every migrant will automatically enter the European Union,” Schmid said.

The German deputy conveniently overlooks a critical point and thereby seems implicitly to buy into how Minsk, Moscow and their supporters are trying to play on humanitarian concerns to place the onus in the current crisis on Warsaw, Vilnius and Brussels. In August 2001, Belarus adhered to the 1951 Refugee Convention. In fact, I was the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Representative in Minsk at that time. People fleeing persecution and war should apply for asylum in the first safe country they reach. In this case, if they are genuinely doing so, this means they should apply in Belarus. The Belarusian authorities have an international obligation to provide protection to such asylum seekers and process their applications for refugee status.

Schmid cannot easily be dismissed as a lone German parliamentarian voicing a personal opinion. On the contrary, he represents the party which received the most votes in the recent German election. The SPD is currently the process of forming a coalition government which it will lead. In other words, the SPD, which over the years has often seemed more concerned than Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union about maintaining good relations with Russia regardless of the latter’s behavior, appears to view Ukraine as merely a convenient buffer zone. And both the CDU and SPD continue to oppose Ukraine’s membership of the European Union and NATO.

It is not surprising that Schmid’s unwelcome proposal drew a prompt and caustic response from Oleksiy Danilov, the Secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council. “It’s very strange when the Germans start telling us what to do,” noted Danilov before suggesting the SPD accept the migrants themselves.

Ukraine is clearly taking the potential threat posed by the Belarus border crisis seriously. In recent days, the Ukrainian government has strengthened security on the border with Belarus, while the local authorities in regions bordering Belarus have been placed on high alert. The country is already closely monitoring developments in neighboring Russia for indications of a possible imminent escalation in hostilities, but Kyiv must now also be on guard for new threats coming from Belarus to the north.

Bohdan Nahaylo is a British-Ukrainian journalist and veteran Ukraine watcher based in Kyiv. He was formerly a senior UN official and policy adviser, and director of Radio Liberty’s Ukrainian Service.

Belarus dictator turns hybrid war into humanitarian crisis

Alesia Rudnik — Mon, 15 Nov 2021 18:44:35 +0000

Thousands of migrants from across the Middle East and beyond currently find themselves stranded on the Belarusian-Polish border. They are being cynically used as weapons in Belarus dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s hybrid war against the EU, and their worsening plight represents a potential humanitarian cisis.

In response to the migrant build-up in Belarus, Poland has deployed around 17,000 soldiers to the border zone, where they are facing off against a growing Belarusian military presence. Warsaw has also announced plans to build a border wall and is considering closing the border with Belarus entirely.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi Embassy in Russia has suggested the evacuation of citizens willing to return to Iraq. Belarus’s national carrier Belavia has announced restrictions for residents of Iraq, Syria, and Yemen on flights from Turkey to Minsk. Turkish Airlines has also agreed to stop accepting Middle Eastern citizens on services to the Belarusian capital.

These measures are welcome, but they are insufficient to prevent the possibility of a humanitarian disaster on the Polish border. It is vital that the international community now addresses this escalating confrontation humanely in order to prevent Lukashenka from scoring propaganda points and deprive him of blackmail leverage over the democratic world.

The situation on the Belarusian border has been deteriorating for a number of months as the Lukashenka regime has actively sought to import would-be migrants to Minsk and ferry them to the EU border. At least eight deaths have already been reported on the border due to cold weather conditions along with a lack of food supplies or medical attention.

According to various sources, the Belarusian authorities have established an illicit migration industry charging people fees ranging from USD 4,000 to USD 15,000 for a short-term visa, flight to Minsk, and assistance in reaching the Polish border. The number of flights along key routes from Middle Eastern airports has expanded steadily in recent weeks to meet growing demand.

The role of the Belarusian security forces in this cynical operation has been widely reported. This has included recent video footage that appears to show troops deploying strobe lights while attempting to cut through Polish border barriers.

Lukashenka officially denies orchestrating the border crisis, but he was quite open about his intentions during earlier comments. In May 2021, the Belarus dictator warned that in response to EU sanctions over his crackdown on pro-democracy protests, he intended to end measures preventing migrants from passing through Belarus to the EU. “We used to stop drugs and migrants. Now you will have to catch them for yourselves,” he stated.

At present, there is very little support available for the migrants on the Belarusian-Polish border. When a group of Chechen refugees gathered in Belarusian city Brest in 2017 seeking to travel to Poland, Belarusian human rights organizations provided a range of assistance. However, the majority of Belarusian human rights organizations have since been closed as part of the regime’s crackdown against the country’s pro-democracy uprising.

With Belarusian civil society no longer able to offer assistance, the task has fallen to a handful of international organizations such as the UN’s aid agencies. At the same time, Belarusian and Russian state-controlled media have reported widely on the basic humanitarian support being provided to migrants by the Belarusian authorities.

Eurasia Center events

After Vilnius: What’s next on Ukraine’s path to NATO?

Eastern Europe NATO Security & Defense Ukraine

The crisis is having an impact far from the border zone. Large crowds of mostly Middle Eastern migrants have become part of daily life in Minsk. They congregate in shopping malls and at the airport, in many cases sleeping rough in the city. There is evidence that this is fueling a rising tide of xenophobia and resentment, with many Belarusians expressing their opposition to the influx.

Others appear to see the sudden surge in migrant traffic as an opportunity to earn. Many hotels and restaurants in the Belarusian capital have reported booming business following a Covid-related slump stretching back to mid-2020.

While the crisis on the Belarus-EU border has clearly been manufactured by Lukashenka as part of his geopolitical confrontation with the West, any solution must also involve due care for the many human lives at stake. It is important to note that Lukashenka is enjoying the current hard line response from the Polish side, and will continue to escalate if he feels the crisis is bringing him the propaganda advantages he seeks.

With this in mind, the best approach to countering Lukashenka’s weaponization of migrants may be to disarm this weapon. By accommodating and processing the thousands of migrants currently encamped on the border, Poland could resolve the crisis and deprive Lukashenka of his ability to blackmail the EU.

Any such steps would inevitably risk encouraging similar tactics in the weeks and months ahead, but accepting the migrants and offering humanitarian assistance may be the quickest way to defuse the current crisis until more effective international measures can be introduced to prevent any repeats.

Alesia Rudnik is a PhD Fellow at Karlstad University (Sweden) and a Research Fellow at Belarusian think tank The Center for New Ideas.

It is not difficult to see why more and more European politicians now suspect Moscow of orchestrating events in neighboring Belarus. Putin himself has vocally defended Belarus, while Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has suggested the EU should pay Minsk to resolve the crisis. The Kremlin-controlled Russian media has also provided strong information support for the Lukashenka regime.

Many of the migrants now concentrated along the EU’s eastern border claim to have reached Belarus via Russia itself. Nor is this the first time Moscow has been accused of weaponizing migrants in its conflict with the West. During the country’s ongoing military intervention in Syria, Russia has repeatedly faced similar claims.

Moscow also appears to be increasing its direct military involvement in the crisis. In an alarming development, Russia and Belarus announced plans on November 11 to begin joint combat alert patrols along the Belarusian border with Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine. “This ring around the Baltic states, Poland and Ukraine must be monitored by Russian and Belarusian servicemen,” commented Lukashenka. In parallel to this statement, Russian nuclear bombers conducted a monitoring mission in Belarusian airspace.

Crucially, few credible observers believe the Belarus dictator would dare engage in such provocative actions on the EU border without permission and encouragement from the Kremlin. While relations between Lukashenka and Putin have historically been complex, the Minsk strongman’s increasing international isolation and domestic vulnerability following the deeply flawed August 2020 Belarusian presidential election have made him almost entirely dependent on Russia for his political survival.

Over the past fifteen months, Lukashenka has been forced to grant Moscow a wide range of concessions that have undermined Belarusian sovereignty and placed his country firmly under Russian influence. This process has been particularly prominent in the security sphere, with the establishment of new joint military bases and a record number of joint army exercises creating what amounts to a permanent Russian troop presence in Belarus, leading many to remark on an accelerating “military merger” between the two countries.

Given the context of Lukashenka’s deepening dependency on Russia, it seems highly implausible that he would act alone in instigating the current border crisis. Instead, the confrontation bears all the hallmarks of the hybrid war tactics adopted by the Kremlin in recent years as it has has sought to weaponize everything from social media to illegal immigration in its confrontation with the Western world.

Europe has been repeatedly warned that Russia’s aggressive actions in the gray zone between war and peace will only increase until Vladimir Putin is decisively confronted. From the rostrum at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) and other international platforms, I have often attempted to alert my European colleagues to the looming danger. However, many have preferred to dismiss such comments as alarmist while calling for greater dialog with Moscow.

These advocates of engagement are prone to downplaying the significance of Putin’s war in Ukraine, while opting to treat the many cyber-attacks, disinformation campaigns, and political assassinations taking place across Europe as isolated incidents rather than evidence of Russia’s hostile intentions. Instead, they promote a “business as usual” approach towards Moscow and continue to back Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, even as the Kremlin openly uses energy as a geopolitical weapon against Europe.

This appeasement of Putin has brought us to the current situation, with rival troops now massing within meters of each other on opposing sides of the EU’s eastern border and the entire continent one stray bullet away from potential disaster.

Eurasia Center events

After Vilnius: What’s next on Ukraine’s path to NATO?

Eastern Europe NATO Security & Defense Ukraine

Sadly, the Western response to this latest Russian escalation has been characteristically insufficient. It is wishful thinking to suggest the new sanctions measures proposed by the EU will force the Kremlin to deescalate.

In the short term, much will now depend on the resolve of Poland and Lithuania. At the same time, the Ukrainian authorities need to treat events in Belarus as an extension of Russia’s hybrid war against their own country. With Lukashenka now acting as Putin’s puppet, the one thousand-kilometer Ukrainian-Belarusian border must be recognized as new front in the conflict.

In order to counter the Kremlin threat, the countries on the front lines of the hybrid war with Putin’s Russia should aim to unite their efforts. The ideal platform for this is the Lublin Triangle, a diplomatic initiative launched last year by the foreign ministers of Ukraine, Poland, and Lithuania. It would also make sense to involve Latvia and Estonia if possible and forge a more formal Baltic-Black Sea alliance that would facilitate deeper military cooperation.

While they work to create the conditions for a more coordinated strategy, these front line countries should also seek greater US and UK engagement. Britain and America remain the two most reliable partners for the countries facing the challenge of a resurgent Russia. Needless to say, such efforts must be approached in a manner that will complement rather than detract from the role of NATO as the ultimate guarantor of peace in the region.

With the security situation currently in danger of spiraling out of control on the Belarusian border, and with Russian forces once more concentrating close to Ukraine, there is simply no time to waste. We may be poised for a perfect storm of Russian aggression during the coming winter months and can no longer afford to have any illusions about the gravity of the situation.

Oleksiy Goncharenko is a Ukrainian lawmaker with the European Solidarity party.

Kohistany in King 5 on her efforts to relocate Afghan refugees.

Atlantic Council — Thu, 11 Nov 2021 18:34:00 +0000

On November 11, the Seattle news organization King 5 ran a story on Forward Defense Nonresident Senior Fellow M. Lyla Kohistany’s efforts to help relocate Afghan refugees as the CEO of Task Force Pineapple. The organization is a network of veterans and citizen volunteers who help coordinate safe passage for at-risk Afghans to the United States including special forces soldiers, government officials, artists, athletes, women, members of the LGBTQ population, and foreign nationals. Task Force Pineapple has arranged safe transport for over 1,000 people from Afghanistan to date.

When it comes to figuring out what the American people need DHS to do, the perspective that the office of policy has is the one that is most focused on helping the American people be more secure

Thomas Warrick

Fellow

Alex Plitsas

Afghanistan Crisis Management

The Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security works to develop sustainable, nonpartisan strategies to address the most important security challenges facing the United States and the world.

The post Kohistany in King 5 on her efforts to relocate Afghan refugees. appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Gangster tactics: Poland accuses Putin of masterminding Belarus border crisis

Brian Whitmore — Wed, 10 Nov 2021 15:21:46 +0000

It appears that the European Union has decided to call things exactly what they are.

As Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s manufactured migrant crisis on his country’s border with the EU escalated earlier this week, a spokesperson for the European Commission assailed the Belarusian dictator’s “gangster-style” tactics.

This is not hyperbole. Tensions between Belarus and the European Union have been mounting since Lukashenka retaliated to EU sanctions by orchestrating a migrant crisis on the country’s shared borders with EU member states Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland.

In recent months, the Lukashenka regime has been flying migrants to Minsk from the Middle East and moving them to the border. Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland have responded by erecting barbed wire fences, building walls, and sending military forces to control the border.

As thousands of migrants set up makeshift camps close to the border this week, Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told an emergency session of parliament on November 9 that the ultimate culprit in the escalating crisis is Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin.

“This attack which Lukashenka is conducting has its mastermind in Moscow. The mastermind is President Putin,” Morawiecki said.

The allegation is plausible, especially when one considers that the Belarusian dictator’s manufactured migrant crisis mimics tactics Russia has been accused of using against Europe in the recent past.

As Brussels accused Belarus of behaving like a “gangster regime” and Warsaw alleged that the real godfather was in the Kremlin, Moscow decided to play the part.

Apparently acting in the role of consigliere for the Putin-Lukashenka axis of autocrats, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the quiet part out loud by suggesting that the whole problem would go away if Europe would only pay Lukashenka off.

Lavrov’s comments came at a news conference on November 9 in Moscow alongside Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Vatican Foreign Minister. Russia’s top diplomat cited a 2016 deal under which Brussels provided financial assistance to Turkey in exchange for Ankara taking back migrants who had entered Greece illegally.

“Why is it not possible to help the Belarusians in the same way?” Lavrov said.

So there you have it. The mask is off. Lukashenka’s main financial benefactor, which in all likelihood is the ultimate architect of the growing humanitarian crisis on Europe’s eastern frontier, is attempting to make Brussels an offer it cannot refuse.

However, this is an offer the EU must refuse in no uncertain terms. Providing financial assistance to Lukashenka would effectively offset sanctions enacted in response not only to his brutal crackdown on dissent and the torture of dissidents, but also the de facto hijacking of a European commercial aircraft in spring 2021.

Crucially, it would ease the financial burden Moscow has been forced to bear in propping up the moribund Belarusian economy and the isolated Lukashenka regime. And most importantly, it would reward bad behavior from Moscow and Minsk and encourage more such rogue actions in the future.

Eurasia Center events

After Vilnius: What’s next on Ukraine’s path to NATO?

Eastern Europe NATO Security & Defense Ukraine

Lavrov’s suggestion came less than a week after Poland’s Defense Ministry said Belarusian soldiers had escorted illegal migrants to the border and “threatened to open fire” on Polish troops. ““The actions of Belarusian soldiers looked like an attempt to escalate the situation,” Poland’s Defense Ministry said in a statement on November 3.

The good news is that Brussels is showing no signs of acquiescing to this pressure. On November 9, the European Council partially suspended its visa-facilitation agreement for Belarusian officials, while keeping it in place for ordinary citizens.

The mounting migrant crisis on Europe’s eastern frontier is many things. First and foremost, it is a human tragedy manufactured by two autocrats who are cynically and criminally manipulating desperate people fleeing war and repression.

It is also an effort by the Putin-Lukashenka axis of autocrats to wage hybrid war and destabilize Europe. And now it has become an act of geopolitical extortion and blackmail designed to intimidate Europe and force the EU to back down on sanctions.

The European Commission is absolutely correct to condemn these developments in frank and unambiguous language. Lukashenka is indeed engaging in “gangster-like” tactics, but he is not alone. It looks increasingly like the real mastermind driving this dangerous crisis is located in Moscow. It is vital that the EU and NATO now stand firm in facing both men down.

Belarus border crisis: Lukashenka weaponizes human misery

Daniel Fried, Michal Baranowski, Ben Judah — Wed, 10 Nov 2021 00:25:34 +0000

Turning as usual to aggression, Belarus’s authoritarian strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka has escalated attacks on Poland and the European Union by encouraging and, it seems, forcing would-be migrants from Iraq, Syria, and other countries in the Middle East to breach the EU’s eastern border.

On November 8, the regime in Minsk was seen bringing people, some flown in from the Middle East for this purpose, to the Polish frontier and encouraging them to rush the border. In response, Polish authorities have deployed border guards, police forces specializing in crowd management, the National Guard, and even some military forces. Video footage of the chaos and confrontation spread across social media in close to real time, sparking fears for the safety of the men, women and children caught up in this volatile situation in the forests of Eastern Europe.

It is not hard to discern why Lukashenka is doing this. Poland, like Lithuania, is active in its support for the Belarusian democracy movement. It has welcomed Belarusian political exiles, including leaders of the opposition led by Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who is widely believed to have legitimately won the last Belarus presidential elections in August 2020. Many Belarusians and Poles have compared the Belarusian democracy movement to Poland’s Solidarity, which suffered years of repression after 1981 but ultimately won elections and led Poland after 1989.

Furthermore, the Poles and Lithuanians have extolled the old multi-ethnic Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which included present-day Belarus, as a precedent for Belarus’s democratic future with Europe rather than under the Kremlin. Poland’s president has even addressed the Belarusian people in Belarusian. Poland has its own internal stresses and challenges, but its Belarus policy reflects the still-strong pro-democracy thread in national policy, especially toward Poland’s eastern neighbors and Russia.

Lukashenka hates all this, of course, and sees it as a threat to his own regime. His brutality, especially against his own citizens, is matched by his Putinesque cynicism. By pushing Middle Eastern migrants against the EU border, he seeks to create local chaos and generate fears about another wave of uncontrolled mass migration entering the EU. This topic has previously proven politically divisive in Europe and has fueled nativist political movements across the continent, including in Poland.

By manufacturing a migration crisis, Lukashenka aims to polarize Poland internally and divide the EU with what is, in effect, a hybrid attack. He may well believe this will give him leverage to get the EU and Poland to back away from their support for the Belarusian democracy movement in return for being spared another round of internal stress about migration from the Middle East.

Recent press reports suggest Lukashenka is flying more and more Middle Eastern would-be migrants into Minsk to intensify the pressure. The Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, has meanwhile suggested that the EU respond to the crisis in the same way as it handled a similar migration crisis in Turkey, namely by funding Belarus to deal with the problem. Other than trolling, the Kremlin calculation here may be to use the migration issue to force the EU into easing the pressure on Lukashenka and becoming a source of financial stabilization for the regime.

A darker interpretation of recent events also cannot be excluded. A few days ago, a Polish border patrol ran into Russia-speaking and presumably Belarusian “little green men” carrying weapons on Polish territory. At the same time, Russia is massing forces once again on the border with Ukraine.

Putin is putting growing military pressure on the West. This is taking place directly against Ukraine, and indirectly through Lukashenka against Poland, the latter probably as a pressure tactic rather than a serious military threat. These events point to another escalation in Russia’s hybrid conflict with the West, which has political, energy, security, and informational dimensions.

Moscow and Minsk may sense vulnerability. Warsaw and Brussels have been quarrelling over various issues lately, such as the supremacy of EU law and the independence of Poland’s judiciary. Poland has also been fighting with Germany about the ill-considered Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which appears to be a useful asset in Putin’s efforts to use energy as a political weapon.

Meanwhile, the Polish ruling party had picked a fight with the US over media freedoms by pushing a media law targeting the country’s largest independent television network, TVN, and potentially forcing its US owners to sell their shares. Fortunately, this media law stalled when Poland’s president threatened to veto it on free speech and business grounds.

Lukashenka may have judged that Poland was sufficiently isolated in Europe and from the Biden Administration that he could succeed in triggering the Polish government to abandon its support for the Belarusian democracy movement out of fear of Muslims crossing its border. This is the sort of calculation that Putin, Lukashenka’s ultimate backer, might have made.

Europe and the US need to prove Lukashenka wrong in his cynical assessment. Whatever Brussels and Washington’s concerns about some aspects of Polish government policy, Lukashenka is engaging in an act of hybrid aggression and using non-military means to attack the EU’s borders. He is weaponizing human misery and, arguably, engaging in human trafficking. Lukashenka is attacking Poland because of its support for Belarus’s democratic and European future.

Regardless of other serious issues between them, the US, the EU, and the UK need to show solidarity with Poland and be prepared to demonstrate a similarly united front with respect to Lithuania and others if necessary. They also need to make humanitarian moves to protect the men, women and children from the Middle East who find themselves caught up in this dangerous geopolitical confrontation as temperatures plummet and winter draws close.

Eurasia Center events

Public Event Tue, March 22, 2022 • 11:30 am ET

After Vilnius: What’s next on Ukraine’s path to NATO?

Eastern Europe NATO Security & Defense Ukraine

The response has already begun. On November 8, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen issued a strong statement that condemned Lukashenka’s aggression and, importantly, urged retaliatory action. Proposed steps included approving sanctions against Belarus currently under preparation by the EU and the US in response to earlier acts of repression, and potentially targeting airlines that are active in moving would-be migrants to Belarus.

Events on the Polish-Belarusian border were also discussed on November 9 by Poland’s President Andrzej Duda and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. Stoltenberg asked to be kept informed about developments on the ground, understanding the risk of further deterioration in the security situation in and around Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine.

This is a good start, especially the threat to impose sanctions against airlines supporting Lukashenka’s aggression. But there is much more the EU and US should do together with the UK.

Steps could include jointly approaching countries of origin and asking that they not allow their people to be trafficked by Lukashenka. Similarly, offers could be made to provide safe countries of origin with funds and logistics to repatriate their citizens out of danger in Belarus. Consultations with the United Nations refugee agency must also be urgently launched over how to guarantee their safety.

It is critical, meanwhile, to inform airlines that their complicity in Lukashenka’s scheme could result in fines, bans of overflight rights to Europe and the US, or full blocking sanctions that could put them out of business. Turkish Airlines and Russia’s Aeroflot are two of the main culprits and could be targeted early on.

If the situation continues to deteriorate, it is worth considering invoking NATO’s Article 4 that involves consultations when “the territorial integrity, political independence, or security of any of the parties is threatened.”

EU leaders including European Council President Charles Michel, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell could visit the Polish-Belarusian border joined by senior US and UK diplomats in order to show solidarity.

The EU itself must continue to offer to deploy the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, Frontex, to the Polish government. Frontex is headquartered in Warsaw and it should at a minimum offer to have a regular presence on the border.

If the Belarusian military continues its aggressive probing of the Polish border, NATO allies should propose to send special forces units to the Polish-Belarusian border as a deterrent against further Belarusian provocations.

Ongoing sanctions preparations should be coordinated and intensified. The EU and UK have already imposed sanctions on Belarusian government bonds. There is no good reason for the US to refrain from joining them. Sanctions should also include Russian officials and oligarchs who are actively supporting the Belarus regime.

Whenever possible, the US should act in concert with the EU on Belarus sanctions. But if the EU cannot reach consensus because one of its more Putin-friendly governments imposes a veto, the US, UK and also Canada can act ahead of the EU, coordinating with each other and informally with key member states.

These steps matter. It is vital to send an unambiguous signal to the Kremlin. This means announcing jointly to Russia that further escalation on the Polish-Belarusian border, just as on Russian-Ukrainian border, is unacceptable and will be met with serious consequences. This message was articulated recently by the CIA director, Bill Burns, during his visit to Moscow. It is worth repeating.

For understandable reasons, the US, UK, and EU often prefer incrementalism in sanctions and related measures. But this year alone, Lukashenka has engaged in air piracy to force down a Ryanair commercial airliner and seize a Belarusian journalist flying between EU capitals, and is believed to be behind the apparent assassination of a Belarusian dissident in Kyiv.

He is now attacking the borders of an EU and NATO member. Pushing back, in coordinated fashion, is the right step. Not acting together will almost certainly encourage Lukashenka, and his patron Putin, to further escalate this already dangerous situation.

Daniel Fried is the Weiser Family distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council. Michal Baranowski is a Senior Fellow and Director of GMF’s Warsaw office. Ben Judah is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council.

The Western Sahel—a region stretching from Senegal and Mauritania to Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad, and including the twelve sharia law states of northern Nigeria—is in a demographic impasse. Rather than yielding an economic dividend, the conditions spawned by the region’s persistently youthful, rapidly growing, high-fertility populations overwhelm the capabilities of state-run services, generate extensive urban slum conditions, slow if not stall economic and social progress, and aggravate ethnic tensions. Decades of exposure to these mutually reinforcing conditions have undermined the legitimacy of central governments and rendered the region’s states vulnerable to the spread of Islamic populism and regime instability.

Due to the growth momentum of their youthful age structures, from now through the 2040-to-2045 period (the time horizon of this study), the region’s states will be driven to respond to the urgent needs to build infrastructure, increase agricultural productivity, maintain security, and generate jobs in their attempt to employ and politically pacify young-adult cohorts of unprecedented size who, each year, vie to enter the already underemployed Sahelian workforce. Yet these well-intentioned development efforts can never be sufficient unless the region’s governments prioritize policies and programs that address a key underlying impediment to development: sustained high fertility.

To work their way out of this dilemma, Sahelian governments must shift a significant part of their development focus and funding to policies and programs aimed at preventing adolescent marriages and childbearing, promoting girls’ education, securing women’s participation in public- and private-sector workplaces, and achieving small, healthy, well-educated families. However, the region’s persistent jihadist insurgency raises questions as to how far women-centered programs can be safely and successfully extended beyond the edges of the Western Sahel’s inland cities. Absent serious progress on these coupled crises, policy makers in the EU, the United States, and their non-European allies may eventually disengage (as they already have from Somalia today), concluding that containing the Western Sahel’s jihadist insurgency and out-migration at the region’s frontiers is a more viable option than continued development assistance.

Adjoining discussion paper: Regional policy and program perspectives

To gain further insights and cover policy and program issues that extend beyond the authors’ expertise, the Atlantic Council’s Foresight, Strategy, and Risk Initiative commissioned Organizing to Advance Solutions in the Sahel (OASIS), a reproductive health policy organization based in Berkeley, California, to convene a series of consultative discussions among West African public health and education professionals. These professionals discussed the merits of current policy and programmatic approaches in the Sahelian states, identified the major obstacles encountered, and recommended areas for additional effort and investment. A synopsis of these consultations appear in the OASIS discussion paper titled “Accelerating a Demographic Transition”. An additional analysis of international assistance to the Sahel for reproductive health and girls’ education is available in an accompanying OASIS brief. Several of their key points are discussed and cited in this report.

Photograph by Yvonne Etinosa.

Key findings

Age structure and the demographic window. As a group, the Western Sahelian countries remain among the world’s most youthful populations. Moreover, within the 20-to-25-year period of this report, none of the Western Sahelian countries are projected by the United Nations (UN) Population Division’s medium-fertility projection to reach the demographic window, namely a period of socioeconomically and fiscally favorable age structures (the so-called demographic dividend). Over the past seventy years, it has been within this window—beginning at a median age of around 25 or 26 years—that countries generally have reached upper-middle levels of development (e.g., the World Bank’s upper-middle income category and associated levels of educational attainment and child survival). Notably, Mauritania and Senegal will approach this demographic window by 2045 in the current UN’s low-fertility projection—the most optimistic scenario in the Population Division’s standard series.

Population growth. UN demographers estimate that the overall population of the six states of the Western Sahel has grown from nearly 21 million inhabitants in 1960 to about 103 million in 2020—an almost five-fold increase over sixty years. For the twelve states of northern Nigeria, the authors’ modeled estimates suggest that the population trajectory has been comparably steep, reaching nearly 78 million in 2020. Those sources expect the combined populations of the six Western Sahelian countries and northern Nigeria to grow from today’s estimate of about 181 million to somewhere between a projected high, in 2045, of about 415 million, and a projected low of about 370 million people. Much of this growth is produced by age-structural momentum, a largely unavoidable consequence of the region’s extremely youthful age distribution.

Fertility decline. The region’s total fertility rates currently range between about 4.6 children per woman in Senegal and Mauritania, to pretransition rates—above 6.5 children per woman—in Niger and the twelve sharia law states of northern Nigeria. Throughout the Western Sahel, rates of adolescent childbearing remain extremely high, and ideal family size generally equals or exceeds realized fertility. Even in the recent past—up to and including the UN’s 2010 data series—the Population Division’s medium-fertility projections for the countries of the Western Sahel have proved overly optimistic. Yet, recent local surveys in the region indicate that the current version of its medium-fertility projection is not out of reach. That scenario assumes that, between 2040 and 2045, fertility will decline to between 3.4 and 4.0 children per woman in most of the Western Sahel’s states, and near 4.7 in Niger. Significant differences in modern contraceptive use and patterns of childbearing are already evident between rural women and more educated urban women, but the differences are not yet as pronounced as in East or southern Africa, where fertility decline is proceeding at a faster pace.

Maternal and child health, as well as girls’ education. Whereas childhood mortality has steadily declined in the Western Sahel, still one in ten children die before the age of five in Mali and Chad. Recent World Health Organization (WHO) estimates indicate that in Niger and Chad, more than 40 percent of children below age five exhibit stunting. According to the WHO, Chad’s maternal mortality rate is the world’s second highest, while Mauritania, Mali, and Niger are also among the twenty countries in which pregnancy and childbirth are the most dangerous. In Chad and Niger, just one in five eligible girls are enrolled in secondary school, and net secondary enrollment has yet to rise above 40 percent elsewhere in the region. Adolescent marriages remain the region’s most serious deterrent to increasing girls’ educational attainment.

Women’s autonomy and rights. Despite the advice of regional health professionals and the criticisms of UN agencies, successive governments have, so far, done little to enforce already existing laws that would reduce adolescent marriages, eliminate female genital cutting, protect women from forced marriages, restrict polygamy, and give women inheritance rights and custody of their own children in case of marital separation or widowhood. While women’s advocates see these as key to a shift in preferences to smaller, healthier, and better-educated families, current Sahelian political leadership fears political blowback. High levels of organized resistance—such as the large demonstrations by Islamic organizations in Mali, in 2009, that turned back women’s rights—have convinced some development professionals that for several states in the Western Sahel, the only route to change currently available may be through intensive investments in girls’ education and financial support for women’s health care networks, as well as progressive legal, professional, educational, and cooperative societies.

Farming. Despite rising temperatures and the recent slowdown of cropland expansion, the growth of grain production has, since 1990, exceeded the pace of the region’s roughly three percent per year rate of population growth. However, due to erratic harvests on mar- ginally productive croplands, armed conflict, and the presence of displaced populations, the region’s states are regular recipients of substantial food aid. Whereas ground-water irrigation is likely to become a more important input in the future, the combined effects of future population growth, continued climatic warming, persistent insurgency, and periodic drought in the Western Sahel make food self-sufficiency highly unlikely in the foreseeable future.

Pastoralism. After three decades of relatively steady increases in rainfall in parts of the region, livestock numbers (adjusted for species body-size differences) have grown significantly since the 1990s. Yet the most productive pastoral rangelands, put under the plow by growing populations of dryland farmers, have dwindled in surface area. Meanwhile, the numbers of grazing-rights holders have proliferated and vegetation on the remaining rangelands have dramatically deteriorated in form and forage quality, precipitating shifts from cattle to sheep and goats. Across the Sahel, agro-ecologists have noted the emergence of what they call neopastoral production systems that feature wealthy absentee owners of large herds, the proliferation of light but sophisticated weaponry, and a growing impoverished and politically marginalized pastoral underclass that is increasingly vulnerable to radicalization.

Security. The region is in the throes of rapidly growing Islamic insurgencies. Whereas demographic models of persistent non-territorial (revolutionary) conflict predict substantial declines in the risk of such conflict during the demographic window, none of the region’s states are currently projected by the UN Population Division to reach that window during the period of this report. Thus, the authors’ models suggest that ongoing conflicts in Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad, and northern Nigeria are statistically likely to continue, at some level, through the 2040-2045 period. Unlike the Marxist-inspired insurgencies that ignited across Southeast Asia and Latin America during the second half of the twentieth century, the jihadist presence in the rural portions of the Western Sahel restricts the educational progress of women, their autonomy, and delivery of the family planning services that could facilitate fertility decline and improve reproductive health and nutrition.

Urbanization. The rapidly growing urban population of the six countries of the Western Sahel currently comprises about one-third of the region’s population and is projected to approach half by 2045. Despite laudable investments in housing that have dramatically reduced the proportion of slum dwellers in the urban population in several states, these efforts have been outpaced by rapid urban growth. Consequently, the region’s slum-resident population has nearly doubled since 1990. As income-generating opportunities evaporate in the agricultural and livestock sectors, the hopes of young men will rest on the urban job market and the educational opportunities that make them fit for employment. Yet employment in the formal sector of the economy will remain elusive throughout the region, and rapid urbanization is bound to present new housing, fresh water, energy, health, sanitation, and security challenges. Still, if governments and donors heavily invest, urban transformation could stimulate transitions to greater female autonomy and smaller, better educated, more well-nourished families with skills and prospects for urban employment in the region.

Migration. Between 1990 and 2015, more than 80 percent of migrant flows that originated in the six Western Sahelian countries ended beyond the region’s borders. During this period, slightly more than 60 percent of the net outward flows were added to populations in other African countries, whereas nearly 40 percent were added to populations in Europe, North America, and destinations elsewhere. Senegal and Nigeria in particular, represent significant migrant gateways to Europe and North America. This analysis does not even account for substantial refugee flows during the 2015-2020 period, which are associated with escalating conflict in the Lake Chad Basin, Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali. For young Sahelians surviving on marginal rural livelihoods and in urban slums, episodic drought, looming conflict, and sustained economic hardship represent weighty “push factors” that readily tip personal decision-making toward migration. In this arid and poorly developed part of the world, the region’s population size is clearly important. It adds to the ranks of those in marginal livelihoods who might be pressured to leave during episodic disasters and seek greater opportunities elsewhere, while creating few “pull factors” encouraging potential migrants to stay.

Models of demographic progress

The report also highlights the pathways taken by three countries that politically, programmatically, and without coercion, facilitated relatively rapid fertility transitions and age-structural transformations: Tunisia, Botswana, and Bangladesh. While these states differ geographically, culturally, and economically from the Western Sahelian states, their demographic starting points were similar. Initially, each experienced a broadly pyramidal profile with a median age under twenty years and, in each, the total fertility rate was estimated at between six and seven children per woman. To these, the paper adds a discussion of ongoing programmatic efforts that are influencing the patterns of reproduction in Ethiopia, Malawi, and Rwanda.

Tunisia. This North African country’s rapid journey out of the age-structural transition’s youthful phase was the product of the vision and leadership of Habib Bourguiba, the country’s first president. His Neo-Destour political party legislated a package of pro-women reforms, including laws that compelled parents to send their daughters to school, raised the legal age of marriage, prohibited polygamy, gave women full inheritance rights, made divorce a judicial process, provided decentralized centers of voluntary family planning, mandated that women could work outside the home, opposed the veil, and curtailed the power of local imams.

Botswana. From its inception, professional care and affordability have been key elements of this country’s reproductive health effort. Family planning services, provided free of charge since 1970, were directly integrated into maternal and child health care at all local primary health facilities. Moreover, the country is one of the few in the sub-Saharan region where girls’ secondary-school enrollment rates—now above 90 percent—exceed boys’ rates. While Botswana shared the initial challenge of high rates of adolescent pregnancy and early marriage with Sahelian countries, its history of effective governance and wise use of mineral rents sets Botswana apart from most countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

Bangladesh. This country’s remarkable demographic turnaround was brought about by a dedicated health administration that mobilized tens of thousands of community-based health workers and volunteers, teamed up with a local non-governmental organization called Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), and used an infusion of health commodities and funds from foreign donors. Begun in 1975, Bangladesh’s successful donor-funded approach and its country-wide public-health communications program helped trigger demand for other long-term contraception methods (e.g., injectables and implants), countrywide expansion of the village worker program, and formalization of Bangladesh’s public health supply chain.

Programs in East Africa. Applying lessons learned from Asia and Latin America, reproductive health programs in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, and Rwanda have attained strong support from national leaders, achieved high public profiles, and obtained strong financial commitments from foreign donors. Over the past three decades, greater attention to girls’ educational attainment, organized efforts to augment women’s reproductive rights and increase political participation, and effective public health communications have improved the effectiveness of donor-funded programs for maternal and child health as well as family planning. Significant service delivery and contraceptive acceptance challenges remain in each of these eastern African countries, including high contraceptive-discontinuation rates, and wide gaps in contraceptive use between the lowest-income households and wealthier, urban families.

Photograph by Doug Linstedt.

Scenarios

In situations of crisis and uncertainty, scenarios help reduce the scope of options and unveil poorly visible possibilities that could, in the future, catch policy makers unaware. These fictitious futures allow analysts to depart from the most obvious event trajectories and explore other possibilities without having to imagine discontinuities or explain complex chains of events that, throughout history, have led to surprises. For the sake of didactic brevity, we present the following three scenarios under the guise of news dispatches, which shine a light on the situation in the Western Sahel in the early 2040s.

“More of the Same.” In an interregional summit, held in 2043, the European Union (EU) and an organization of Sahelian states agree to a fourth five-year multilateral Migration Convention. The agreement limits and controls the flow of migrants from and through the Sahel in return for a generous increase in the EU’s regional aid package. Girls’ school enrollments continue to rise in the region, and modern contraceptive use increases slowly, spreading from the burgeoning urban areas into smaller cities and towns. However, governments make little serious effort to expand women’s rights or to perturb the patriarchal system that condones adolescent marriages and childbearing. Meanwhile, some Western Sahelian states have instituted cash income supplements for stay-at-home mothers, offering an alternative to women competing in the region’s crowded job market. Meanwhile, Sahelian states continue to pool military resources to contain jihadist groups that remain active across the rural Sahel.

“Breakthrough.” A summit of the expanded group known as G7/Sahel, held in 2043, opens with the rollout of a UN-sponsored report highlighting a reproductive turnaround in several member states in the region and outlines significant progress in others. A local representative of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) reports on the results of demographic and health surveys indicating that, in both Senegal and Burkina Faso, countrywide total fertility rates have fallen below three children per woman, and that Niger appears to be following on a similar path. Local surveys in several Sahelian cities provide evidence that fertility is near the two-child-per-woman replacement level and that maternal and childhood clinical caseloads as well as school class sizes have dramatically declined. Despite a slowdown in the region’s rate of population increase, ongoing growth due to momentum, increasing temperatures, periodic crop failures, and sporadic jihadist violence, grain imports and food aid remain critical elements of the food-security equation in the Sahel.

“Downward Spiral.” In a UN Security Council session convened in 2043, the Sahel’s special representative calls for international action to address a multifaceted crisis unfolding across the Western Sahel. He describes Somalia-like state failures and territorial infighting among warlords in Mali and Chad, and further outlines deteriorating security conditions across the Hausa-speaking regions of northern Nigeria and Niger, where loosely affiliated jihadist groups have proliferated and, in some cases, gained political control. He also notes that airfields in the Sahel have become the interregional hub for moving contraband, including human trafficking. In his report, the Sahel’s special representative calls the Security Council’s attention to Niger, currently in the throes of a famine on a scale that occurred in the latter half of the twentieth century. This time, Niamey, the capital, is faced with feeding a population nearing sixty million, rather than the 5.2 million of the mid-1970s. Senegal, the region’s only gateway for food aid and other humanitarian assistance, is also the jumping-off place for illegal migration to Europe.

Recommendations

For international aid donors, the report offers a general recommendation: Successful demographic turnarounds over the coming twenty to twenty-five years would feature at least one, and hopefully two, countrywide programmatic success stories, providing exemplars of best practices, a pool of local expertise, and models of community participation that might spread elsewhere. Senegal may be the best candidate to host such a model program. Another focused effort should be launched in an inland state—perhaps Burkina Faso, if its rural areas are pacified. In Niger, Mali, and Chad, the most effective interventions will likely be those that vastly improve urban services and expand a trained cadre of dedicated health workers to deploy in urban peripheries and refugee camps, where demands for education, family planning, and other reproductive services are typically high. In addition to the more general take-aways, the report’s specific recommendations are as follows:

Gain from urbanization. By 2045, nearly half of the region’s growing population is projected to live in urban areas. If services can be mobilized and funded, it will be in these urban centers that young Sahelians receive the vocational and professional education and attain the income-generating employment that could keep many of them from slipping into the illegal or extremist margins of their societies. It is imperative that girls’ education and voluntary family planning—along with other reproductive, maternal, and child health services—are also in place in these expanding cities and towns, and that women gain access to both the private- and public-sector workforce.

Ramp up girls’ education and family planning. Governments in the region should reinvigorate their commitments to increasing levels of girls’ educational attainment and, with the assistance of international donors, vastly increase levels of spending on family planning and other reproductive health services. States should elevate the administrative profile of family planning to a ministerial responsibility and augment its public profile through information campaigns. Education and health administrations should eliminate bureaucratic, traditional, and religious barriers to girls’ school attendance and facilitate easy and affordable access to family planning services for both married as well as single individuals. Methods of delivery that directly bring basic reproductive health services to people in their urban neighborhoods and rural homes—including village health workers and mobile clinics—may prove most effective in Sahelian conditions. At this stage of development, it would be helpful if Sahelian professional societies develop an online library of local success stories that cover girls’ education, family planning, as well as sexual and reproductive health.

Work with respected religious and political leaders, and other public figures; involve and inform men. Exposure to supportive messages from religious leaders who address questions of religious acceptability is generally associated with higher levels of modern contraceptive use. Moreover, recent studies indicate that local programs that inform and involve men and seek the support of local leaders may be the most likely to succeed in the Western Sahel. For decades, health communicators have worked with television and radio producers as well as entertainers, particularly those involved in popular daytime dramas (i.e., soap operas) and talk shows to impart public service messaging concerning maternal and child health, nutrition, HIV/AIDS, family planning, women’s rights, and sexual relationships.

Augment women’s rights. In the Western Sahel, much can be accomplished by protecting girls and women from multiple forms of discrimination and violence, and by expanding their rights in marriage. This effort begins by enforcing current national laws that already prohibit all forms of female genital cutting, that outlaw forced marriages, and prohibit marriage before the age of eighteen years. Once married, the region’s women should deserve the rights to initiate divorce, obtain recourse against violence, and secure custodianship over their children in case of marital separation, divorce, or the death of their spouse. Women should have the right to legal recourse and equal treatment in state-run family courts of law, rather than being limited to the judgments of religious and traditional courts, which have generally failed to protect women and children from physical, psychological, and economic harm. Where political resistance has rolled back legislative efforts to augment women’s rights (as it has been the case in Mali), government support and endorsement of women’s legal, professional, cooperative, and educational societies may offer alternative routes for many Sahelian women to achieve greater autonomy and attain leadership positions.

Bring services to marginalized minorities. Health and education ministries should ensure that significant programmatic efforts in girls’ education, voluntary family planning, and women’s rights be distributed, in some form, among marginalized minorities—no matter how geographically or culturally isolated these minorities might be. Prior experiences in other regions suggest that regional, socioeconomic, ethnic, or caste fertility disparities later develop into hard-to-overcome social and economic inequalities that generate political tensions and exacerbate animosities.

Promote women-centered efforts in all agricultural, economic, and infrastructural development projects. All government, private, and donor-supported projects should contain components that facilitate extending girls’ educational attainment and/or quality of education, improve access to reproductive health services, and promote women’s rights and their economic autonomy. No donor-supported project should facilitate the efforts of governments, political parties, or traditional and religious leaders to impede women’s progress in any sector of development.

Manage resource-related tensions between farming and pastoralism. In a more-populous Western Sahel, the future of agricultural and pastoral livelihoods will depend on the development of groundwater irrigation and intensified agropastoralism (a more deliberate integration of agricultural and grazing uses of land), as well as their relation to urban markets. In this more-populous future, the region’s governments should consider enforcing schemes that restrict absentee rangeland users, protect rangelands from further agricultural encroachment, and help pastoralists deter cattle rustling. Meanwhile, governments in the Western Sahel should continue to develop industries that add value to agricultural and livestock products, promote cooperation between farmers and pastoralists, and develop more efficient transport to urban markets.

Protect development gains with investments in local security. In an environment of rapidly spreading jihadist conflict, geographic pockets of progressive local leadership and popular support for girls’ education and other women-centered programs could become primary targets of militants. Affected communities and their leaders deserve special protection provided by police or anti-terrorist units.

Download full report

Watch the official launch event

Report launch | Demographic trends in the Western Sahel

Official launch event of the Scowcroft Center report, “What Future for the Western Sahel? The Region’s Demography and Its Implications by 2045,” in which the authors argue that unless the Sahelian states focus on reversing the underlying conditions that sustain high fertility, they are unlikely to dislodge the mutually reinforcing crises of instability, forced migration, and food insecurity in the foreseeable future.

Africa Energy & Environment Human Rights Politics & Diplomacy

Lire le rapport en français

Report

Mar 7, 2022

Quel avenir pour le Sahel?

By Richard Cincotta and Stephen Smith

Le Sahel est dans une impasse démographique. S’ils veulent sortir de l’impasse actuelle, les gouvernements sahéliens devront réorienter une partie importante de leurs efforts de développement et moyens financiers vers des politiques et programmes visant à améliorer la condition féminine : en prévenant les mariages et grossesses précoces chez les adolescentes, en promouvant l’éducation des filles et en garantissant la pleine participation des femmes dans tous les secteurs publics et privés, à commencer par les lieux de travail.

Africa Energy & Environment

The Foresight, Strategy, and Risks Initiative (FSR) provides actionable foresight and innovative strategies to a global community of policymakers, business leaders, and citizens.

EXPLORE THE INitiative

The post What future for the Western Sahel? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Is Lukashenka mimicking Putin’s weaponization of organized crime?

Brian Whitmore — Wed, 03 Nov 2021 19:59:39 +0000

You can call it trolling. You can call it gaslighting. Or you can just call it the usual run-of-the-mill hypocrisy.

Aleksandr Bastrykin, chairman of Russia’s Investigative Committee, visited Belarus on November 2 for talks with law enforcement officials about, wait for it, fostering closer cooperation to combat transnational organized crime. Bastrykin also met with Oleg Shandarovich, the first deputy chair of the Belarusian Investigative Committee, about fighting cybercrime.

And apparently he did so with a straight face.

Under Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian Kremlin regime, Russia has, of course, long been accused of using organized crime, including cybercrime, as an instrument of statecraft. The criminal underworld and the law enforcement and security services are routinely regarded as two sides of the same coin.

This includes allegations that criminal gangs with close ties to the Kremlin are frequently used to generate untraceable black cash and to carry out tasks like assassinations and arms smuggling that Vladimir Putin’s regime wants to keep its fingerprints off.

Spanish prosecutor Jose Grinda has noted that the activities of Russian criminal networks are virtually indistinguishable from those of the Russian government. Prior to Russia’s forceful and illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, the Kremlin reportedly dispatched a delegation from the powerful Soltsevo organized crime group to Simferopol to line up support from local gangsters. Russia’s security services also stand accused of actively recruiting skilled hackers from the ranks of cyber criminals to attack the West.

Given all this, one has to wonder whether what Bastrykin was really doing in Minsk was not seeking to foster cooperation about how to combat organized crime, but rather discussing greater coordination between Russia and Belarus on how to use it more effectively.

Greater coordination between Russia and Belarus on this issue would certainly seem to make sense, because the autocratic regime of Alyaksandr Lukashenka appears to be actively mimicking Vladimir Putin’s strategy of weaponizing the criminal underworld.

In an interview with the EUObserver, Pavel Latushka, a former Belarus establishment insider turned dissident, said the Lukashenka regime has sent organized crime figures to Europe to target exiled Belarusian dissidents. “These criminals are on Polish and EU territory and are preparing acts of terrorism against me and my team under the direction of the Belarusian interior ministry,” Latushka, a former Belarusian Culture Minister who is currently living in Warsaw, commented.

According to Latushka, the operation is led by Vladimir Tikhinya, the former deputy head of the Belarusian interior ministry’s anti-organized crime unit, and Alyaksandr Kushnerov, a reputed Belarusian crime boss who also goes by the name Sasha Kushner. Citing his own sources in the Belarusian security services, Latushka said Tikhinya has been “given a free hand to organize operations of criminal structures to take care of liquidation of Belarusian opposition activists abroad.”

Eurasia Center events

After Vilnius: What’s next on Ukraine’s path to NATO?

Eastern Europe NATO Security & Defense Ukraine

Latushka’s allegations appear more credible when viewed in the context of recent events. Back in August 2021, the body of exiled Belarusian dissident Vital Shyshou was discovered hanged in a park in Kyiv. Members of Shyshou’s organization, the Belarusian House in Ukraine (BDU), say Ukrainian authorities had previously warned them about possible assassination attempts.

Yury Shchuchko, an activist with the Belarusian House in Ukraine, told Current Time television that the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) had warned them about “people from the Belarusian special operations forces and other units coming to Ukraine to physically liquidate” them. “They asked us to be cautious, because a network of Belarusian KGB agents is operating here, and anything is possible.”

The Belarusian House in Ukraine also released its own statement on Telegram reading: “We were warned repeatedly by local sources and our people in Belarus about possible provocations, going as far as kidnapping and assassination. Vitaly reacted to those warnings with stoicism and humor.”

It would be no surprise if the Belarusian regime is adopting more of the strategies and tactics long favored by Russia. The current migrant crisis that has been manufactured by Lukashenka on the Belarusian border with the EU closely mimics a strategy that Putin was accused of deploying against Europe back in 2015. And the ongoing crackdown on social media and online dissent in Belarus is essentially a copy of policies enacted by Moscow years ago.

It only stands to reason that the Lukashenka regime is now also deploying the long-standing Russian strategy of using organized crime as an instrument of statecraft.

Shahid quoted in United News of Bangladesh: Urge ASEAN, QUAD friends to distance from Myanmar military: Dhaka to Washington

Atlantic Council — Thu, 28 Oct 2021 19:03:00 +0000

The post Shahid quoted in United News of Bangladesh: Urge ASEAN, QUAD friends to distance from Myanmar military: Dhaka to Washington appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Are Belarus and Russia using migrant crisis to smuggle agents into Europe?

Brian Whitmore — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 16:59:12 +0000

Elements of a new Iron Curtain continue to appear along Belarus’s border with the European Union. And as they do, officials in the Baltic states and Poland are increasingly concerned that there could be more to the escalating migrant crisis on the EU’s eastern frontier than meets the eye.

The Polish parliament is considering legislation to spend more than USD 400 million to build a wall on its border with Belarus. Poland has also nearly doubled its troop presence on its eastern border to almost 6,000 soldiers. These moves come weeks after Polish officials claimed that Belarusian forces had fired shots across the border on October 7.

Tensions between Belarus and the European Union have been mounting for months since Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s autocratic regime retaliated against EU sanctions by manufacturing a migrant crisis by flying thousands of migrants to Minsk from Middle Eastern hot spots and then spiriting them across the border into Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia. More than 16,000 have been prevented from illegally crossing the Polish border, more than 4,000 in Lithuania, and nearly 1,800 in Latvia.

The migrant crisis on Europe’s eastern border is not a sideshow. It is an escalating security nightmare that is unfolding as Belarus becomes increasingly militarized and as Russia rapidly expands its military footprint in its smaller but strategically vital neighbor. And it is becoming increasingly apparent that there could be much more sinister agendas at play in this manufactured crisis than a desire on the part of the Belarusian dictator to get revenge on Europe for imposing sanctions on his regime.

Back in September, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told reporters in Warsaw that Lukashenka was not acting alone, but was instead being assisted by Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin. “We’re dealing with a mass organized, well-directed action from Minsk and Moscow,” he said.

The manufactured migrant crisis is an effort by Putin and Lukashenka to wage hybrid war and destabilize Europe. And it is a human tragedy fabricated by two autocrats who are manipulating desperate people fleeing war and repression.

But according to Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics, it also appears to be an effort to stealthily smuggle potential agents and provocateurs into Europe. “There are reports that some of those people have been living in Belarus or in Russia for years. Some of them are affiliated with established terrorist organizations so there are also security concerns,” Rinkevics told Newsweek in reference to the people illegally crossing from Belarus into neighboring European Union member countries.

Lithuania’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mantas Adomėnas said back in August 2021 that Russian nationals were also among those attempting to illegally cross the Lithuanian border. “We had a dialogue with the Russian representative because Russian citizens are also crossing the border,” Adomėnas told Ekho Moskvy.

In a blog post at the time, veteran Russia-watcher and former US State Department official Paul Goble wrote that in addition to “exploiting the situation for its own purposes to create problems for Lithuania,” Moscow appeared to also be using the migrant flow “to cover the insertion of Russian illegals.”

Eurasia Center events

After Vilnius: What’s next on Ukraine’s path to NATO?

Eastern Europe NATO Security & Defense Ukraine

The possibility that Moscow and Minsk may be surreptitiously spiriting agents into Poland and Lithuania is disturbing because those countries have become a haven for large numbers of Russian and Belarusian dissidents and opposition figures who have fled their homelands. Meanwhile, both Putin and Lukashenka have become increasingly bold about targeting dissidents living abroad.

Russia, of course, has a long history of sending agents to assassinate dissidents abroad, including the killing of Aleksandr Litvinenko in London in 2006, the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in 2018, and the shooting death of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in Berlin in 2019.

In August 2021, the badly beaten body of Belarusian dissident Vital Shyshou, who founded an organization to assist other persecuted Belarusian exiles, was discovered hanged in a park in Kyiv.

One of Shyshou’s colleagues, Yury Shchuchko, told Current Time television that the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) had warned about “people from Belarusian special operations forces and other units coming to Ukraine to physically liquidate” them. “They asked us to be cautious, because a network of Belarusian KGB agents is operating here and anything is possible.”

EU foreign ministers are considering possible new sanctions against Belarus’s national airline Belavia for transporting migrants to Belarus for the purpose of spiriting them into the European Union. The sanctions would include banning European companies from doing any business with Belavia. Germany has also launched a criminal investigation into the “organizers” of the current migrant crisis, a not so veiled reference to Lukashenka.

These are steps in the right direction. But the recent actions of the Putin-Lukashenka axis of autocrats on Europe’s eastern frontier represent a security crisis that demands more urgency from both the EU and NATO than we have seen thus far.

Blanks or not, the fact that there was gunfire on the European Union’s eastern border represents a significant escalation in autocratic Belarusian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s ongoing hybrid war against the West. This escalation is happening as Belarus is becoming increasingly militarized and as Russia is steadily expanding its footprint in its smaller and strategically important neighbor.

Tensions between Belarus and the European Union have been mounting since Lukashenka retaliated to EU sanctions by manufacturing a migrant crisis on the country’s borders with EU member states Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. The Lukashenka regime has been flying migrants to Minsk from the Middle East and then spiriting them across the border. Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland have responded by erecting barbed wire fences and sending military forces to control the border.

General Roman Polko, the acting director of Poland’s Bureau of National Security, told wPolityce that in orchestrating a crisis on the border, Lukashenka was attempting to set off a “human bomb” against Poland and Europe. “Lukashenka naively believed that Europe would succumb to blackmail, lift all sanctions, and perhaps even provide some financial assistance just to stop the flow of migrants. However, he miscalculated,” Polko commented. “So now he is resorting to even more extreme measures.”

Polko added that the tension Lukashenka is provoking on the EU border is a component of Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin’s own ongoing confrontation with the West. “Putin is still waging a hybrid war,” he said. “He knows that Russia is too weak to win an open armed conflict as far as the NATO alliance is concerned. Besides, Russia is too dependent on Western economies to be able to afford such a conflict. I say Russia all the time because Putin is pulling the strings here.”

In this sense, Lukashenka plays a similar role for Putin as the Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, who is widely believed to have been behind the assassinations of Putin critics like Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov and investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya. By allegedly acting as Putin’s willing executioner, Kadyrov provides the Kremlin leader with plausible deniability and distance from operations he wants carried out without his fingerprints.

Lukashenka now appears to be playing a similar role vis-à-vis the West. If Kadyrov is Putin’s willing executioner, Lukashenka is his willing instigator and provocateur. In fact, the Belarusian dictator’s manufactured migrant crisis mimics tactics Russia has been accused of using against Europe in the past.

Eurasia Center events

After Vilnius: What’s next on Ukraine’s path to NATO?

Eastern Europe NATO Security & Defense Ukraine

The escalating tension on the Belarusian-Polish border comes as analysts note a growing anti-Polish campaign by the Lukashenka regime. Pavel Usov, director of the Warsaw-based Center for Political Analysis and Prognosis, wrote in a recent commentary, “it is in the interests of Lukashenka to demonize the West, and Poland in particular, to try to present it to the Belarusians in the form of an occupier and a threat who seeks to seize the country and enslave it.”

Minsk and Moscow have also sought to score propaganda points when migrants have died on the border or when satellite imagery showed Polish border guards pushing them back into Belarus. Lithuania has attempted to mitigate the crisis at its border by allowing migrants to apply for asylum at its embassy in Minsk.

Germany, which has recently experienced an increase in illegal crossings over its border with Poland by Iraqis and Syrians who arrived in Europe from Belarus, has launched a criminal investigation into the “organizers” of the current migrant crisis, a not so veiled reference to Lukashenka.

The crisis on Europe’s eastern border is not a sideshow. It is a human tragedy that has been manufactured by two autocrats manipulating desperate people fleeing war and repression. It is an effort by the Putin-Lukashenka axis of autocrats to wage hybrid war and destabilize Europe. And it is escalating. With winter fast approaching and temperatures plummeting, the humanitarian crisis at the EU border is likely to worsen dramatically in the weeks ahead.

Pakistan’s domestic politics following the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan

Dawood Ghazanavi — Wed, 06 Oct 2021 16:01:00 +0000

Though discussions abound about how South and Central Asia might align to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan, the ramifications of the Taliban takeover will also play out in the domestic affairs of Kabul’s neighbors. Looking at the evolving relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan, questions remain as to how Pakistani politics and society will change amid the cessation of conflict but new Taliban regime next door.

To explore these questions and more, Dawood Ghazanavi, scholar and barrister at the Pakistan Supreme Court, joined Irfan Nooruddin to discuss what the future holds for Pakistan amid the Taliban’s new government and recent political developments in the country.

This interview was recorded on October 4, 2021.

The South Asia Center serves as the Atlantic Council’s focal point for work on the region as well as relations between these countries, neighboring regions, Europe, and the United States.

SouthAsiaSource Sep 22, 2021

Experts react: 2021 Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Tajikistan

By South Asia Center

On September 17, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) held a heads-of-state summit in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, in a hybrid virtual and in-person setting. Consisting of China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and most recently Iran, the SCO meeting primarily discussed the evolving situation in Afghanistan and its ramifications for member states as well as the international community more broadly.

Afghanistan Central Asia

New Atlanticist Sep 14, 2021

Sanctions alone won’t tame the Taliban

After two decades of conflict in Afghanistan, it’s difficult to imagine Western powers resorting to military intervention against the Taliban, even if the group lives up to the worst of everyone’s fears. That leaves economic and financial sanctions—a favored policy option to impose costs and contain adversaries without using force—as the primary tool with which […]

SouthAsiaSource Sep 3, 2021

Pakistan and the Taliban 2.0: The good, the bad, and the ugly

By Rabia Akhtar

The Taliban’s 11-day Blitzkrieg has left the entire world stunned. As the new government takes shape in Afghanistan, there are some good, some bad, and some ugly realities confronting the region, primarily Pakistan.

Afghanistan Pakistan

SouthAsiaSource Sep 2, 2021

The US-Pakistan relationship in a new Afghanistan

By Hashim Pasha

Now that the American venture into Afghanistan is coming to be seen by some as a serious strategic failure, there is a strong temptation for US policymakers to find something, or someone, to blame.

Afghanistan Conflict

New Atlanticist Sep 1, 2021

How to avoid another state-building failure after Afghanistan

By Frank Ruggiero

Why did the United States continue a state-building policy after al-Qaeda was dismantled? And how can it learn to use force to negotiate the peaceful end to its next conflict?

Afghanistan Conflict

New Atlanticist Aug 31, 2021

US intel is now flying blind in Afghanistan

By Jennifer A. Counter

Good intelligence is all about people—which is why the president’s ‘over-the-horizon’ approach may fail.

Afghanistan Conflict

ALL ON Pakistan

SOUTHASIASOURCE BLOG

The post Pakistan’s domestic politics following the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Now is the time to recognize the genocide in Burma

Rehman Chishti and Knox Thames — Fri, 17 Sep 2021 15:15:06 +0000

With Afghanistan grabbing global headlines, it’s easy to forget about another long-running crisis: the repression of Burma’s Rohingya Muslims. With the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) getting underway, the high-level session provides an important opportunity for the United States and United Kingdom to place the topic back on the global agenda—by calling the crimes committed by the country’s military (the Tatmadaw) a “genocide.”

 Multiple American and British administrations have debated the question. And in the meantime, Burma’s military junta has continued systematically attacking the Rohingya and other ethnic minorities. A military-led coup in February served as a further distraction. Calling the Tatmadaw’s actions a “genocide” before UNGA would remind the world about this crisis. It would also discourage future atrocities by heaping new pressure on the regime.

Evidence of wrongdoing, aimed at destroying Burma’s Rohingya population because of its ethnic and religious identity, is plentiful. After extensive research, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum found “compelling evidence” that Myanmar’s military committed ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, and genocide against the Rohingya. Soldiers killed thousands, while some 700,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh. A US State Department report found the violence to be “extreme, large-scale, widespread, and seemingly geared toward both terrorizing the population and driving out the Rohingya residents.” It concluded that “the scope and scale of the military’s operations indicate they were well-planned and coordinated.”

While the persecution of the Rohingya is undoubtedly the military’s most egregious crime, the junta has also been carrying out atrocities against other ethnic and religious minorities in Burma, such as the predominantly Christian Kachin, Chin, and Karenni. 

Yet successive US and UK governments have equivocated and remain noncommittal.

When asked in June about a genocide designation regarding the Rohingya, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken cited a “very much actively ongoing” review. But his report to Congress a month later pulled punches and merely reiterated the Trump administration’s determination of “ethnic cleansing.” Meanwhile, then British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab told Parliament in July that his country would not join the International Court of Justice case brought by The Gambia against Myanmar on the Rohingya genocide, even though he supports “the impetus behind the case.”

None of this will compel Burma’s military junta to end its abuses.

We’ve both worked in government on issues of religious freedom. We know dictators won’t stop until the costs outweigh the benefits. That’s why more action is needed if we are to save the Rohingya and other minorities from these terrors. Telling the truth is a necessary starting place for smart policies. A joint declaration would take a clear moral and legal stand while complementing bilateral coordination on sanctions.  

The UNGA provides the right venue to rally the world. A bold genocide declaration would demonstrate leadership and send Burma’s military rulers a clear, direct, and unmistakable message. In contrast, continued use of vague language merely empowers them.

 The same generals who ordered the genocide against the Rohingya also led the February coup and subsequent crackdown, which has killed more than one thousand people who have protested the putsch. By failing to name the Rohingya genocide, the Tatmadaw will feel emboldened to escalate its campaigns against ethnic and religious minorities and further threaten the brave citizens who courageously demonstrated against the coup. 

Some policymakers fear the term “genocide” risks pushing Burma further into China’s orbit. Since China does not place human rights at the center of its foreign relations, some believe raising the issue puts Western diplomacy at a disadvantage and gains nothing. But the United States and the United Kingdom should not be afraid to say so. 

 A “genocide” label would present new avenues through which to punish the regime for its atrocities. For example, a declaration would enable the United States and Britain to use their UN Security Council seats to press for a referral of Burma to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to ensure perpetrator accountability. Even if China and Russia block an ICC referral, the “genocide” label would empower the United States and United Kingdom to exercise universal jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute the perpetrators.

A genocide designation would also justify expanding the arms embargo, supporting a UN effort to collect and preserve evidence of crimes against the Rohingya, and sanctioning regime leaders further.

These collective actions would help dissuade the regime from further crimes, discourage outside financial support, and undercut its international legitimacy. Moreover, such leadership on genocide—just as heads of state meet at the UNGA—would energize global efforts to press the military to end its repression and increase humanitarian support.  

After all, there’s an inherent contradiction here: The US government and the British Parliament have both labeled China’s actions against Uyghur Muslims a “genocide.” If we use the word against China, a rising economic and diplomatic adversary, why can’t we do the same with Burma? We constantly work to distinguish our countries from China to promote a secure and prosperous Indo-Pacific—so how does it advance our values or interests if we fail to fully denounce these crimes? 

The challenges facing the Rohingya in Burma and those who fled into Bangladesh are immense. Yet, some foreign-policy decisions transcend the tightrope of balancing competing priorities and interests. Failing to accurately assess Burma’s genocidal campaign against the Rohingya will reverberate beyond their situation, demonstrating to dictators, the Taliban, and others that we lack the honesty and courage to speak truth to power. 

 A dire human-rights situation continues unabated for the Rohingya. We urge newly named British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and Secretary Blinken to take decisive action before the UNGA and officially recognize this crisis as a “genocide.” Burma’s military committed mass atrocities against the Rohingya; they know it, and we know it. Now, it’s time we say so.

Rehman Chishti is a member of the British Parliament (representing Gillingham & Rainham) and the former UK prime minister’s special envoy on freedom of religion or belief. Follow him on Twitter @Rehman_Chishti.

Knox Thames served as the US special advisor on religious minorities at the State Department during the Obama and Trump administrations. Follow him on Twitter @KnoxThames.

Bhasan Char: An inflection point in the Rohingya refugee crisis?

By Imrul Islam

On December 4, 2020, Dhaka followed through on its promise to move refugees from Cox’s Bazar to Bhasan Char, starting a new, unpredictable chapter in the Rohingya crisis. However, Bhasan Char does not solve these problems as much as it relocates them. Separating some refugees from others does not address the underlying drivers of crime within the refugee camps. If anything, relocation splinters aid response, and further attenuates humanitarian space.

Bangladesh Civil Society

SouthAsiaSource Jun 24, 2021

On World Refugee Day, we must choose action over words to help Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh

By Imrul Islam

Two decades after it began, and 70 years since the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, World Refugee Day must be more than words. It must be a catalyst for urgent action to address the rights of people forced to flee.

Bangladesh Crisis Management

Fast Thinking Feb 1, 2021

FAST THINKING: A coup in Myanmar

By Atlantic Council

The military is back in control after detaining Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, the country’s de facto civilian leader, and senior members of her ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) party. Civil-rights activists have been detained as well. How did this happen?

Indo-Pacific Politics & Diplomacy

The post Now is the time to recognize the genocide in Burma appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Confronting the disaster left behind in Afghanistan

Mir Sadat — Fri, 10 Sep 2021 17:37:15 +0000

In the weeks preceding the August 30 withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan, I joined a coalition of military members, veterans, human-rights advocates, and ordinary Americans who banded together to evacuate thousands of American citizens, green-card holders, special immigrant visa (SIV) applicants, and others. This unprecedented effort demonstrated the United States’ greatest values: honor, courage, commitment, and integrity. In the absence of bold US government leadership, these volunteers represented the voiceless and helpless US citizens, US permanent residents, and Afghan allies left stranded in enemy territory after US forces accelerated their withdrawal in June.

There will be plenty of time to debate and write books about the merits of withdrawing from Afghanistan. But putting that aside, history will judge the United States by the appalling manner in which this withdrawal was planned, communicated, and executed—not once but twice, as troops were redeployed to facilitate evacuations.

The series of strategic miscalculations started with the initial US-Taliban peace deal in February 2020, perceived by the Taliban as the United States’ proposed terms of surrender, and the mistakes accelerated in velocity and magnitude this year under the new US administration. These errors included everything from withdrawing forces too quickly at the same time as the summer fighting season so there was no adjustment period for the Afghan military, to removing contractors who served as technical support and connective tissue for the Afghan military, to giving up Bagram Air Base, to not taking up the Taliban’s August 15 offer to allow the US military to secure Kabul, to not unleashing US special operations forces around Kabul to eliminate the terrorist threat.

These miscalculations resulted in the deaths of US service members, the inability to retrieve US citizens and green-card holders throughout the country, restrictive Taliban checkpoints, and a humanitarian disaster at the gates of the airport.

Saturday marks the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks by al-Qaeda, the terrorist group harbored by the Taliban. It is a sad reminder that Afghanistan has become an exponentially more dangerous war zone ruled by terrorists and violent jihadi extremists than it was before the withdrawal—and perhaps more dangerous than it was in 2001. This time the regime, composed of a nexus between the Taliban (an Islamist movement) and the Haqqani Network (a designated terrorist organization), is stronger, better equipped, more resilient, more organized, and more ambitious. Members of the new Taliban regime include a terrorist leader on the US Federal Bureau of Investigation’s “most wanted” list and five former Guantanamo Bay detainees.

Who’s left behind?

Now that its troops have departed, the United States must hold to its promise that every American citizen, permanent resident, SIV applicant, and Afghan ally who wants to leave Afghanistan can do so. Until then, this US mission in Afghanistan is not complete and should be considered failed.

The United States and ninety-seven other nations reached an agreement with the Taliban to allow evacuations to continue, but that deal has been slow to materialize. US officials have been pleading with Qatari and other Middle Eastern nations to exert influence over the Taliban to permit US citizens to leave Afghanistan, with leaders such as Secretary of State Antony Blinken at times bending over backwards not to criticize the Taliban.

The first international flights finally left Kabul Thursday, including US citizens, but a weeklong Taliban blockade continues for charter flights leaving Mazar-i-Sharif. The harsh reality remains that Taliban members often have not allowed US citizens, US permanent residents, and Afghans even with the proper paperwork to bypass their checkpoints. General Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., commander of US Central Command, estimated on August 30 that hundreds of Americans were still left in Afghanistan, saying: “We did not get everyone out who we wanted to get out.” The US government has yet to provide a definitive answer to the number of US citizens or green-card holders who are left behind.

The Department of Homeland Security says it will admit more than 50,000 Afghans into the United States, but there are an estimated 250,000 Afghans approved or eligible for US visas across the various databases for non-governmental organizations, civil society, and others. Plus, thousands more visa-eligible people who are not captured in any database are working hard to make themselves known to a network of volunteer groups trying to conduct evacuations. Since there are no longer US boots on the ground in Afghanistan, it is important that the US government support the ongoing private evacuation efforts.

Those Afghan allies who are unable to evade the Taliban and escape to the United States or another friendly country could be condemned to death. The Taliban can identify and hunt down Afghans who assisted the US military using biometric systems abandoned by the United States and Afghan government databases. It will require bold global leadership by the United States and other powers to save more lives and protect US interests in the region.

Holding the US—and the Taliban—to account

Congress must hold the executive branch accountable, especially because in the months and weeks ahead of the withdrawal the US government did not engage in an active, repetitive public-awareness campaign to encourage American citizens and green-card holders to leave Afghanistan. In fact, the US government seemed like it was caught off-guard after the fall of Kabul and struggled to ascertain the number of Americans in Afghanistan. The American public—particularly Gold Star families, veterans, and military members—needs to know how our government planned this withdrawal, what alternative scenarios were considered, how those courses of action were fleshed out, and who made key decisions.

Meanwhile, the atrocities in Afghanistan are only beginning. Taliban militants have reportedly started summary executions of former government officials, minorities, artists, and human-rights advocates. There are reports of women forced into marriages with Taliban fighters as well. The United Nations and other human-rights commissions must document the Taliban regime’s violations and levy additional sanctions on Taliban leaders.

Now that the United States has withdrawn its fighting forces for the second time, the US government can save lives and protect the homeland by:

convincing the international community to not recognize the Taliban regime for at least two years until it can demonstrate basic adherence to human rights,

sanctioning other nations’ intelligence services and political leaders who provide guidance and mentorship to the Taliban regime,

working with non-governmental organizations to address the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan and convincing Uzbekistan to allow in Afghan refugees via its land border,

setting up an Afghan/American Resettlement Task Force to resettle Afghan allies and prevent non-Afghans from exploiting the emigration process,

extending the refugee and special immigrant visa available to Afghans because many are currently trapped in Afghanistan,

placing rescued Afghan minors with qualified Afghan-American families to minimize the psychological and cultural impact on these children and to combat Taliban propaganda that Afghan children are being converted to other religions.

After the Soviets’ 1989 withdrawal, the United States and the global community disengaged from Afghanistan, helping give rise eventually to the Taliban’s horrors and then the 9/11 attacks. Twenty years later, with Americans left behind in enemy territory, the United States must not disengage again as other competitors fill the vacuum and exploit Afghanistan’s natural resources and strategic location, while creating a permissive environment for terrorist organizations to flourish. Sending rockets, drones, or jet fighters from one thousand miles away does not eliminate threats and causes unnecessary civilian casualties, which only feeds the narratives of terrorist groups.

The US government cannot victim-shame or blame its way out of responsibility in the Afghan withdrawal debacle. In describing the aftermath of US support to the Afghan resistance to the Soviet Union, former congressman Charlie Wilson said: “These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world… and then we f—ed up the endgame.” The United States has simply screwed up the endgame again.

However, there still is a window of opportunity to make things right if the White House and State Department work with allies in Congress and the international community—and back the efforts of the extraordinary volunteer network that has already mobilized to save lives in Afghanistan.

Mir Sadat is a nonresident senior fellow in the Forward Defense practice of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. He is a former National Security Council policy director, and a previous strategic advisor to two International Security Assistance Force commanding generals. Follow him on Twitter @Dr_Sadat_USN.

This piece represents the author’s views solely and does not necessarily represent the official policy or position of any department or agency of the US government.

The post Confronting the disaster left behind in Afghanistan appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Kroenig and Ashford discuss the brewing refugee crisis in Eastern Europe and the new Taliban government

Atlantic Council — Fri, 10 Sep 2021 13:52:24 +0000

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

On September 10, Foreign Policy published a biweekly column featuring Scowcroft Center deputy director Matthew Kroenig and New American Engagement Initiative senior fellow Emma Ashford discussing the latest news in international affairs.

In this column, they discuss Belarus’ attempt to inundate Eastern Europe with migrants, threats to democracy in Brazil, and the newly announced Taliban government in Afghanistan.

If the United States and Europe had imposed a steeper cost on Russia after 2014, Putin wouldn’t be contemplating more aggression. Now is the time for the United States to back its words with threatened actions that will follow further aggression, including increased military support to the Ukrainian government and more punishing economic sanctions against Russia.

Matthew Kroenig

Neither the United States nor its European allies were willing to fight Russia over a peripheral US interest like Ukraine in 2014, and I don’t think they’re willing to do so now.

Emma Ashford

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

Former staff

Emma Ashford

New American Engagement Initiative Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Conflict Economic Sanctions

The post Kroenig and Ashford discuss the brewing refugee crisis in Eastern Europe and the new Taliban government appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Belarus and Europe’s new Iron Curtain

Brian Whitmore — Wed, 08 Sep 2021 17:24:49 +0000

Alyaksandr Lukashenka chose a telling location last week to announce that Belarus would soon receive an enormous military hardware consignment from Russia.

Speaking in the eastern Belarusian city of Babruysk on September 1, the autocratic leader said Russia would be sending combat jets, helicopters, and air defense missile systems, possibly including S-400 missile systems, “in the near future.”

The significance of making such an announcement in Babruysk should be clear to anybody who has been following the cat-and-mouse game that has been Russian-Belarusian relations in recent years. Since 2013, Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin has been trying to strongarm Lukashenka into allowing a new Russian airbase in that city, and Lukashenka had long been resisting.

That is, apparently, until recently. Back in March 2021, Lukashenka indicated that he was prepared to drop his long-standing opposition to the base in Babruysk, which would host SU-27 fighter jets flown by Russian pilots. The city is already the site of a Belarusian air base.

Lukashenka’s announcement about a large new Russian military consignment was just the latest data point in a pattern indicating the intensifying militarization of Belarus and accelerating integration of the Russian and Belarusian armed forces.

On the day Lukashenka spoke, Russian anti-aircraft missile troops were arriving in the western Belarusian city of Hrodna, near the border with Poland and Lithuania, to set up a joint military training center. Days later, a shipment of SU-30SM fighter jets arrived at an airbase in Baranovichi, also in western Belarus. And from September 10-16, the massive joint Russian-Belarusian Zapad-2021 military exercises are scheduled to take place.

Moreover, the Zapad-2021 exercises follow a record number of joint military exercises between the two countries this year, with the constant rotation of Russian forces amounting to a de facto permanent Russian troop presence in Belarus.

The escalating militarization of Belarus and the expanding Russian military footprint inside the country represent the most significant qualitative change in the security equation on NATO’s Eastern flank since Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and armed intervention in Ukraine’s Donbas region.

This trend directly threatens the security of Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. It also enhances Moscow’s ability to close the Suwalki Gap, a roughly 100-kilometer stretch of the Polish-Lithuanian border wedged between Belarus and Russia’s heavily militarized Kaliningrad region, which would effectively cut the Baltic states off from the rest of NATO.

It may be too early to talk about the return of a divided Europe, but with Belarus increasingly resembling an extension of Russia’s Western Military District, things certainly do appear to be heading in that direction.

Adding to the Iron Curtain vibe, Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia have recently begun constructing barbed wire fences on their borders with Belarus in response to a crisis Lukashenka has manufactured by importing migrants from across the Middle East to Minsk and then facilitating their illegal entry into Europe.

Poland’s parliament voted on September 6 to uphold a state of emergency declared by President Andrzej Duda along the country’s eastern border with Belarus. Citing the illegal migrant crisis, the Zapad-2021 exercises, and the increased militarization of Belarus, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki stated that “in Moscow and Minsk scenarios are being written” that threaten Poland’s security and sovereignty.

Eurasia Center events

After Vilnius: What’s next on Ukraine’s path to NATO?

Eastern Europe NATO Security & Defense Ukraine

Russia’s creeping military domination of its far smaller western neighbor also makes the long-term project of Belarus’s deeper political and economic integration less urgent.

Lukashenka is scheduled to travel to Moscow on September 9, on the eve of the Zapad exercises, for what will be his fifth meeting with Putin this year. The two are expected to go through the motions of signing a package of so-called integration “roadmaps.”

But the Belarusian political analyst Artem Shraibman noted in a recent commentary, “on the Russian side, there is clearly less enthusiasm” for the formal integration process than was the case in 2019. Shraibman added that there are “faster methods” for keeping Belarus tightly inside Russia’s orbit, including the new military facility in Hrodna, “and Moscow is actively using them.”

In other words, Russia simply doesn’t need to annex Belarus in a spectacular Crimea-style operation. And it no longer needs to bully Lukashenka into deeper integration.

The Putin regime is already achieving its geopolitical goals in Belarus by leveraging Lukashenka’s isolation and vulnerability to steadily establish military facts on the ground. Belarus is now a Russian military platform and the West needs to adapt to this reality to protect frontline NATO states.

A new Iron Curtain could indeed be descending on Europe. It may not be on the same scale as the continent-wide barrier of the Cold War era, but it nevertheless has major implications for European security and the confrontation with Putin’s Russia.

Warrick in the Washington Post on the Special Immigrant Visa

Atlantic Council — Thu, 02 Sep 2021 21:04:00 +0000

On September 2, Forward Defense and Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East nonresident senior fellow Thomas S. Warrick published an article in the Washington Post titled “I helped design the SIV program. It needs an urgent update if we want to help Afghan refugees.” In the article, Warrick argues that the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program offers a potential solution aiding Afghan refugees, but that the US government must commit the people and resources necessary to ensure the program is effective now.

When it comes to figuring out what the American people need DHS to do, the perspective that the office of policy has is the one that is most focused on helping the American people be more secure

Thomas Warrick

Fellow

Alex Plitsas

Afghanistan Crisis Management