What is happening in Iraq, Fallujah and al-Anbar province?

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So is it 2004 or 2014?  Iraq is once again making headlines, and second-guessing over both George W. Bush and Barack Obama’s performance with respect to the US occupation of Iraq is in the news with the publication of former defense secretary Robert Gates. iraq flag icon

What do you need to know about Iraq these days?  Here’s a list of the top 10 question you probably have about the current turn of events there — and probably more than you wanted to know about the state of governance in Iraq today.

So did terrorists take control of Iraq last weekend?

Not quite.  A group called the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS or ISIL, الدولة الاسلامية في العراق والشام, ad-Dawla al-Islāmiyya fi al-‘Irāq wa-sh-Shām‎), which formerly styled itself as Iraq’s local branch of al-Qaeda, took control last Friday of parts of Fallujah and Ramadi, the two largest cities in al-Anbar province.  There are signs, however, that ISIS may already be retreating from Fallujah, with Sunni tribesmen (particularly loyal to neither the government nor ISIS) now wresting back control of both cities.  Iraq’s Shiite prime minister Nouri al-Maliki signaled earlier this week that he planned on launching a military offensive to retake the city using Iraqi national forces, a move that seems surely to cause even more sectarian tensions between Sunni and Shiite Iraqis.  For those of you who’ve forgotten, al-Anbar, at over 53,000 square miles, is the largest of 19 governorates in Iraq, by far the largest province.  Its population is just 1.56 million of Iraq’s 31 million people, but it forms part of the heart of Iraq’s Sunni population — about 97% of Iraq’s population is Muslim and about one-third of them are Sunni.  Al-Anbar’s geography is even more strategically vital, because it borders much of eastern Syria, northern Saudi Arabia and the northeastern tip of Jordan.

What is ISIS? I thought that was the spy agency in the animated Archer series.

ISIS formed in 2003 as a conglomerate of diverse Sunni groups, largely as a response against the US invasion.  It fairly quickly pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda and soon even became as al-Qaeda in Iraq, and it had its heyday between 2004 and 2006, when US forces killed its leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.  But ISIS’s modern iteration only really emerged in spring 2013, when it started making mischief in northern Syria, and the Syrian cities of Homs and Aleppo.  ISIS, like most hardcore Salafist groups, wants to institute sharia law throughout the Middle East, and ISIS’s leaders dream of creating a new caliphate that stretches from Arabia to central Africa.  More realistically, it’s now fighting for dominance in northern Syria and Sunni-dominated western Iraq.  Western media outlets are quick to proclaim this weekend’s turn of events as ‘al-Qaeda regains ground,’ but ISIS is really more interested in holding power in Iraq and Syria than in exploding planes into buildings in New York City.  Its current leader is Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is still sympathetic to al-Qaeda’s wider anti-American goals, though, and that’s earned him a $10 million bounty, courtesy of the US state department.

Why is Fallujah such a big deal, anyway? 

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Fallujah holds an important symbolic value because it was the hub of the Sunni counterinsurgency early in the US occupation of Iraq and, in 2004, it became the site of some of the heaviest fighting during the US occupation.  One story about Fallujah in National Journal this week managed to quote seven Americans (and not a single Iraqi citizen) about the costs of Fallujah’s recent tumult, and an NPR piece noted that many US veterans are crestfallen that their sacrifices a decade ago may have been for naught.  That tells you just how important Fallujah is in the narrative of the US involvement in Iraq.

After the first battle of Fallujah in April 2004, US forces were actually forced by insurgents to withdraw, though in the second battle in November 2004, US troops finally took the city, but not without a year or two of further guerrilla attacks.  The two battles of Fallujah were responsible for some of the highest casualties of the Iraq War, though many more Iraqis died (some by the controversial use of white phosphorus) than US or allied troops.

The city, which lies on the banks of the Euphrates River, is just 69 kilometers away from Baghdad and, taken together with Ramadi, the capital of al-Anbar governorate, comprises one of the chief Sunni-majority cities in Iraq.  Deposed president Saddam Hussein took extra special care to keep Fallujah in his good graces between 1979 and 2003.

So that means Iraq is moving back toward civil war?  Continue reading What is happening in Iraq, Fallujah and al-Anbar province?

Chavismo offers no solutions for Venezuela’s violent crime

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Though Venezuela’s crumbling economy was the top issue in 2013, the country’s violent crime rate is now topping the 2014 agenda after the horrific murder of Mónica Spear, the 29-year-old television star and 2004’s Miss Venezuela, and her ex-husband were shot in an attempted robbery, after their car broke down on a highway Monday night.Venezuela Flag Icon

Violent crime in Venezuela didn’t spring up overnight, but even president Nicolás Maduro admits that 2013 saw a rise in crime.  But it’s been on the rise throughout the chavista era.  It’s a topic that I discussed earlier today on Fusion’s America with Jorge Ramos (in my first-ever live television interview — next time, I need to know where to put my eyes!).

When Hugo Chávez was first elected in 1999, he and his advisors thought that reducing crime in Venezuela was a matter of reducing poverty and inequality.  For all the faults of chavismo, you can point to a substantial reduction in poverty and inequality since 1999, though there’s obviously some debate as to whether the chavistas accomplished that goal in the most efficient, effective or sustainable manner.

Yet even as poverty decreased, violent crime increased steadily over the Chávez era.  Official figures aren’t available (and it’s doubtful they would be reliable even if they were), but Observatorio Venezolano de Violencia, an NGO that tracks violent crime, claims that the homicide rate is 79 per 100,000 — a rise in 2013 from a rate of 73 in 2012.  That makes Venezuela second only to Honduras, with a 2012 homicide rate of 91.6 per 100,000.

If there’s one point to take away about the link between poverty and violent crime, it’s that the poorest Venezuelans are more likely to be victims of crime themselves.  Crime is higher in the cities than in the countryside, and it is highest yet in the barrios of Venezuela’s capital, Caracas — you’re much likelier to be murdered in the more lawless neighborhoods in the mountains overlooking downtown Caracas than in the wealthier and safer valley below.  While every murder is a tragedy, Spear’s death is just one of tens of thousands annually.  Justice rarely comes for many of those anonymous victims and their families, given that crimes are rarely investigated and even more rarely prosecuted.

Crime is a complex sociological phenomenon, so it’s not easy to point to one variable in particular as its direct cause.  Poverty may play a role, but it’s not a matter of ‘if x, then y.’  In the case of Venezuela, the more relevant factors include a high gun ownership rate, corruption and low trust in public institutions, and a climate of political polarization.  But the biggest factor is the weakening of the rule of the law over the past 15 years.

As Juan Nagel writes in Foreign Policy, Venezuela has very few judges and prosecutors, and many of them are corrupt.  Policemen and other officials commonly take bribes.  Jails are overcrowded and controlled by the criminals locked inside them. No one has much faith in the justice system.  If you look at the 2013 Corruption Perceptions Index, Venezuela is ranked 160. Afghanistan, North Korea and Somalia are tied for dead-last at 175.  That should tell you quite a bit about Venezuela’s culture of impunity.  It’s not just the justice system, either.  It’s the kind of ‘democracy’ whereby all of the state organs, from state media to the electoral commission to the courts to Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA), the state oil company, have all been politicized and are today essentially levers to boost chavismo.  It’s the kind of ad hoc economic policymaking where rules change from one day to the next, or the Venezuelan president can expropriate a business or nationalize an industry on a whim.  That, too, corrodes the rule of law.

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That’s also why there’s very little chance that Maduro or any chavista regime is likely to reverse the decade-long trend of greater violent crime.  Despite a high-profile photo op with opposition leader and Miranda state governor Henrique Capriles (pictured above), Maduro (like Chávez before him) has worked to strip municipal and state governments of much of their autonomy by consolidating power over local budgets under the national government.  That’s especially true for states and municipalities controlled by the opposition. Continue reading Chavismo offers no solutions for Venezuela’s violent crime

How Bangladesh could influence next month’s Thai election

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They’re both located in south/southeastern Asia, they share female prime ministers, and they share the dubious distinction of being the two troubled elections that kick off 2014’s global election season. thailandbangladesh flag icon

Though there’s little reason otherwise to link Bangladesh’s January 5 general election with Thailand’s February 2 vote, there are uncanny similarities.  In both countries, the main opposition parties are boycotting (or have boycotted) the election, the governing party is set to win the election, leaving each country in a political crisis with no easy apparent solution.  In both cases, the electoral crisis has its roots in a struggle that dates back over a decade, and in both cases, the military hasn’t been shy about intervening in the past.

In Bangladesh over the weekend, prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s governing Bangladesh Awami League (বাংলাদেশ আওয়ামী লীগ) won 232 of the 300 seats in the country’s Jatiyo Sangshad (national parliament).  The opposition, more Islamist Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP, বাংলাদেশ জাতীয়তাবাদী দল) refused to participate in the vote, and it lost all of its seats.  Ostensibly, the BNP and its leader, former prime minister Khaleda Zia refused to take part in the vote due to Hasina’s refusal to appoint a caretaker government to oversee the elections.  But the reality is much more difficult — the BNP has carried out a campaign of attrition through general economic strikes, protests and sometimes violence to protest Hasina’s government.  Hasina (pictured above, top) has responded with an increasingly authoritarian tone, and Zia and other third party leaders have been detained or put under house arrest.  The political violence comes against the backdrop of the controversial execution of Islamist leader Abdul Quader Mollah for war crimes relating to the country’s 1971 war for independence, and unresolved matters from the 1971 war tribunal (including the previous life imprisonment sentence for Quader Mollah) led to massive protests in Dhaka’s Shabagh Square in early 2013.  Violence related to the election has already cost hundreds of lives and unknown damage to the Bangladeshi economy and the garment industry that dominates the country’s exports.

In Thailand, prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra has called snap elections in response to protests against her government that initially sprang from opposition to a proposed amnesty bill that would have pardoned top political leaders from both major parties for political violence over the past decade.  Yingluck’s populist Pheu Thai Party (PTP, ‘For Thais’ Party, พรรคเพื่อไทย), however, holds a nearly unbreakable lock on Thai politics, due to the popularity of Yingluck and her exiled brother, former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, in northern and northeastern Thailand.  The opposition Phak Prachathipat (Democrat Party, พรรคประชาธิปัตย์) refused to take part in the elections and is instead calling for an unelected council to govern.

In both cases, the opposition parties are actively banking on military intervention — an outcome that would undermine the fragile democratic institutions and rule of law in both countries, which have each made gains in reducing poverty over the past decade.  The Thai Democrats and its leaders, former prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and former deputy prime minister Suthep Thaugsuban, knew they had no chance to win the February election and believe that under a military government, they will have more influence.   Zia, who has been Hasina’s chief political rival since the 1980s, has never much trusted Hasina.  Game theory might teach you that three decades of ‘repeated games’ between the BNP and the Awami League would make a negotiated settlement easier.  But the BNP no longer has any faith in Hasina’s government to carry out fair elections, so the longtime animosity between Zia and Hasina may actually raise the costs of a deal.  So the BNP may actually prefer the military to the Awami League at this point.

What’s next?

The international community is already pressing Hasina hard to call new elections, and there’s even a precedent for how Bangladesh can walk out of the current impasse.  When Zia was prime minister in February 1996, she called snap elections that the Awami League boycotted — voter turnout barely exceeded 20% and the BNP on all 300 seats.  After a period of negotiation between the two parties, however, fresh elections were held in June 1996, the BNP lost power and the Awami League won a minority government.  The Bangladeshi tradition of appointing a caretaker government prior to elections, in fact, comes from the 1996 political settlement between the BNP and the Awami League.  Continue reading How Bangladesh could influence next month’s Thai election

2014 Elections Calendar

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Here are my 14 elections to watch in 2014.

Here are 14 more elections to watch in 2014.

Here are 14 potential game-changers for world politics in 2014.

Please click here for the 2013 calendar of world elections.

* * * * *

January

January 5: Bangladesh — parliamentary
January 14-15: Egypt — constitutional referendum

February

February 2: Costa Rica — parliamentary and presidential (1st round)
February 2: El Salvador — presidential (1st round)
February 2: Thailand — parliamentary
February 9: Switzerland — referendum
February 9: Tokyo (Japan) — gubernatorial
February 28: Orange Democratic Movement (Kenya) — internal leadership elections

March

March 6-7: European People’s Party — convention to determine European Commission presidential candidate
March 9: Colombia — parliamentary
March 9: El Salvador — presidential (runoff)
March 15: South Australia — state assembly
March 15: Tasmania (Australia) — state assembly
March 15: Slovakia — presidential (1st round)
March 16: Serbia — parliamentary
March 16: Crimea (Ukraine) — status referendum
March 22: Maldives — parliamentary
March 23: France — municipal (1st round)
March 23: Paris (France) — mayoral (1st round)
March 23: Osaka (Japan) — mayoral
March 29: Slovakia — presidential (runoff)
March 30: France — municipal (2nd round)
March 30: Paris (France) — mayoral (2nd round)
March 30: Thailand — senatorial
March: Antigua and Barbuda — parliamentary

April

April 5: Afghanistan — presidential
April 6: Hungary — parliamentary
April 6: Costa Rica — presidential (runoff)
April 6: Bogotá (Colombia) — mayoral recall election
April 7: Québec (Canada) — parliamentary
April 7: India — parliamentary (first of nine phases)
April 9: Indonesia — parliamentary
April 9: India — parliamentary (second of nine phases)
April 10: India — parliamentary (third of nine phases)
April 10: Orissa (India) — state assembly (first of two phases)
April 12: India — parliamentary (fourth of nine phases)
April 12: Sikkim (India) — state assembly
April 13: Guinea Bissau — presidential and parliamentary
April 13: Macedonia — presidential (first round)
April 17: Algeria — presidential
April 17: India — parliamentary (fifth of nine phases)
April 17: Orissa (India) — state assembly (second of two phases)
April 24: India — parliamentary (sixth of nine phases)
April 27: Macedonia — parliamentary and presidential (second round)
April 30: Iraq — parliamentary
April 30: India — parliamentary (seventh of nine phases)
April 30: Andhra Pradesh (India) — state assembly (first of two phases)

May

May 4: Panama — presidential and parliamentary
May 7: South Africa — parliamentary
May 7: India — parliamentary (eighth of nine phases)
May 7: Andhra Pradesh (India) — state assembly (second of two phases)
May 11: Lithuania — presidential (first round)
May 12: India — parliamentary (ninth of nine phases)
May 20: Malawi — presidential and parliamentary
May 21: South Africa — presidential (indirect)
May 22-25: European Union — parliamentary
May 25: Belgium — parliamentary
May 25: Lithuania — presidential (runoff)
May 25: Colombia — presidential (1st round)
May 25: Ukraine — presidential (1st round)
May 26-27: Egypt — presidential
May: Lebanon — presidential (indirect, ongoing)
May: South Africa — presidential (indirect)

June

June 1: Uruguay — presidential primaries
June 3: Syria — presidential
June 8: Kosovo — parliamentary
June 12: Ontario (Canada) — parliamentary
June 12: Antigua and Barbuda — parliamentary
June 14: Israel — presidential (indirect)
June 14: Afghanistan — presidential (runoff)
June 14: Kansallinen Kokoomus (National Coalition, Finland) —
leadership contest
June 15: Ukraine — presidential (runoff)
June 15: Colombia — presidential (runoff)
June 21: Mauritania — presidential (1st round)
June 25: Libya — parliamentary
June: Yemen — constitutional referendum/span>

July

July 5: Mauritania — presidential (runoff)
July 9: Indonesia — presidential
July 13: Slovenia — parliamentary
July 19-20: Partido Socialista Obrero Español (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party) — leadership contest
July 20: Thailand — parliamentary

August

August 10: Turkey — presidential (first round)
August 24: Turkey — presidential (runoff)
August 24: Abkhazia (Georgia/Russia) — presidential
August 29: Sint Maarten (Netherlands) — parliamentary
August 31: Saxony (Germany) — state assembly
August 31: Macao — chief executive (indirect)

September

September 14: Brandeburg (Germany) — state assembly
September 14: Thuringia (Germany) — state assembly
September 14: Sweden — parliamentary
September 17: Fiji — parliamentary
September 18: Scotland (UK) — independence referendum
September 20: New Zealand — parliamentary
September 22: New Brunswick (Canada) — provincial assembly

October

October 4: Latvia — parliamentary
October 5: Brazil — parliamentary and presidential (1st round)
October 5: Bulgaria — parliamentary
October 12: Bolivia — presidential and parliamentary
October 12: Bosnia and Herzegovina — presidential and parliamentary
October 12: Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina — presidential and parliamentary
October 12: Republika Sprska — presidential and parliamentary
October 12: Sao Tome and Principe — parliamentary
October 15: Mozambique — presidential
October 15: Haryana (India) — state assembly
October 15: Maharashtra (India) — state assembly
October 24: Botswana — parliamentary
October 26: Uruguay — parliamentary and presidential (1st round)
October 26: Brazil — presidential (runoff)
October 26: Ukraine — parliamentary
October 26: Haiti — parliamentary
October 26: Tunisia — parliamentary
October 27: Toronto (Canada) — mayoral
October: Ghana — death penalty referendum

November

November 2: Romania — presidential (first round)
November 4: United States — congressional and gubernatorial
November 9: Catalunya (Spain) — independence referendum (unofficial)
November 16: Romania — presidential (runoff)
November 16: Lebanon — parliamentary
November 22: Bahrain — parliamentary (1st round)
November 23: Tunisia — presidential (1st round)
November 23: Calabria (Italy) — parliamentary
November 23: Emilia-Romagna (Italy) — parliamentary
November 25: Jammu and Kashmir (India) — state assembly (first of five phases)
November 25: Jharkhand (India) — state assembly (first of five phases)
November 27: Tonga — parliamentary
November 28: Greenland (Denmark) — parliamentary
November 29: Union pour un mouvement populaire (Union for a Popular Movement) — leadership contest
November 29: Bahrain — parliamentary (2nd round)
November 29: Namibia — presidential and parliamentary
November 29: Victoria (Australia) — state assembly
November 30: Uruguay — presidential (runoff)
November 30: Moldova — parliamentary

December

December 8: Dominica — parliamentary
December 10: Mauritius — parliamentary
December 14: Japan — parliamentary
December 17-18: ZANU-PF (Zimbabwe) — leadership election
December 20: Jharkhand (India) — state assembly (fifth of five phases)
December 20: Jammu and Kashmir (India) — state assembly (first of five phases)
December 21: Uzbekistan — parliamentary
December 21: Tunisia — presidential (runoff)
December: Dominica — parliamentary
December: Switzerland — presidential (indirect)

By end-of-year: Egypt — parliamentary
December: Tuvalu — parliamentary

 

 

14 potential game-changers for world politics in 2014

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Though I rang in the new year with a list of 14 world elections to watch in the coming year (and 14 more honorable mentions to keep an eye on), I wanted to showcase a few more thoughts about what to watch for in world politics and foreign affairs in 2014.

Accordingly, here are 14 possible game-changers — they’re not predictions per se, but neither are they as far-fetched as they might seem.  No one can say with certainty that they will come to pass in 2014.  Instead, consider these something between rote predictions (e.g., that violence in Iraq is getting worse) and outrageous fat-tail risks (e.g., the impending breakup of the United States).

There’s an old album of small pieces conducted by the late English conductor Sir Thomas Beecham, a delightfully playful album entitled Lollipops that contains some of the old master’s favorite, most lively short pieces.

Think of these as Suffragio‘s 14 world politics lollipops to watch in 2014.

We start in France… Continue reading 14 potential game-changers for world politics in 2014

Brian Schweitzer, Montana’s foremost foreign policy expert

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In the United States, it’s never too soon to start thinking about the next presidential race, even though the 2016 primary season won’t kick off for another 24 months, and voters have to get through the 2014 midterm elections in November before fully turning to 2016.USflagmontana

But this fairly engaging snippet comes from David Weigel’s Slate interview with former Montana governor Brian Schweitzer:

The Iranian deal makes sense. We linked up with the Saudis before and after World War II. Look, unlike virtually every member of Congress, I have a pretty good firsthand knowledge of the Middle East. The day after I got out of graduate school, after I defended my thesis, I went straight to Libya. I was there for a year; I was in Saudi Arabia for seven. I learned to speak Arabic. I can explain to you, in a way that almost no one else in the country can, the difference between a Sunni and a Shia. I can explain to you who and what the Wahhabis are in Saudi Arabia. I can talk to you about why we, the United States, initially got involved with the Saudi royal family, what we got out of the deal. I can explain to you why we knew Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. We knew, because we supplied chemical weapons to him so he could poison the Iranians. The Iranians are Persian, not Arab; they haven’t got along for several thousand years.So we’ve had a bad history with Iran because of what we did in 1953, replacing an elected official with a dictator. If we can build a relationship that’s a little more even-handed, if we can get them to back away from their nuclear ambition—let’s face it, their neighbors don’t even like that—if we were to step up and said we’re no longer just going to take the Saudis’ position all the time, you don’t have to worry about us attacking you from Afghanistan or Iraq, if you agree to back away from your nuclear ambitions, we’ll be neutral.

When was the last time that you heard a candidate for US president — on either the Republican or Democratic side — who has such an immediately strong command of foreign policy, especially the historical cause-and-effect that so few US policymakers seem to understand?  When was the last time that a governor with such a command of foreign policy? And it’s not California or New York or Texas, but Montana, a landlocked Western state with a population of just over one million people.

Here’s a checklist:

  • Schweitzer speaks Arabic. (who knew?)
  • Schweitzer opposed the war on Iraq, which now seems like a no-brainer. (But in any event…)
  • He opposes the continued US occupation in Afghanistan, given that US forces essentially the nullified the Taliban’s reach in 2001-02.
  • He thinks Edward Snowden, the consultant that leaked the extent of the National Security Agency’s global and internet surveillance efforts, should be pardoned.
  • France and the United Kingdom have more capitalist health care systems because their governments negotiate hard over prices (that’s an argument that takes some brass, I’ll note).
  • The drug war ‘appears’ to have been lost, though Schweitzer didn’t mention the ongoing (and ridiculous) paramilitary US anti-drug efforts in Latin America today.
  • In mentioning the 1953 coup against Iranian president Mohammad Mossadegh, he demonstrates that he knows Iran’s history — and US-Iranian relations — predates 1979.
  • He knows that the United States supplied chemical weapons to Iraq in the 1980s, which Saddam Hussein used against Iranians.  (If you’re keeping score, that was the last time chemical weapons had been used in the Middle East prior to the Syrian attack outside Damascus in August 2013).

I wish Weigel had asked Schweitzer more about the US drone program, the difference between covert and clandestine operations, the use of both special forces and the Central Intelligence Agency, targeted killings of both foreign nationals and US citizens, the destabilization of Yemen and Somalia by US forces in the 2000s and 2010s, and the controversial US killing of Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud, whose death virtually meant the end of any peace talks with the Pakistani government and its new prime minister Nawaz Sharif.

Oh, and don’t forget this gem: ‘If you ask generals whether we should stay in a war a little longer, that’s like asking a barber whether you need a haircut.’

Keep your eyes on this one — I knew Schweitzer was an impressive two-term governor who won election as a Democrat in a very Republican state (Mitt Romney won Montana in the 2012 presidential election by a margin of 55.3% to just 41.8% for US president Barack Obama).  But I had no idea the depth of his foreign policy knowledge.  Impressive, even though the Democratic presidential nomination seems today like it’s almost certain to be Hillary Clinton’s for the taking.

14 in 2014: Fourteen *more* elections to watch in 2014

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As if that weren’t enough!

If you’ve managed to stick with Suffragio through 14 world elections to watch in 2014, here are 14 more honorable mentions that you should probably also keep an eye on:

Thailand general election, February 2.thailand

Popular Thai prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra called snap elections for February after the latest round of protests over a proposed (and ultimately tabled) amnesty bill.  The fights threaten to reopen a decade of polarization and political violence between the ‘red shirts’ that support Yingluck and her self-exiled brother Thaksin Shinawatra and the ‘yellow shirts’ who oppose them.  Popular support in Thailand’s north among rural voters meant that Yingluck and the Pheu Thai Party (PTP, ‘For Thais’ Party, พรรคเพื่อไทย) were headed for near-certain victory.  The decision by the opposition Phak Prachathipat (Democrat Party, พรรคประชาธิปัตย์) to boycott the election is a barely disguised plea for military intervention for an unelected ‘governing council’ instead.

El Salvador presidential election, February 2 (with March 9 runoff).el salvador

El Salvador, with 6.3 million residents, may be small, but it’s the third-most populous country in Central America.  As in neighboring Honduras, which went to the polls in November 2013, a preponderance of drug violence and a corresponding collapse in public safety is at the heart of the Salvadoran presidential campaign.  None of the three major candidates is expected to win an outright majority on February 2, but the learning candidate is vice president Salvador Sánchez Cerén of the governing Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN, Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front), a one-time guerrilla movement-that transformed itself into the country’s top center-left political party following the 1980s civil war.  Sánchez Cerén is hoping to succeed former journalist Mauricio Funes, who has served as president since 2009 and is limited to a single five-year term.

Though Sánchez Cerén leads polls with between 29% and 31%, two candidates are competing fiercely for second place with between 25% and 28% each — longtime San Salvador mayor Norman Quijano of the center-right Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (ARENA, Nationalist Republican Alliance), which governed El Salvador between 1989 and 2009, and former president Antonio ‘Tony’ Saca, who left ARENA to run for a second, non-consecutive term for an alliance anchored by Saca’s new populist, right-wing party, the Gran Alianza por la Unidad Nacional (GANA, Grand Alliance for National Unity).  The bottom line is that Sánchez Cerén will face a tough fight against the ultimate center-right candidate that emerges in the second round.

Costa Rica general election, February 2 (with April 16 presidential runoff).costa_rica_flag

Costa Rica is perhaps the most developed country in Central America. It is likely to open accession talks to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in 2015, making it the first Central American member of the OECD.  Its GDP per capita is nearly $10,000, which makes it virtually equivalent to Panamá’s, and Costa Rica doesn’t have the massive canal revenues that Panamá enjoys.  That is one of the reasons why the center-left Partido Liberación Nacional (PLN, National Liberation Party) seemed so likely to coast to a third consecutive term to the Costa Rican presidency, despite the massive unpopularity and corruption allegations against outgoing president Laura Chinchilla.  The longtime mayor of San José, Costa Rica’s capital, Johnny Araya, held a wide lead in polls throughout much of 2013.  But that’s changed as Araya’s missteps on the campaign trail have led to the impression that he’s aloof and out of touch.  José María Villalta, the sole lawmaker for the social democratic Frente Amplio (Broad Front) is now virtually tied with Araya in polls. Continue reading 14 in 2014: Fourteen *more* elections to watch in 2014

Sharon’s legacy represents the best and worst of Israel

sharon

Ariel Sharon’s passing is something for which Israel has had eight years to prepare, and yet it’s almost as if his sudden turn for the worse is taking Israelis by surprise.  With the impending retirement of Israeli president later this year, 2014 is shaping up as the final curtain call of the 1948 generation — though they come from very different perspectives, both Sharon and Peres came of age during the crucible of the 1948 war for independence, which would shape their leadership in Israeli government for the following six decades.  ISrel Flag Icon

Sharon belonged to the generation that cut its teeth politically and militarily under the founding generation of David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir.  It’s the generation that fought and won many of Israel’s defining wars, starting with the 1948 war, the 1967 Six-Day War that brought Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, the Palestinian territories and Syria’s Golan Heights under Israeli control and the 1973 Yom Kippur War.  Sharon’s impudence in crossing the Suez Canal, in direct disobedience of a stunned military elite, is now remembered as the iconic moment of the October 1973 war.  Sharon’s generation brokered peace with Egypt at the end of the 1970s, but failed to seal a Palestinian peace deal with the late Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat.  It’s a generation that bequeathed to modern Israel the foundations for one of the world’s most dynamic and innovative economies, but also bequeathed the same demographic and diplomatic puzzles that have plagued Israel since its foundation.

Sharon personified both the best and worst of Israel, and volumes will be written (and have been already) on both his crimes and contributions to the world.  But you can trace the complexity of Sharon’s career in the two defining events of his public life — his complicity in the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre in Beirut and his turn from a warrior’s hard-right Zionism toward the statesman’s pragmatic peacemaking, a process that culminated in the 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.  Over the coming week, you’ll read a lot about Sharon and his legacy, as an Israeli general, defense minister and as a prime minister.  Critics will point to missteps like his 2000 visit to the Temple Mount (the location of the al-Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third-holiest site) that, in part, sparked the Second Intifada.  His boosters will mourn the window of opportunity for peace that tragically slammed shut with Sharon’s brain hemorrhage on January 5, 2006, leaving Sharon in a vegetative state for the past eight years and an entire blotter of ‘what ifs’ for Israel and the Middle East.  In some cases, his fiercest critics in the 1980s will be among those lionizing Sharon this week as a man of peace.

But the reality is much more nuanced — and you should beware any analysis that presents Sharon exclusively either a war criminal or as a prophet of peace.

Could Sharon have sealed the deal?

Sharon’s January 2006 stroke occurred two months after Sharon formed a new centrist party, Kadima (קדימה‎, ‘Forward’), leaving behind his longtime home with the right-wing Likud (הַלִּכּוּד‎), a party Begin founded in 1973.  Sharon, who spent much of his time in the political wilderness championing Jewish settlements throughout the Palestinian territories, was occupied throughout the last year of his premiership in tearing down some of those settlements when he ordered the unilateral withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza and part of the West Bank.  Sharon came to the recognition that Israel’s perpetual occupation over nearly 4 million Palestinians was untenable — for Israel as well as the Palestinians.  So while Sharon championed the construction of a security barrier between Israel and the West Bank, he also took the first steps of what was expected to be the end of Israel’s military occupation of Palestine en route to a two-state solution.

Sharon was headed to an almost certain electoral triumph.  His deputy prime minister Ehud Olmert, who lacked Sharon’s credibility, charisma and vision, and who would ultimately leave office under corruption charges, still led Kadima to an overwhelming victory in March 2006.  But without Sharon at the helm, the Kadima project faltered — Olmert almost immediately launched a war in Lebanon, a military adventure that most Israelis believed to be somewhat of a failure for Israel and a victory for Lebanon’s Shiite militia Hezbollah (حزب الله‎).

Just 20 days after Sharon’s stroke, however, Palestinians voted to elect the legislature of the Palestinian National Authority, and they delivered a stinging defeat to the more moderate Fatah (فتح‎) and a victory for Hamas (حماس‎), the more militant wing of the Palestinian liberation movement.  No one knows how Sharon would have responded to Hamas’s emergence, its clear democratic mandate and the ensuing turbulence between Fatah and Hamas in 2006 and 2007 that essentially left Gaza under Hamas control and the West Bank under Fatah control, a bifurcation that continues today.  Israel responded by imposing a blockade on the Gaza Strip, largely with Egyptian cooperation, thereby further antagonizing Hamas.  In response to the increase of Gaza-based rocket attacks on Israel, Olmert in 2008 launched a military invasion, Operation Cast Lead, that lasted 22 days and killed up to 1,400 Palestinians.

As an old warrior and one of Israel’s most conservative politicians, Sharon would have been one of the few Israelis with the ability to pull the country into a long-term Palestinian peace deal — more so than even current prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, who lead one of the more hawkish Israeli governments of the past quarter-century.  It’s hard to know what might have happened if Sharon hadn’t suffered a stroke.  Would he have felt the same pressure as Olmert to respond militarily to Hezbollah in summer 2006 by launching war on Lebanon?  Maybe, maybe not.  But given the almost universal condemnation of Hamas by the United States, Egypt and the Israeli political elite, it’s hard to believe that Sharon would have been much more willing to deal with a Hamas-led government in Gaza and it’s equally hard to believe that Sharon would have been more than a bystander in the Hamas-Fatah split — it was a split a long time coming, and it’s not a coincidence that it came so shortly after Arafat’s 2004 death.

For all the wishful thinking today, especially in light of eight years of stalled progress on the two-state solution and an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, it’s not necessarily certain that Sharon would have been successful in brokering a peace with Hamas as well as with Fatah — it’s a thorny problem that continues to plague the renewed peace efforts of US secretary of state John Kerry and Israeli justice minister Tzipi Livni today.

Sabra and Shatila and beyond

For all of Sharon’s missteps as prime minister (such as his ill-fated visit to the Temple Mount in 2000), nothing really compares to his inexcusable role at Sabra and Shatila.  Arafat’s Second Intifada followed from the breakdown in the summer 2000 Camp David talks, and it was already an almost-certain uprising in search of an  excuse when Sharon conveniently made his 2000 visit.  But no honest appraisal of Sharon’s legacy can omit the 1982 Lebanon War — and not just the Sabra and Shatila massacre. Continue reading Sharon’s legacy represents the best and worst of Israel

Rajaonarimampianina, Rajoelina ally, wins Malagasy presidency

Rajaonarimampianina

For a country that marked the interim between the first and second rounds of its presidential election with an outbreak of bubonic plague, it would seem that Madagascar’s new president-elect Hery Rajaonarimampianina has his work cut out for him in a country that’s had too many false starts at both political stability and economic growth. madagascar-flag

According to Madagascar’s election commission, Rajaonarimampianina won the country’s December 20 runoff with 53.5% of the vote to 46.5% for runner-up Jean Louis Robinson, though Robinson and his allies have alleged that the vote was riddled with fraud since December 21.  Election results had been previously expected on January 7.

Rajaonarimampianina, a former finance minister, was the candidate backed by outgoing president Andry Rajoelina, a former mayor of the capital city of Antananarivo, who came to power in March 2009 in a coup that followed protests over economic conditions.  Robinson, a doctor and a former health minister, was backed by  Marc Ravalomanana, president from 2002 until his ouster by Rajoelina in 2009.  Though Rajoelina promised prompt elections when he took power, repeated delays meant that it took four years to implement a new constitution.  Those delays cost Madagascar, an impoverished country of over 22 million, much-needed  developmental aid that will hopefully now be freed to pull the troubled Malagasy economy out of its doldrums.  The World Bank estimates that the political crisis of the past four years caused an economic hit of around $10 billion — not a small amount considering that the country’s GDP in 2012 was just $9.975 billion. Continue reading Rajaonarimampianina, Rajoelina ally, wins Malagasy presidency