The war on terror: an interim report

With Obama reiterating gung-ho visions of the imminent/inevitable defeat of global terrorism – focused on the growing presence of IS in Libya this time round – this is a good moment to take heed of a rather more sober assessment of the actual ground situation.

The war on terror: an interim report

Paul Rogers, openDemocracy, 7 April 2016

Al-Qaida and ISIS bookmark a fifteen-year era of global conflict marked by western hubris and failure.

Chambers Street, New York, 11_09_01. David Farquhar_Flickr. Some rights reserved

Chambers Street, New York, 11 September 2001. David Farquhar/Flickr. Some rights reserved

In the wake of 9/11 there was widespread support across western governments for strong military action against al-Qaida and its Taliban hosts in Afghanistan, although from the start there were voices expressing another view. The first column in this series warned that the atrocities should be seen as a provocation by al-Qaida to drag the west into a long drawn-out war in central Asia. Oxford Research Group published a longer report along the same lines (see “The United States, Europe and the majority world after 11 September“, ORG, September 2001).

The scholar-activist Walden Bello, taking an even wider view, condemned the attacks but went on presciently to argue:

“[The] only response that will really contribute to global security and peace is for Washington to address not the symptoms but the roots of terrorism. It is for the United States to re-examine and substantially change its policies in the Middle East and the Third World, supporting for a change arrangements that will not stand in the way of the achievement of equity, justice and genuine national sovereignty for currently marginalised peoples. Any other way leads to endless war.”

Such views got nowhere at the time, the war went ahead, and in late January 2002 – after the Taliban had been dispersed – George Bush used his state-of-the-union address to Congress to declare an extension of the war to an “axis of evil” of rogue states, with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq heading the list. The long-planned termination of that regime started fourteen months later and within six weeks seemed, like Afghanistan, to have been a great success, with Bush’s “mission accomplished” speech on 1 May 2003 celebrating the end of hostilities. The war on terror appeared to have been won.

Instead, complex wars ensued in Afghanistan and Iraq with over a quarter of a million people killed, yet there have been periods when the devastating conflicts seemed to be diminishing. In 2009, for example, the incoming United States president, Barack Obama, could begin to carry out his campaign promise of getting US troops home from Iraq, and in 2011 the killing of Osama bin Laden appeared to confirm that al-Qaida was finished.

At the same time, the Arab awakening was seen initially as promising a new era for the Middle East, but it led rapidly to a bitter war and a disastrous non-peace in Libya, severe and brutal repression of dissent in Syria, and further deep divisions in Iraq with a marginalised Sunni minority.

Syria and Iraq then provided the opportunity for a revitalised al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) to reinvent itself and proclaim a new caliphate – Islamic State, or ISIS – which took control of a population of around six million in a proto-state that sought continual expansion. It went on to establish an offshoot in Libya with its own territorial ambitions and developed links across west Africa, the Sahel, Yemen and even Russia’s Caucasus.

Within months, that brought the west back to war in the Middle East. Since August 2014, 20 months ago, some 10,000 air-raids have killed 28,000 ISIS supporters (see “After Brussels: understanding and countering ISIS’s strategy”, IISS Strategic Comment, March 2016). In this period there have been intermittent reports that this new manifestation of al-Qaida was in retreat, for example after losses in Kobane and Ramadi, or in light of the Paris and Brussels attacks, which are claimed to be desperate reactions to these setbacks on the ground.

Fifteen years on

Destruction in Homs, Syria. Khaled al Hariri/Flickr. Some rights reserved.

Looking back over these fifteen years it is extraordinary how often western leaders have stated that the end is in sight and that just some more military effort will bring success. Every time, the optimism is soon blighted – yet the official mantra (‘there is no alternative’) persists.

The current period is hearing the same blithe reassurances, though a recent column in this series argued that the European attacks demonstrate ISIS’s global prowess, its ability to stir up anti-Muslim bigotry and attract more adherents from the margins, and its capacity to extend the war from the Middle East directly to countries it accuses of killing its people (see “After Brussels, ISIS’s strategy“, 25 March 2016).

There is, though, an even more important dimension. It was reported in that earlier column that ISIS had been preparing this change in strategy for over a year. It now appears that the planning goes back much further, with the building up of cadres of potential attackers over several years (see Rukmini Callimachi et al, “In Europe, ISIS sowed its seeds”, New York Times, 30 March 2016).

If ISIS’s change of strategy predates the western military response to its advances – and is not at heart a response to the reversals since the air-war started 20 months ago – the implications are chastening. What this means is that the ISIS planners had worked out in advance how the west would respond to its rapid expansion, and were far less fixated on the geographical creation of a territorial caliphate than was supposed.

From the start, it would seem, ISIS recognised that there would be a strong and sustained response and that they would face very many casualties. Because of this expectation, resources were being put into the planned war in Europe and elsewhere some years ago. This may seem far beyond what one would expect unbalanced extremists to be able to do, but one of the most consistent problems with western analysis has been a serious underestimation of the intellectual resources embedded in the creation of ISIS strategy.

On reflection this should hardly be surprising – ISIS paramilitary leaders have many years of fighting elite western forces, mostly notably in the shadow war against JSOC in Iraq from 2004 to 2008. Moreover, the last decade’s experience itself builds on an earlier quarter of a century of paramilitary combat in Afghanistan: against the Soviets in the 1980s, alongside the Taliban against the Northern Alliance warlords in the 1990s, and against American forces in the early 2000s. It is this hard, determined background, coupled with a religious intensity that transcends this earthly life, that makes the current war so robust and difficult to counter – so much so that it is probably not amenable to a military solution at all.

If that view is not acceptable in western capitals, neither is the scale of investment required to nurture the alternative to military control. Part of that alternative lies in countering the underlying poverty of ISIS’s religious vision, and can only come from within Islam; but the other part is addressing the reasons for the alienation and marginalisation of so many young people across the Middle East and beyond.

The latter certainly does require sustained western involvement, though of a very different kind than the military approach of the last fifteen years. Rather, it means taking to heart the views expressed by Walden Bello amid the post-9/11 fallout. In the unlikely event of this series of articles surviving another five years until the thousandth is published, some time in 2021, my fear is that we still will not have made that transition.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/paul-rogers/war-on-terror-interim-report

Confusion Reigns: Roberts On The Sri Lankan Conflict’s Final Stages

Here’s my latest effort to rebuff some of the nonsense peddled about the Sri Lankan conflict – in this instance pulling my recent book into the morass.

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Confusion Reigns: Roberts On The War’s Final Stages

Colombo Telegraph, 12 April 2016

From Michael Roberts’ latest essay ‘Attempts To Rescue Pirapāharan Et Al In 2009’ (Colombo Telegraph, 5 April 2016) I see that I have joined the list of authors whose work has been subjected to his less than forensic critical attentions. In this instance his focus is the final stages of the Sri Lankan conflict. Rarely one for modest enterprise in this context, part of Roberts’ aim here is an attempt to show where – and how – others have got it wrong, and/or wilfully sought to mislead, over events in the final stages of the war.

I do not propose to tackle all Robert’s factual assertions or broad-brush claims, though many of them certainly warrant such critical treatment. Rather I shall confine myself to those that reference my recent book To End A Civil War: Norway’s Peace Engagement in Sri Lanka (Hurst), notably Chapter 11, ‘Endgame’, dealing with the conflict’s final stages.

Two distinct but related key issues present themselves in this context. The first concerns Norwegian efforts to persuade the LTTE leadership – in essence meaning Prabakharan – to agree to a proposal for what was described as an ‘organized end to the war’ via the good offices of ‘KP’, the Tiger’s chief arms procurer turned inter-national representative. The second concerns related efforts, led by the Norwegians but with support from the US in particular, to craft an actionable plan to evacuate Tamil civilians trapped in the war zone and secure the surrender – and safety – of all Tigre cadre bar Prabakharan himself and his security chief Pottu Amman.

First, on a relatively minor note Robert’s points to differences in the details of the peace plan relayed to the LTTE leadership by KP as reported both by me and by DBS Jeyaraj, the latter’s version being based on a very informative later interview h conducted with KP. Differences in recollection, especially at a distance of some years from the events, are hardly surprising – even if Roberts doesn’t seem to have noticed that balancing the Norwegian account of the plan, I also provide a summary of the Jeyaraj KP interview ‘version’. But the key point here – as Roberts, to be fair, points out – was KP’s belief, clearly expressed to the Norwegians, that Prabakharan would not accept such a proposal owing to the fact that, as I quote Erik Solheim saying ‘the LTTE leadership was living in a surreal world, believing in miracles’.

Next after briefly recounting the story – which I elaborate in the book – of a secret meeting between KP, other LTTE representatives and the Norwegians held in Kuala Lumpa in late February, Roberts returns to the subject of a ‘rescue’ mission to the North. In this context he refers to ‘a negotiated end to the hostilities’ as the goal of international peace efforts but with the rider ‘if Salter’s account can be relied upon’. This is a curious comment, because there is no need whatsoever to ‘rely’ on my account. (Although I’d of course be happy if Roberts did!) If Roberts had read the earlier sections of my chapter carefully he would have seen reference to a meeting of the Sri Lanka Co-Chairs Group, made up of Norway, the USA, the EU and Japan, held on 2 February 2009. (In this respect Roberts’ reference to ‘Norway and the USA’ as sponsors of a rescue plan needs adjusting.)

In particular, the meeting’s final statement called on the LTTE to initiate discussions on ‘the modalities for ending hostilities, including the laying down of arms, renunciation of violence, acceptance of the [GoSL’s] offer of amnesty, and participating as a political party in a process to achieve a just and lasting political solution’.

This statement, which as Solheim points out in the book was ‘not what either side wanted to hear’, provided the basis for international efforts to limit, and if possible stop the blood-letting that enveloped the war zone over the following months. And, if he so prefers, Roberts can take the Co-Chairs rather than my word for this.

In this context, too, it would be pertinent to point out that the impetus to develop a rescue plan did not come soley from international actors. From interviews with Tore Hattrem, former Norwegian Ambassador to Sri Lanka I learned (and reported in the book) that around the time of the February Co-Chairs meeting, Hattrem received a phone call informing him that there were ‘a strong voices’ within the LTTE calling for a ‘face-saving mechanism that would allow civilians to leave the war zone’.

Indeed, Hattrem went on to suggest that it was following this ‘message’ that efforts to pull together a rescue plan really began in earnest. First the ICRC was proposed for registering the names of cadre who surrendered, and the US soon added the suggestion of evacuation ships docking in the Vanni. This in turn provided the basis for deliberations over the coming weeks – noted by Roberts – on the modalities of involving US naval forces in the rescue operation. In response the GoSL was reportedly ‘hesitant’ over the proposal.

On chronology, at least, so far Roberts’ has followed the script. Now, however, he begins to lose it. Let me quote: “Basil Rajapaksa was the conduit through whom this international cabal explored such options. But Solheim and Salter – perhaps deliberately – do not tell us WHEN Rajapaksa or some other Sri Lankan dignitary was approached. This is a critical gap in my present stock of information. It is my surmise that Sri Lanka was only approached with this scheme late in the day, say mid-April or late April”

Where to start? While it is true that no specific date is given for communicating the rescue plan to Basil Rajapaksa is given – but deliberately? – the proposal cannot have been, and indeed was not a surprise either Rajapaksa or government as whole. if Roberts had read earlier section of the chapter he would have seen reference (pp. 340-341) to an SMS sent to Tore Hatrem in early January 2009 by ‘a high-ranking official close to the president outlining an amnesty proposal to the LTTE and including an offer to continue their struggle by political means, forming a political party’. Details of the official in question’s identity apart, this surely makes it crystal clear that in the early part of 2009, the Rajapaksa administration – or at any rate parts of it – were thinking along similar lines to the Co-Chairs, if not in details, at least in substance regarding the both the contours, and the desirability, of a peaceful end to the conflict.

Second, as I also note in the account of developments in February 2009, towards the end of the month Foreign Minister Bogollagama was quoted in media reports as pronouncing himself ‘aware’ of the Co-Chairs rescue initiative, while also stressing that the GoSL was talking to ‘other friendly countries’, India in particular, about the options for evacuating Tamil civilians from the Vanni. Thus at whatever point it was that Basil Rajapaksa was officially informed of such plans, they would almost certainly not have come as a surprise to him, and definitely not to the GoSL as a whole.

Indeed there is a final, clinching reason why Rajapaksa cannot have been in the dark. As I (again) report, following the secret February meeting with KP in Kuala Lumpur, Tore Hattrem debriefed him on its outcomes, notably KP’s pessimism regarding the prospects of his persuading Prabakharan to go along with the Co-Chair proposal, in response to which Rajapaksa was reportedly ‘disappointed’.

All in all, as I hope this account makes clear, the suggestion or insinuation – the latter is in fact more Robert’s style – that the Norwegians attempted to hoodwink or withhold vital information from the GoSL is simply absurd. A final word on the subject – from the book – goes to Bård Ludvig Thorheim, then First Secretary at the Norwegian Embassy in Colombo. Thorheim points out that media stories alleging a Norwegian attempt to save the LTTE, which began to emerge after the (supposedly secret) Kuala Lumpur meeting, soon faded.

Thorheim attributes this to the GoSL’s realization that if the Norwegians received too much criticism for having assisted the LTTE, ‘they could cover themselves by revealing that the government had been fully informed about all contacts with the LTTE, and had even passed on messages to the Tigers not long beforehand (the latter a reference to the ‘amnesty’ proposal SMS sent to Hattrem in January 2009).

Roberts saves his crudest and most absurd jibe for last – one, moreover, in which I am reduced to a mouthpiece, dubbed ‘Solheim through Salter’. Discussing the Sri Lankan Army’s behaviour in the final days of the war Roberts takes me – or rather Solheim-through-me – to task for demonstrating what he calls our ‘infantile military intelligence’. The evidence proffered for the charge of military infantilism is my reference to suggestions that SLA troops ‘fired or threw grenades into civilian bunkers as a ‘precaution’ against LTTE attacks’.

In response his argument could be summed up as: any old fool knows that advancing troops can’t check what they’re attacking – especially not if terrorists are mixed in with civilians. Well, if the case ever gets as far as an international court I don’t suspect that’s a defence that will get Syrian troops accused of barrel-bombing civilian districts of Aleppo held by ‘terrorist forces’ very far. Nor should it in Sri Lanka’s case – if and when the long-promised domestic courts eventually materialize.

What makes the critique even more absurd, moreover, is the fact that if Roberts had only bothered to read onto the end of the paragraph he quotes from so dismissively, he would see that I offer a clear explanation of the contextual factors that probably help explain the Sri Lankan Army forces’ use of this gruesome practice: during the earlier battle for PTK wounded Black Tiger cadres had allegedly hidden themselves in bunkers and then blown themselves up when an army unit passed by. (An alleged Army response at the time was for heavy army vehicles to flatten bunkers containing civilians.)

So there it is: the Robert’s critique, such as it is, of my book. And if any further response from him is forthcoming, it would be heartening to discover that it was informed both by a careful reading of the text itself, and an avoidance of fatuous personal jibes.

*Mark Salter – Author, To End A Civil War: Norway’s Peace Engagement in Sri Lanka

https://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/confusion-reigns-roberts-on-the-wars-final-stages/

Sri Lanka: in defence of Oslo

Another week – and another rebuttal letter published as a full page feature in Sri Lankan newspaper The Island. Wonder how long I can keep this up for . . .

09TH_ERIC_GD9BSIFP_2767370e — Erik Solheim, Gopalkrishna Gandhi and myself at the Chennai book launch, 8 March 2016

Salter adds to war of words on CFA

The Island, April 7, 2016

Gamini Gunawardene’s comments on my most recent response to your correspondent Shamindra Ferdinando (The Island, 5 April 2016) have been brought to my attention. I don’t propose to respond on every issue he raises, just those that relate directly to my earlier reply – Gunawardene’s scattershot historical assertions are probably best left to others to address.

Gunawardene begins by wondering why the Norwegians singled out the majority Sinhala community for assistance in efforts to build up a ‘peace constituency’ – and concludes by taking this fact as evidence that their basic assumptions were ‘flawed’. The answer is that – correctly in my view – the Norwegians identified securing Sinhala support for the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) as absolutely essential to the future prospects for the peace process initiated with the CFA’s signature in April 2002. This view was based on the straightforward proposition that any sustainable peace agreement in Sri Lanka requires the backing of the country’s majority population group – the Sinhalese.

Regarding the overall lesson learned that, as Gunawardene quotes me as saying, ‘external support for peace can never be substituted for locally owned and initiated efforts’, he draws two demonstrably false conclusions. First, it is not the case that, as he infers, this ‘lesson’ never occurred to the Norwegians until much later in the day: the question of supporting the emergence of a local ‘peace constituency’ was in fact a subject of lively debate among not only Norwegians, but also other internationals working in Sri Lanka and–last but not least – their local partners from at least the mid-1990s, and probably earlier.

Second, it is simply false to suggest that the Norwegians failed to pay sufficient attention to previous attempts at external intervention/mediation– notably India’s and the lessons to be drawn from them. As Erik Solheim and others involved at the time never tire of pointing out, close consultation with Delhi was a cornerstone of Norwegian peace facilitation efforts in Sri Lanka. The issue then, I believe, is not one of familiarity with, for example, the ultimately disastrous IPKF intervention, but rather of the right conclusions to be drawn from it.

As the main argument of Gunawardene’s piece makes plain, supporters of a military ‘solution’ to the conflict in Sri Lanka, such as himself, never tire of pointing to a range of incidents during the conflict’s course as ‘evidence’ of the futility of ‘appeasing’ the LTTE, the impossibility of reaching any agreement with them and thus the necessity of destroying the Tigers by force.

Those who framed and supported the CFA examined precisely the same evidence as Gunawardene et al. However, they draw very different conclusions from it, the central one being that after over 15 years of conflict, the futility, human and economic cost of continuing with the war pointed clearly to the imperative of redoubling efforts to achieve a peaceful end to the conflict. Nor were the Norwegians alone in thinking in this manner. In early 2002 they shared this starting point (or a close variant of it) with many others, notably the key architects of the CFA: Ranil Wickremesinghe and his newly elected government and the LTTE leadership.

All in all, then, it is simply false to contend, as Gunawardene does repeatedly, that the Norwegians had not ‘studied’ the Sri Lankan conflict, or had failed to understand the lessons of past interventions. No: the point was simply that they, like many others, came to the conclusion that a peaceful solution to the conflict was both desirable and – based on the good will of both parties apparent at the time – perhaps possible.

Gunawardene goes on to question my reference to Chandrika Kumaratunga’s proud recollection of the achievements of the Sudu Nelum movement. ‘So when the Sinhalese supported, was peace ushered’? he asks, somewhat sarcastically. No, not in 1998 is of course the answer. But three years later, a majority voted in Wickremesinghe’s UNP government, which proceeded swiftly to agree a ceasefire with the LTTE and only four months later, to conclude the CFA with them. And even if the margin was pretty thin, opinion polls conducted soon after the CFA indicated majority support for the agreement.

This suggests that, all in all, efforts to secure popular support for peace in the majority Sinhala community were both sensible – and feasible. (The suggestion towards the end of Gunawardene’s article that in positing a post-CFA need to ‘explain and advocate the benefits of peace’ to sections of the Sinhalese community I am contradicting myself here is spurious. Sinhala attitudes are not a fixed asset, and much had shifted between the mid-1990s and the early 2000s, public opinion with respect to peace efforts included).

Following this comes Gunawardene’s dissection of what he calls my ‘foolish assertion’ that when Norway peace facilitators entered the scene in Sri Lanka they shared the widely held view that ‘neither side was capable of defeating the other militarily’. He goes on to deride the ‘superficiality’ of this perception. But hold on there! First, I am offering a statement of fact here, not a judgement. Fact because, it is unquestionably the case that this represented majority perception –at this point; including significant sections of the Sri Lankan political and military establishment.

Second, this is a perception that appears to have been maintained by significant actors in Sri Lanka until a good deal later in the conflict. As noted in my last reply, for example, Erik Solheim relates an incident in autumn 2008 when a senior Indian official informed him that he believed that Sri Lankan forces were now capable of defeating the LTTE militarily as the first time he had heard a high-level Delhi representative express that opinion. Hardly evidence that, as Gunawardene argues, this viewpoint was ‘a ‘popular misconception created by ‘the West’ (sic)’. All in all, in describing the Norwegian view as ‘superficial’ and as an explanation for the fact that their ‘peace effort’ (his ironic inverted commas) ‘miserably failed’, Gunawardene is condemning as ignorant a much wider audience than he perhaps intended.

In similar vein, he goes on to pose the rhetorical question: what if they [i.e. the Norwegians] did not [support and facilitate the peace process]? Would that have been the end of the world for us?’ The answer to that, I sense, is ‘almost certainly not’. With, however, one important rider; namely, that the one and only reason the Norwegians agreed to act as peace facilitators in Sri Lanka was because they were asked to do so by the parties.

It’s important to reiterate this basic point, if only to counteract the continuing tendency – traces of which are evident in this intervention – to ignore or otherwise downplay the fact that Norwegian involvement in the conflict was the result, not of external interference and/or a post-imperial breach of Sri Lankan sovereignty, but of a request to do so by the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE.

Coming to Gunawardene’s rousing if cheapshot conclusion. If it is indeed the case that, as he suggests, a fundamental lesson from Sri Lanka is ‘not to mess around with other people’s troubles’, then the people who may most need to take that lesson to heart are those who invited the Norwegians in, in the first place. If you talk to those people, however – as I have done– you will discover that they extended the invitation to Norway following considerably more thought and reflection than Gunawardene appears to credit them with.

And they did so, moreover, in the apparent belief that the invitees were a good deal more level-headed – and well-informed about Sri Lankan affairs – than he appears to believe was the case. All of which leaves his parting swipe at the Norwegians – ‘especially when you are incompetent’ – looking even more questionable, if not absurd, than it already was.

Mark Salter, Author, To End A Civil War: Norway’s Peace Engagement im Sri Lanka

http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=143383

Amnesty International charges Turkey with ‘illegally returning Syrian refugees’

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Thousands of Syrian refugees are living in Turkish refugee camps

“In their desperation to seal their borders EU leaders have wilfully ignored the simplest of facts: Turkey is not a safe country for Syrian refugees and is getting less safe by the day, The large-scale returns of Syrian refugees we have documented highlight the fatal flaws in the EU-Turkey deal. . . .It is a deal that can only be implemented with the hardest of hearts and a blithe disregard for international law.. . . Far from pressuring Turkey to improve the protection it offers Syrian refugees, the EU is in fact incentivising the opposite.”

An Amnesty International spokesperson commenting on AI’s new report on Turkey’s treatment of Syrian refugees

Turkey ‘illegally returning Syrian refugees’ – Amnesty

BBC News, 1 April 2016

Turkey has illegally forced thousands of refugees to return to Syria, a report by Amnesty International says. The group says about 100 Syrians have been sent back to their war-torn country every day since mid-January in breach of international law.

Amnesty says its report exposes the flaws in a recent deal between the EU and Turkey aimed at stemming the flow of refugees arriving in Greece. Turkey has denied sending back any refugees against their will.

Illegal migrants are still arriving on the Greek islands, but the numbers have falle. Image copyright: Getty Images

The group says its research in southern Turkey suggested that authorities had been rounding up and expelling groups of about 100 Syrian men, women and children almost daily since the middle of January. Under the “non-refoulement” principle of international humanitarian law, a state is prohibited from deporting individuals to a war zone. Amnesty said one case involved three young children forced back into Syria without their parents, while another saw the forced return of an eight-months’ pregnant woman.

It said many of those returned appeared to be unregistered refugees but it had also documented cases of registered Syrian refugees being sent back while not carrying their papers. “The inhumanity and scale of the returns is truly shocking; Turkey should stop them immediately,” said John Dalhuisen, Amnesty’s director for Europe and Central Asia.

Many refugees are stranded in northern Greece as EU countries tighten their border. Image copyright: Getty Images

Under the EU-Turkey deal, migrants arriving illegally in Greece are expected to be sent back to Turkey from 4 April if they do not apply for asylum or if their claim is rejected. In return, Turkey will receive aid and political concessions.

But critics of the deal say it hinges on Turkey being a safe country of asylum, which Amnesty says is clearly not the case. “In their desperation to seal their borders, EU leaders have wilfully ignored the simplest of facts: Turkey is not a safe country for Syrian refugees and is getting less safe by the day,” said Mr Dalhuisen.

“The large-scale returns of Syrian refugees we have documented highlight the fatal flaws in the EU-Turkey deal. It is a deal that can only be implemented with the hardest of hearts and a blithe disregard for international law.” He added: “Far from pressuring Turkey to improve the protection it offers Syrian refugees, the EU is in fact incentivising the opposite.”

Key points from EU-Turkey agreement

Returns: All “irregular migrants” crossing from Turkey into Greece from 20 March will be sent back. Each arrival will be individually assessed by the Greek authorities.
One-for-one: For each Syrian returned to Turkey, a Syrian migrant will be resettled in the EU. Priority will be given to those who have not tried to illegally enter the EU and the number is capped at 72,000.
Visa restrictions: Turkish nationals should have access to the Schengen passport-free zone by June. This will not apply to non-Schengen countries like Britain.
Financial aid: The EU is to speed up the allocation of €3bn ($3.3 bn; £2.3 bn) in aid to Turkey to help migrants.
Turkey EU membership: Both sides agreed to “re-energise” Turkey’s bid to join the European bloc, with talks due by July.

The Turkey-EU statement in full

A BBC report in January uncovered allegations of refugees being detained in Turkey before being forced to return to Syria. One refugee told the BBC that guards had driven them to the Syrian border and forced them to sign a piece of paper on which was written “I want to go back to Syria”.

Turkey has taken in 2.7 million Syrian refugees since the civil war began five years ago. Many live in camps near the border between the two countries. The Turkish foreign ministry said it had maintained an “open door” policy for Syrian migrants and strictly abided by the principle of not returning people to a country where they are liable to face persecution.

“None of the Syrians that have demanded protection from our country are being sent back to their country by force, in line with international and national law,” a foreign ministry spokesman told Reuters news agency.

Borders tightened

Last year, more than one million migrants and refugees arrived in the EU by boat from Turkey to Greece, triggering a political crisis within the bloc. More than 143,000 have arrived this year alone, and about 360 have died, according to the International Organization for Migration.

Most migrants and refugees intend to go to Germany and other northern European countries, but tens of thousands are now stuck in Greece as their route north has been blocked. Human rights groups have said the EU-Turkey deal could force migrants to start using other and potentially more dangerous routes, such as the journey between North Africa and Italy.

A note on terminology: The BBC uses the term migrant to refer to all people on the move who have yet to complete the legal process of claiming asylum. This group includes people fleeing war-torn countries such as Syria, who are likely to be granted refugee status, as well as people who are seeking jobs and better lives, who governments are likely to rule are economic migrants.

NATO in Sri Lanka?

The Island gives a front page slot my latest response to their absurdly slanted (and continuing) coverage of Norway’s peace facilitation role in the Sri Lankan conflict. (Probably not the last of either . . .)

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A NATO role in failed Norwegian peace bid and

costly propaganda projects’ – a response

March 29, 2016

Once again I find myself in the position of replying to your columnist Shamindra Ferdinando, this time with respect to his 23 March 2016 column ‘A NATO role in failed Norwegian peace bid and costly propaganda projects’.

In a column peppered with grandiose, and in several instances unsubstantiated claims, I will confine myself to commenting on those that relate specifically to the role of the Norwegians in Sri Lanka – the subject of my recent book To End A Civil War: Norway’s Peace Engagement in Sri Lanka, on which Ferdinando has been good enough to comment on several occasions in recent weeks.

First, Ferdinando asserts that the ‘Norwegians believed decision making process (sic), as well as the public opinion in any conflict-affected country, could be influenced through well-funded propaganda projects.’ This strikes me as a tendentious interpretation of Norwegian strategy in Sri Lanka. As I understand it their view was that, in Sri Lanka as in other post-conflict countries, there was a real need to assist the building up of a critical constituency that both understood and supported the peace process, in particular within the majority Sinhala community.

To that end, it was felt that one of the most useful things Norway could do was to support a wide range of civil society initiatives whose objectives were clearly aligned with promoting peace and general, and support for the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) in particular. To call these ‘propaganda projects’ is simply misleading – unless of course, you are of the view that expressing support for the peace process constitutes propaganda-mongering.

Moreover, to construe the fact that the ultimate impact of such Norwegian-funded peace constituency building was limited as evidence that it constituted what Ferdinando calls ‘squandered Norwegian taxpayers’ money’ is similarly misguided. In my view the real lesson learned here is that external support for peace can never be a substitute for locally owned and initiated efforts. What Sri Lanka really needed in the aftermath of the 2002 CFA, in other words, was a concerted government-led effort to explain and advocate the benefits of peace among the population, in particular those sections of it, such as rural Sinhalese communities in the South, most likely to be suspicious of a peace deal with the LTTE.

By any account, however, that is precisely what didn’t happen. And in this context, former President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s justifiably proud recollection, in the course of a book interview with me, of the dramatic impact on public opinion of the Sudu Nelum (White Lotus) movement initiated in the mid 1990s to persuade the Sinhala population of the overarching imperative of achieving peace with the Tamils is surely an instructive precedent. (Recall that in the space of two years, popular support for peace moves up from only 20 to 70 per cent).

Next, referencing the 2012 ‘Pawns of Peace’ evaluation of Norway’s engagement in Sri Lanka, Ferdinando suggests that the ‘ambitious Norwegian peace initiative’ suffered an ‘irreparable setback’ due to its ‘inaccurate assessment of the ground situation’. Specifically, he suggests ‘Norway operated on the premise that the Sri Lankan government lacked the wherewithal to defeat the LTTE militarily’.

This claim has the distinction of being both inaccurate and trivial. Inaccurate, because at no point was the fundamental rationale for Norwegian support to the Sri Lankan peace process premised on calculations of military balance and advantage (although it certainly took account of such matters). Oslo supported peace because it – like many others – believed that it was a better alternative to continued conflict between government forces and the LTTE.

Trivial, because at the point at which Norway entered the scene as peace facilitator, the belief that neither side was capable of defeating the other militarily was pretty much universal, not least among the international community. Only much later, in 2008, did that assessment of the prevailing military balance shift. (Erik Solheim, for example, recalls the occasion in autumn 2008 on which a senior Indian official told him for the first time that he believed that government forces were now capable of defeating the LTTE.)

Next the 2002 CFA was not, as Ferdinando states, a ‘Norwegian peace initiative’. In fact the real initiative for the CFA came squarely from the parties, notably from Ranil Wickremesinghe following his electoral victory in December 2001 and from the LTTE, who in the aftermath of their devastating July 2001 attack on Katunayake airport and from what was by then a position of undoubted strength adopted a notably positive approach to peace efforts. As befits a facilitator, Norway’s role was to assist in the final agreement’s formulation, shuttling between the two sides in an effort to achieve consensus on formulations and so on.

It is thus essential to underscore that both the CFA and the broader peace process were in the first instance a bilateral initiative of the Sri Lankan government and LTTE, supported and facilitated by the Norwegians. Accordingly, responsibility for the process’ direction, setbacks along the way and ultimately breakdown rests squarely with the parties, and nowhere else. Thus Ferdinando’s suggestion that there was a ‘Norwegian project in Sri Lanka’ is ultimately false. Rather, for a time, there was a peace project in Sri Lanka – initiated with the Ceasefire Agreement – to which Norway lent its whole-hearted support.

Next, in the context of a discussion of what Ferdinando describes as the UNP govern-ment’s CFA-era ‘suppression’ of themedia in a ‘bid to prevent … reportage of the actual ground situation’, he alleges that the Norwegians ‘failed to take tangible measures to discourage the LTTE from causing trouble’ – presumably meaning with the media. Sadly, the comment suggests a failure to understand what being a third party peace facilitator does, and does not, involve.

In Sri Lanka neither the Norwegians as facilitators nor the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) as monitors had the mandate – or indeed the practical instruments – to take the kind of ‘tangible measures’ Ferdinando presumably has in mind. Such an interventionist mandate and capability was held exclusively by the parties themselves.

Further on, Ferdinando states that the ‘much touted assertion’ that ‘NATO member Norway is a lightweight facilitator’ simply ‘does not hold water’. First, it is worth recalling that the term ‘lightweight facilitator’ was first used by none other than Lakshman Kadirgamar – ‘lightweight’ being precisely Norway’s preferred quality in the eyes of the former Sri Lankan Foreign Minister.

With respect to the (correct) reference to Norway as a NATO member, Ferdinando takes an ‘expert on Norwegian initiative’ – a thinly-veiled reference to myself, as the context makes clear – to task for questioning his claim that, in as yet unspecified ways, Norway “involv[ed] NATO in their project here.” By way of supporting evidence, Ferdinando’s latest column points to the Pawns of Peace Evaluation – well, actually, a single page in it – which he also suggests I ‘obviously hadn’t perused’. [In fact I have, as a simple glance at the bibliography of my book plus a number of references and quotes from the Evaluation would have made clear to him).

Here it is then, the one reference to NATO (p.100) – a search of the whole Evaluation turned up three more, all of them hidden away in minor references. Summarizing this single substantive reference to a NATO connection or involvement in Sri Lanka, Ferdinando concludes from it that ‘as the five-nation Nordic Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) had received intelligence from NATO, it didn’t require intelligence provided by India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) (page 100)’.

Is this what the Evaluation in fact says? The answer is provided in actual quotation of which Ferdinando himself provides a part.

‘The SLMM was not equipped for high-tech intelligence. In line with the preferences and concerns of both the parties and India, the mission had no radar surveillance and relied almost exclusively on its own observations and information forwarded to them. Indian intelligence only reached them through informal channels, ‘so we could never fully trust it,’ a HOM explained. ‘They were not giving it to us to be nice. We would always ask ourselves: why do they want us to know this?’ Intelligence provided by NATO only confirmed what they already knew.’

Does this offer proof that since the SLMM received intelligence from NATO, they didn’t require input from India’s RAW? No, I think, not even on the most fanciful interpretation. And as if this weren’t bad enough, Ferdinando goes on to conclude with the rhetorical flourish that ‘NATO intelligence would have had a significant impact on the (sic) decision making process’ – although it’s not clear which such process, when or even how this claim has in mind.

Last but not least, the pièce de resistance: an article title that reads ‘A NATO role in failed Norwegian peace bid and costly propaganda projects’. In other words a lone, dubiously-interpreted reference as the basis for a headline!

Whatever else, I believe the Norwegian engagement in Sri Lanka deserves more careful consideration and analysis than is on offer in Ferdinando’s latest article.

http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=142888

Poland approves large-scale logging in Europe’s last primeval forest

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Anyone who’s ever visited this amazing primeval forest – the last such left in Europe – home to both its native bison and an amazing array of flora and fauna, knows this is a truly catastrophic decision. Along with Polish democracy, high time to save the puszcza Białowieża!

Poland approves large-scale logging in Europe’s last primeval forest

Greenpeace accuses government of ignoring scientists over fate of Białowieża woodland, home to 20,000 animal species and Europe’s tallest trees.

AFP, Mar 26, 2016

Poland has approved large-scale logging in Europe’s last primeval woodland in a bid to combat a beetle infestation despite protests from scientists, ecologists and the European Union. The action in the Białowieża forest is intended to fight the spread of the spruce bark beetle.

“We’re acting to curb the degradation of important habitats, to curb the disappearance and migration of important species from this site,” the environment minister, Jan Szyszko, said. Szyszko vowed that the logging plans would not apply to strictly protected areas of the primeval forest that was designated a Unesco World Heritage site in 1979.

But under the new plan, loggers will harvest more than 180,000 cubic metres (6.4m cubic feet) of wood from other areas of the forest over a decade, dwarfing previous plans to harvest 40,000 cubic metres over the same period.

Vowing to protect the forest, Greenpeace accused Szyszko of “ignoring the voices of citizens and scientists, the European Commission, Unesco and conservation organisations.” Along with other environmental groups protesting the move, Greenpeace also said the logging could trigger the EU to launch punitive procedures against Poland for violating its Natura 2000 program.

Fog clings to the ground behind a grove of tall birch trees silhouetted by evening light in Białowieża forest. Photograph: Raymond Gehman/CORBISSprawling across 150,000 hectares, the Białowieża forest reaches across the Polish border with Belarus, where it is entirely protected as a nature park. It is home to 20,000 animal species, including 250 types of bird and 62 species of mammals – among them Europe’s largest, the bison. Europe’s tallest trees, firs towering 50m high (164ft), and oaks and ashes of 40m, also flourish here, in an ecosystem unspoiled for more than 10 millennia.

IS in Europe: The Race to the Death

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Former ISIS commander Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who ordered fighters to ‘shoot into crowds’ of civilians

Here’s a revealing BBC Panorama backgrounder on the continuing international intelligence scramble to try and head off the current wave of IS attacks in Europe.

IS in Europe: The race to the death

By Peter Taylor, John O’Kane and Ceri Isfryn. BBC News, 23 March 2016

Tuesday’s devastating attacks in Brussels, in which more than 30 people died and scores were injured, are the latest phase of the war on Europe declared by the so-called Islamic State. The attacks cast a dark shadow over last week’s triumph, the arrest of Salah Abdeslam.

The hope will be that Abdeslam, one of the leading members of the cell behind the Paris attacks, will provide crucial intelligence on the current state of IS’s network and its future plans. The authorities will also hope that he can identify the people behind Tuesday’s attacks.

Getting captured IS fighters to talk is one of the crucial ways in which Western intelligence services have built up the picture of its European network and in particular the role of its former commander, Abdelhamid Abaaoud.

The BBC’s Panorama programme has seen the transcripts of some important interrogations carried out by France’s equivalent of MI5, the DGSI. They reveal valuable details about the tactics used by Abaaoud to train and equip IS fighters in Europe.

Suspects including Salah Abdeslam were arrested in the Brussels suburb of Molenbee. Image: ReutersNicolas Moreau was one them. He was arrested in 2015 having left Nantes to fight jihad in Syria in 2014. He, like many IS recruits, was a former petty criminal who had converted to Islam in prison and become disillusioned with life in France. He told his interrogators he couldn’t stand the “injustice” and “couldn’t see any future in this country”.

He went on to provide valuable information about IS’s external operations department known as Amni, meaning “security”, that sends hand-picked trained fighters back to Europe to inflict death and destruction on their homelands. “Each gets 50,000 euros (£40,000) to mount an attack,” Moreau said.

Captured fighter Nicolas Moreau gave details about IS’s external operations department. Amni, with 1,500 members, also had an internal security role “to detect spies in Iraq and Syria”, he said. Crucially he then revealed the kunya, the nom de guerre of the person in charge of Amni – Abu Omar from Brussels.

In fact, Abu Omar’s real name was Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the commander of the network that was to plan and execute a number of attacks in Europe in 2015, culminating in the meticulously planned massacres in Paris.

Back there [in Syria], it was a real industry – they were really looking to hit France or Europe

Another IS fighter, Reda Hame, captured in France in August 2015, gave more precise details about Abaaoud that helped intelligence agencies fill in the picture about how his network operated. Hame’s value to Abaaoud was that his French passport was due to expire and Abaaoud wanted to get him back to Europe to carry out an attack while his passport was still valid. He said Abaaoud was “a very tough person, very determined and very dangerous”.

Time was of the essence to take advantage of the expiry date. Abaaoud personally gave Hame a crash course in weapons training and then issued instructions. Getting weapons in France, he said, was not a problem. “I just had to ask for what I needed, in France or in Europe.” Abaaoud also warned him to test the weapon thoroughly “as it wasn’t an option that the operation would be lost due to phoney stuff”.

But the most chilling instructions that Abaaoud issued were about the targets Hame was to hit. “He just told me to choose an easy target like a place where there are people. Imagine a rock concert in a European country. If we arm you, would you be ready to shoot into a crowd?”

“Imagine a rock concert in a European country. If we arm you, would you be ready to shoot into a crowd?”

Abaaoud added that it was best to wait after the attack for the forces to intervene and then to die while fighting. “He said that if many civilians were hit, the foreign policy of France would change.”

Interrogators then asked Hame if he was aware of a possible attack in France or Europe. He said he couldn’t be specific. “All I can tell you is that it will happen soon. Back there [in Syria], it was a real industry. They were really looking to hit France or Europe.”

He said that given the motivation of the IS fighters he had met, he would not be surprised if there were actions soon. He then reminded his interrogators of IS’s justification for their attacks on Europe. “They just want the [coalition] airstrikes to stop.”

The interrogation of Reda Hame and his mention of a rock concert as a suggested target took place just three months before the Paris attacks and the assault on the Bataclan concert hall in which 89 fans of the heavy metal American band, Eagles of Death Metal, died.

However dire his Cassandra-like prophecy, it would have been unrealistic to expect the authorities to spend the following months monitoring every concert and public gathering in Paris. But the clear warning was there.

With the help of Israel’s Mossad, the CIA planned to intercept him but the plan failed – Abaaoud slipped the net

From intelligence we have seen, we now understand how 2015 became a desperate race between Abaaoud and Western intelligence agencies as they tried to find him and stop him. From the beginning of the year they had no doubt about his key role in planning attacks in Europe. Telephone intercepts indicated that he was behind an IS cell set up in the Belgian town of Verviers with the alleged aim of killing police officers.

The cell was neutralised when Belgian police, aided by France’s SAS equivalent, the GIGN, stormed the building, killing two members of Abaaoud’s cell who had been with him in Syria. One of them, Khalid Ben Larbi, had flown from Syria and used the UK as a back door to Belgium via St Pancras. We’ve been told he was travelling on a passport belonging to a Dutch jihadi.

Anti-terror police patrol streets in Verviers Image: AFP

The telephone intercepts made to the cell in Verviers, were traced to Athens and were identified as having come from Abaaoud. It was a golden opportunity to swoop and arrest him. Intelligence we’ve seen indicates that with the help of Israel’s Mossad, the CIA planned to intercept him but the plan failed. Abaaoud slipped the net, returned to Syria and boasted in IS’s glossy propaganda magazine, Dabiq, how he had escaped under the noses of Western intelligence.

The IS network is still at large and no-one knows where and when it may strike next

Through the summer, the warnings about the threat from Abaaoud and his network increased. One source reported that Abaaoud was now IS’s Minister for War. The CIA warned that Abaaoud’s network was trying to get hold of European ID cards and that he was in contact with Turkish smugglers about trying to get recruits back to Europe. Alarm bells were now ringing ever more loudly.

There was concern, too, when it was discovered that Mohamed Abrini, a member of the Paris cell and one of Abaaoud’s closest lieutenants, spent time in the UK last summer. We understand he went to Birmingham and when he returned to Brussels, he was interviewed by the police. Mohammed Abrini, unlike his fellow jihadi, Salah Abdeslam, is still at large.

Mohammed Abrini was photographed with Salah Abdeslam shortly before the Paris attack. Image AFP

We have learned that as summer 2015 turned to autumn, the race to find Abaaoud intensified. A series of meetings were held between Western intelligence agencies, now seriously concerned about their inability to locate Abaaoud and increasingly worried about his network’s intent. In October, MI6 and MI5 met with a European partner agency to discuss Abaaoud and their concern about a report that he was intending to send 60 trained fighters to attack Belgium, France, Germany and the UK.

Other agencies, too, were trying to find a way of countering Abaaoud and discussed setting up a specialist team to target an individual who was now Europe’s most wanted man.

The meeting to finalise the details was to be held in Paris. The original date in the calendar was ominous: 13 November, the very day of the Paris attacks. The meeting was postponed before that date but it would have been too late anyway. The race was over and Abaaoud had won.

The grim statistics were the result: 130 people dead and almost 700 injured. Five days after the attacks he had commanded, Abaaoud was killed in a safe house in St Denis, a suburb of Paris – a suicide bomber hiding with him detonated a suicide vest.

French security forces fired thousands of rounds at the flat in St Denis where Abaaoud took refug. Image: Alamy Tuesday’s attacks in Brussels clearly indicate that the IS network is still at large and no-one knows where and when it may strike next. That’s the nightmare that keeps the intelligence services awake at night. However intense their efforts to keep us all safe, they can never guarantee 100% security against such a ruthless and sophisticated enemy.

As Alain Winants, the former head of Belgium’s MI5, warns. “I fear that in the West we will have to live for the coming years with the threats of that kind of terrorism.”

Image: AFP

Film of The Colombo Book Launch

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The video quality isn’t exactly pristine, but the audio is actually pretty good – certainly more than enough to catch the main contours of the discussion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf5XfudbUB8

CR Joint Analysis Workshop Report

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Here’s my report from a recent Conciliation Resources ‘Joint Analysis Workshop’ held in the context of the ‘Peacebuiling and Reconciliation’ Accord Insight publication on the same theme for which they have invited me to act as Specialist Editor. Web page includes some great video interviews with some of the key participants too!

http://www.c-r.org/resources/joint-analysis-workshop-peacebuilding-and-reconciliation

‘Killing Rajiv Gandhi Was the LTTE’s Biggest Mistake’

Here’s an India-focused report from the recent launch of my Sri Lanka book in New Delhi.

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Former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated on May 21, 1991 in Tamil Nadu’s Sriperumbudur. (AP File Photo)

‘Killing Rajiv Gandhi Was LTTE’s Biggest Mistake’, Leader Reportedly Said

All India | Indo-Asian News Service: March 10, 2016

New Delhi: Assassinating former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was the Tamil Tigers’ biggest mistake, a new book quotes the late LTTE ideologue Anton Balasingham as saying.

Balasingham told Norway’s former Special Envoy to Sri Lanka Erik Solheim that LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran and his feared intelligence chief Pottu Amman initially denied their involvement in the killing.

But they admitted the truth to Balasingham “a few weeks” after the May 21, 1991 assassination, says Mark Salter’s book “To End A Civil War” (Hurst & Company, London).

The just released 549-page book is the most exhaustive account of the Norwegian-led peace process that sought to end three decades of conflict in Sri Lanka.

The conflict finally ended when the Sri Lankan military crushed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in May 2009, wiping out its entire leadership including Prabhakaran and Pottu Amman.

“Perhaps most controversially, in terms of official LTTE policies, Balasingham conceded that the killing of Rajiv Gandhi was the biggest mistake the LTTE had ever made,” says the book.

The LTTE has never officially admitted to killing Mr Gandhi, who was blown up by a Sri Lankan Tamil woman suicide bomber at an election rally near Chennai.

Privately, Balasingham told the Norwegians that Mr Gandhi’s killing “was a complete disaster”.

According to Mr Solheim, Balasingham put the decision to kill Mr Gandhi to Prabhakaran’s desire for revenge for Tamils killed by Indian troops when they were deployed in Sri Lanka in 1987-90, and a belief that Gandhi may again send the troops to Sri Lanka if he returned to power.

Mr Solheim also says that although Balasingham, who in his final year was based in London and died of cancer in December 2006, wanted to reach out to the US and Europe, his real affinity was with India.

“Thus at the end of his life in 2006, Balasingham went so far as to try and ‘apologize’ to India for this misdeed (assassination).”

After Mr Gandhi’s assassination, India outlawed the LTTE – which was earlier based in Tamil Nadu and enjoyed New Delhi’s blessings – and declared Prabhakaran and Pottu Amman proclaimed offenders.

In contrast, Balasingham had no hesitation in admitting that the LTTE assassinated moderate Tamil leader and academic Neelan Tiruchelvam – who was critical of the Tamil Tigers — in July 1999 on a Colombo street.

When the Norwegians, Mr Solheim included, confronted Balasingham on the killing, the book quotes the latter as saying point-blank: “Yes, we killed him and if you listen to me I will tell you why.”

The book quotes Solheim as saying that Balasingham once referred to Prabhakaran as a “warlord” and said the LTTE needed to transform into a political entity.

Balasingham also told Mr Solheim, who is now based in Paris: “You must never underestimate the capacity for violence of these guys (LTTE).”

According to Mr Solheim, Balasingham “was very frank with us, including admitting to the LTTE’s mistakes.

“Over time I came to regard Bala highly and to consider him as a great human being as well as a good friend.”

http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/killing-rajiv-gandhi-was-lttes-biggest-mistake-leader-reportedly-said-1285777 … via @ndtv