Since the Seleka coalition of rebels took power last March, over 200 000 people have been uprooted from their homes due to conflict. Credit: EU/ECHO/M.Morzaria/cc by 2.0

By Bryant Harris
WASHINGTON, Jan 22 2014 (IPS)

The appointment of a new transitional president, Catherine Samba-Panza, in the Central African Republic (CAR) is generating optimism in some quarters that the country’s first female leader will manage to quell mounting ethnic strife.

President Samba-Panza was appointed on Monday, in the midst of inter-communal violence between Muslim Seleka and Christian militias.“Right now the country’s on the brink of total anarchy.” -- Philippe Bolopion

“As CAR’s first woman head of state since the country’s independence, and with her special background in human rights work and mediation, [Samba-Panza] has a unique opportunity to advance the political transition process, bring all the parties together to end the violence, and move her country toward elections not later than February 2015,” John Kerry, the U.S. secretary of state, said Tuesday.

Yet some analysts here have quickly pushed back on the idea that the appointment of the new president offers a renewed chance for peace.

“There’s a predatory elite that has more or less sucked the country dry,” J. Peter Pham, the director of the Africa Centre at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank, told IPS. “Unfortunately they’ve just elected a member of that elite to be the interim head of state.”

While Samba-Panza is a Christian, she enjoyed close ties to the previous president, Michel Djotodia.

“She’s one of the Christian politicians who had thrown in their lot with the Seleka,” Pham says. “She has never been elected so much as a dogcatcher.”

Djotodia appointed Samba-Panza mayor of Bangui, the capital, in April, shortly after seizing the presidency. Although Samba-Panza was technically elected transitional president, the election took place within the National Transition Council, which is comprised of members appointed exclusively by Djotodia.

Pham believes that a Samba-Panza presidency raises questions about the international community’s long-term commitment to CAR.

“There’s no appetite in the international community, so there’s no long-term plan for the mission,” he says. “So I’m afraid what we’re actually facing is this so-called election spun in as positive a light as possible and used to cover an ignominious withdrawal.”

For the time being, the United States is still sending financial aid to help alleviate the crisis. On Monday, the government announced an additional 30 million dollars in relief funding for CAR, bringing the total U.S. contribution to humanitarian efforts in the country to approximately 45 million dollars.

That’s in addition to 101 million dollars designated for restoring security and 7.5 million dollars to support reconciliation efforts.

“One fifth of Bangui is now living in a vast, miserable encampment as terrified citizens seek safety from violence and looting,” Nancy Lindborg, an official with USAID, Washington’s main foreign aid arm, said Monday after a two-day trip to CAR.

“The U.S. government has urgently ramped up our assistance to help deliver lifesaving food, water, and medical help to the more than 2.6 million women, children and men in urgent need throughout the country.”

Inter-communal violence

CAR’s current crisis erupted when the Seleka seized control of Bangui, ousting former president Francois Bozize and installing Djotodia in April.

“Since the Seleka took over power in March they have unleashed a wave of killings, burning entire villages, looting and viciously attacking civilians on a pretty large scale,” Philippe Bolopion, the United Nations director for Human Rights Watch (HRW), a watchdog group, tells IPS. “They descend on a village, kill a few people, chase everyone out of their houses, loot everything they can, burn the houses and move on.”

President Djotodia attempted to dissolve the Seleka because of the extremity of their war crimes and attacks on civilians.

“In late September, Djotodia decided he would dismiss [the Seleka] because they were getting out of control, and that’s when things went downhill,” the Atlantic Council’s Pham says. “He dismissed them but they had no place to go, and he never had the loyalty of the people on whom he hoisted himself.”

The Seleka continue to operate outside of government control and target civilians, which has led to clashes with the predominantly Christian militias. While former president Bozize initially created these militias – known as anti-balaka – to combat banditry, they began responding to Seleka abuses on Christians with similar attacks on Muslims, rapidly escalating the violence.

“They have targeted Muslim civilians only because they are Muslim. Their attacks are just as brutal and as vicious as the Seleka attacks were,” says HRW’s Bolopion. “When I was in CAR in November I talked to a Muslim villager who described how anti-balaka came to his house in the morning to take his grandkids, kids, and two wives out and slit every one of their throats.”

Although the conflict in CAR appears to be purely sectarian on the surface, the appointment of a Christian to the presidency by other Djotodia appointees indicates that the conflict is more nuanced. Pham posits that the violence is ethnic, rather than religious.

“The political elite have never had religion as a divisive issue, so religion isn’t really a source of conflict,” he says. “It’s not a religious conflict but religion marks people’s ethnic groups.”

The Seleka themselves have even killed Muslims living in majority Christian areas.

Tensions between the Seleka and anti-balaka reached a boiling point in December, as clashes between the two groups and their attacks on civilians drastically increased. Even though President Djotodia resigned on 10 January in an attempt to alleviate the chaos, the violence continues to raise fears of genocide.

“The situation has not stabilised at all on the ground, and we are very worried about mass retaliations against the Muslim population now that the Seleka are on the run,” says Bolopion. “Right now the country’s on the brink of total anarchy.”

Two-track solution

As the violence continues, analysts have made proposals to help end the conflict.

“We think you need a two-track approach,” explains Bolopion. “One track is to bolster the capacity of civilian power on the ground. But we must also work on many tasks to reconstruct the country such as the longer-term solution of rebuilding the army, justice system and basic function of administration.”

France currently has 1,600 troops on the ground in CAR, while the European Union is expected to offer 500 soldiers to supplement French forces.

“They need all the help they can get because it’s very difficult,” Bolopion says.

Pham notes that the United Nations has authorised a force of up to 10,000, but states that nowhere near that number has materialised. “What we’re seeing in CAR is simply the evaporation of what few institutions there were,” he says.

Churches in Diabaly, central Mali, were looted and destroyed during the Islamist occupation. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Bryant Harris
WASHINGTON, Jan 15 2014 (IPS)

A year after Mali’s civil war came to an end, experts here are increasingly concerned that the country risks an eventual return to violence, particularly as Malian authorities continue to marginalise the restive north while neglecting to pursue meaningful political and economic reforms. 

Indeed, a lack of equitable opportunity across Mali has caused northern Tuareg separatists to cite political and economic marginalisation as their reason for rebelling in the first place. The Tuaregs have contested Mali’s north since the 1990s, launching four separate rebellions, finally succeeding due to arms obtained from the Libyan Civil War against Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.“There have been promises made for increased development and local autonomy, but the Malian government strategy is simply to buy off the leader of the rebellion." -- J. Peter Pham

In 2012, Al Qaeda-linked groups took advantage of the insurgency and a military coup to establish control over the area, though Malian authorities were eventually able to expel the Islamist militants with the aid of French intervention. This led to a June 2013 ceasefire accord known as the Ouagadougou agreement, which allowed the government to station soldiers in the north and paved the way for democratic elections last summer.

Yet today, analysts suggest the Tauregs feel that the Malian government has not lived up to its past promises.

“The Tuaregs as a whole regret their temporary alliance with extremists who pushed them out right away but are by no means fully reconciled with the government in Bamako,” J. Peter Pham, director of the Africa Center at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank, told IPS.

“There have been promises made for increased development and local autonomy, but the Malian government strategy is simply to buy off the leader of the rebellion – but not address the underlying causes. People have to see some sort of benefit for being part of the state and that has not been the case.”

On Sunday, Malian President Ibrahim Boubacer Keita concluded a three-day trip to Mauritania, where he signed a joint statement increasing cooperation between Malian and Mauritanian security forces as France reduces its presence in Mali. Yet analysts from the International Crisis Group (ICG), a watchdog group, are warning that the country’s internal security remains fragile.

Further, a new ICG report cautions that “the urgent need to stabilise the [security] situation should not detract from implementing meaningful governance reforms and a truly inclusive dialogue on the future of the country.”

Similar sentiments recently came during an official mission to Mali by the International Monetary Fund.

“[G]rowth in Mali must be more equitable and more inclusive,” Christine Lagarde, the head of the Washington-based IMF, wrote in a blog entry last week. “This means that all sectors in Mali’s economy should have access to opportunity, including in the education sector and participate in the benefits of growth.”

Limited reconciliation

The Malian government’s inability to adequately include the north in the economic growth that Lagarde recently praised has hindered reconciliation attempts.

After the conflict, civil service workers staffing these institutions have been slow to return to the north, even as northern infrastructure is in need of rehabilitation.

The lack of public services and economic relief in northern Mali has reportedly made the Malian government even more unpopular, resulting in several protests. In late November, for instance, the Malian army opened fire at civilians attending a protest.

The ICG suggests that Malian authorities should focus on the reestablishment and improvement of judicial, health-care and education systems. The report also calls on the government to end its reliance on community-based armed groups to establish order and launch investigations into the army’s abuse and harassment of civilians.

The unrest has also hindered the shipment of humanitarian aid, while the country continues to lack the resources to restore services in the north. In October, the secretary-general reported that some 65 percent of health centres in conflict-affected areas are either partially functional or completely destroyed, while half of schools are closed.

Despite the government’s unpopularity in the north, a United Nations mission, known as MINUSMA, has worked to support Mali’s National Commission for Dialogue and National Reconciliation, established in March 2013 to foster improved relationships between the Malian government and northern separatists. But in an October report, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described the “dialogue and reconciliation activities” as “limited”.

Mali has also established a series of conferences focusing on northern decentralisation to soothe unrest by giving Tuareg separatists more autonomy. However, the ICG’s new analysis warns that “the meetings should be more inclusive … and result in prompt, tangible actions,” such as the delayed transference of some state resources to local authorities.

Critics of the reconciliation talks note that they are top-down initiatives from Bamako, Mali’s southern capital, rather than community-led. As a result, armed groups in the north have refused to participate in the meetings on the grounds that the government is uninterested in actual dialogue.

Volatile security

As southern Mali attempts to reconcile with the north, the security situation overall remains tenuous, with significant transitions underway.

“Because of limited resources, budget complaints, and demand elsewhere, you’ll soon be left with barely 1,000 French troops,” the Atlantic Council’s Pham says.” Most of these will be engaged in the southern part [of Mali] and not the northern two-thirds, leaving an undersized and under-equipped, predominantly African, force roughly trying to hold a very large territory.”

Rinaldo Depagne, the ICG’s West Africa director, tells IPS that while the Malian government has not violated the terms of the June 2013 ceasefire, “there’s a kind of will from the government to opt out of the frame of the agreement.”

However, Depagne believes that there is cause to be hopeful. “While certain parts of the agreement are not yet respected, that doesn’t mean they won’t be in the near future. We don’t know if they are ready to fully accept the arrangement but it’s predictable that they could.”

The U.N. secretary-general, meanwhile, found that both parties had violated the ceasefire through the “uncoordinated movement of troops”. Consequently, Malian forces and northern militias continue to clash amidst “armed banditry, new jihadi attacks, and inter-communal violence,” the report notes.

Pham also questions how successful the French intervention was in removing jihadist militants from northern Mali.

“If one believes the numbers put out by French spokesmen or African spokesmen, about 600 militants have been killed in the last year and roughly a little over 400 have been taken prisoner,” he says. “This leaves you with more than 1,000 militants who are unaccounted for and are either biding their time hiding in communities they’re well-integrated into or up in the mountains.”

In the face of northern unrest, MINUSMA has played an active peacekeeping role since France’s offensive in the north. Depagne says that while there are 6,000 MINUSMA troops in Mali right now, “there should be more than 10,000.”

Depagne suggests U.N. forces could be at “full scale” in the coming months.

Increasing U.S.-Iran cultural exchanges could lay the groundwork for better relations between the two countries, believes a prominent think tank here, despite the prevalence of stereotypical memes of the United States as the “Great Satan” and Iran as part of the “Axis of Evil”.

According to an issue brief released today by the Washington-based Atlantic Council, the United States should reach out to Iran’s people through a variety of cultural exchanges, even as the Jun. 14 election of Hassan Rouhani as Iran’s next president may present an opportunity for the United States and Iran to mend their decades-long cold war.

Experts suggest that cultural exchanges could help improve U.S.-Iranian relations. Above, members of Kiosk, one of Iran’s underground rock bands. Credit: Credit: Shoja Lak/IPS

“Cultural and academic exchanges between the U.S. and Iran are a low-cost, high-yield investment in a future normal relationship between the two countries,” said the brief, authored by the council’s bipartisan Iran Task Force.

Recommendations from the task force, comprised of an array of U.S. national security experts, included creating a non- or quasi-official working group “comprised of bilateral representatives from academia, the arts, athletics, the professions, and science and technology” and an U.S. Interests Section in Tehran.

“When it comes to countries that have no diplomatic channels like the U.S. and Iran, people-to-people diplomacy is the only route available to us,” Reza Aslan, an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told IPS.

Scepticism towards cultural diplomacy

Major roadblocks stand in the way of the kind of diplomacy that led to improved U.S.-Soviet relations during the Cold War.

“Yes, cultural diplomacy is good and has been tried before with decent results during the Khatami presidency,” Farideh Farhi, an independent scholar at the University of Hawaii, told IPS.

“But note that the context was different. The United States had not yet fully embarked on its ferocious sanctions regime which makes cultural exchanges quite difficult and reliant on the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control granting exceptions to literally every exchange,” she said."People-to-people diplomacy is the only route available to us.”
-- Reza Aslan

The council conceded that conducting U.S.-Iran exchange programs between nations without bilateral diplomatic channels is “challenging”.

It also stressed that “selling such programming as a means to drive a wedge between the Iranian government and people makes any successful execution problematic”.

But the “goodwill of the Iranian people is ultimately the biggest U.S. asset in changing the direction of the Islamic Republic” and “maintaining active people-to-people linkages during periods of strained bilateral relations has many benefits for U.S. national security, particularly over the long term”, according to the brief.

Addressing animosity

Even so, decades of mutual mistrust between U.S. and Iranian governments, fuelled by what both consider consistent acts of hostility from the other side, has also filtered into the media of both nations.

“The media in Iran is obviously state media which just espouses the propaganda of regime and that’s not going to change,” Aslan told IPS.

“On the U.S. side, the media is a commercial enterprise…As with any soap opera, the only thing the media cares about is eyeballs, which are attracted by sex, violence, fear and terror, and right now, the biggest boogie man is Iran and nothing change is going to change that,” he said.

“While public diplomacy is absolutely vital and really the only outlet we have, the question of whether it’s going to change the larger media perception in the two countries of each other remains a complex one,” said Aslan.

In his first press conference as Iran’s president-elect, the reformist-backed Rouhani appeared as a stark contrast to Iran’s current controversial president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“Our main policy will be to have constructive interaction with the world,” Rouhani, Iran’s nuclear negotiator during the presidency of Mohammad Khatami, during a televised broadcast on Jun. 17.

“We will not pursue adding to tensions. It would be wise for the two nations and countries to think more of the future. They should find a solution to the past issues and resolve them,” said Rouhani said regarding future U.S.-Iran relations.

Rouhani, who served on Iran’s Supreme National Security Council for 16 years and is known as the “diplomatic sheik”, has elicited much commentary in the United States about his possible impact on Iran’s nuclear negotiating stance.

How his new position will affect Iran’s interactions on the world stage, including its controversial nuclear program and its backing of the Assad regime in Syria, remains to be seen.

On Jul. 1, tough new sanctions to which President Barak Obama has already committed will also take effect. Among other provisions, they will penalise companies that deal in Iran’s currency or with Iran’s automotive sector.

The Republican-led House is expected to pass legislation by the end of next month (on the eve of Rouhani’s inauguration) that would sharply curb or eliminate the president’s authority to waive sanctions on countries and companies doing any business with Iran, thus imposing a virtual trade embargo on Iran.

Other sanctions measures, including an expected effort by Republican Senator Lindsay Graham to get an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) resolution passed by the Senate after the August recess, are lined up.

“Unless there is a change in the overall frame of Washington’s approach to Iran, cultural exchanges will be perceived with suspicion in Tehran and effectively undercut by powerful supporters of the sanctions regime in Washington,” Farhi told IPS.

The Tehran Research Reactor where uranium enriched to 20 percent is used to produce medical isotopes. Credit: Jim Lobe/IPS

By Jasmin Ramsey
WASHINGTON, Apr 4 2013 (IPS)

The U.S. should not only focus on the short-term goal of “suspending or delaying” Iran’s alleged quest for a nuclear weapons capability, but also on “curtailing Iran’s other worrisome activities in the region while encouraging – or at least, not derailing – a better relationship with the citizens of the pivotal state,” according to a report released Thursday by the Washington-based Atlantic Council.

“It may not be possible to reach a nuclear agreement with Iran but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to increase people-to-people ties,” Barbara Slavin, an Iran specialist and Council senior fellow, told IPS.Iran understands well that the U.S. wants a political solution in Syria and not a continuation of bloodshed and chaos.

“The fact that academic exchanges are actually rising – and that nearly 7,000 Iranian students came to the U.S. last year – suggests that Iranians and their government value these connections and do not want to lose them despite the regime’s fears of a ‘velvet revolution’,” she said.

The U.S. should engage Iranians through a variety of means including media outreach, cultural exchanges, internet freedom promotion and reducing the “negative effects” sanctions have on Iran’s citizenry, it says.

This can be done by “designating a small number of U.S. and private Iranian financial institutions as channels for payment for humanitarian, educational, and public diplomacy-related transactions carefully licensed by the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control”, according to the report.

While “sanctions have had a severe impact on the Iranian economy,” they “have not yet had the intended political effect of bolstering moderates or shifting the positions of the regime’s leaders,” notes the report, echoing an observation that’s been heard throughout Washington lately.

Any lessening of the sanctions regime, however, ties in to a “dilemma” noted by the report: while eased economic sanctions “would help Iran’s government resume economic growth”, a rapprochement would “allow in more Westerners and could contribute to a potential ‘velvet revolution’ against the theocratic system led by the middle class.”

At the same time, the U.S. does not want to relieve economic pressure on the government while it continues its controversial nuclear activities, the report adds.

“Thus, while the long-term strategic objectives of the United States require it to try harder to build bridges to the Iranian people to prepare the ground for the eventual resumption of normal diplomatic ties, a normalization of relations is unlikely until the nuclear issue is resolved”, the report said.

Talks between Iran and the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China plus Germany) during the last two months did not result in a breakthrough, but the Iranians agreed to consider suspending their 20-percent enrichment of uranium for a six-month period and to convert their existing 20-percent stockpile to uranium oxide for medical use in exchange for some relaxation of Western economic sanctions as a confidence-building agreement, according to Al-Monitor.

The next round of negotiations will take place Apr. 5-6 in Kazakhstan.

“There are a number of ways that Almaty II can play out, but we certainly hope that what the Iranians have characterised as positive will produce concrete results,” said a senior administration official in a Wednesday call with reporters.

“The bottom line is that we need to have them enter into a negotiation on the substance of the proposal that we have put in front of them…we’ll have to evaluate their response and then decide on what is the best way forward,” the official said.

“The Obama administration should lay out a step-by-step reciprocal and proportionate plan that ends with graduated relief of sanctions on oil, and eventually on the Iranian Central Bank, in return for verifiable curbs on Iranian uranium enrichment and stocks of enriched uranium, and assurances that Iran does not have undeclared nuclear materials and facilities,” recommends the Council’s report.

The report also recommends diminishing Iran’s ability to hurt U.S. interests in the region through means that include “efforts to shape and effectively support a coherent Syrian opposition that can provide a viable alternative to the Assad regime as well as reviving Arab-Israeli peace talks and shoring up the U.S. relationship with
Egypt, Turkey and the GCC states.”

Javier Solana, a former NATO secretary-general who was Iran’s chief European interlocutor from 2003 to 2009, stated this week that Syria was so important to Iran that he did not think it possible to reach a nuclear agreement without also addressing the conflict there.

“Remember that [on] Syria, China and Russia are not in the same place [as] the Americans and the Europeans, and that is an important issue…[For] Iran, Syria has an important relationship. If on that we are not together, it will be more difficult to solve [the problem],” he said.

“Iran understands well that the U.S. wants a political solution in Syria and not a continuation of bloodshed and chaos. Otherwise, the Obama administration would have intervened more forcefully before now,” Slavin told IPS.

“I personally think the U.S. should engage Iran on Syria because both the U.S. and Iran want to prevent Assad from being replaced by a fundamentalist Sunni regime. But I also think that, given what has happened in Syria over the past two years, the U.S. should be more proactive as that is the only thing that will convince Assad to step down,” she said.

While a majority of the Council’s Iran Task Force “supports retaining the option of military strikes as a last resort”, the report includes a list of the “ramifications of a premature military strike”.

The potentially “dire second- and third-order effects” include Iranian retaliation against Israel with “thousands of missiles and rockets”, “international condemnation” that could result in the dissolving of the U.S.-built multilateral coalition against Iran, and Iranian withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which would seriously diminish the international community’s access to Iran’s nuclear programme.

According to a report released Wednesday by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Federation of American Scientists, Iran’s nuclear programme has so far cost Tehran more than 100 billion dollars in lost oil revenue and foreign investments alone.

Authors Ali Vaez and Karim Sadjadpour conclude that given the extent of Iran’s investment in and expertise on its nuclear programme, the only way to ensure it remains peaceful is through a “mutually agreeable diplomatic solution”.