A quick note to let our audience know that Kathryn and myself have decided to take the next few months off of this particular blog to devote our energy to other projects.

Blog writing energies will now be directed towards Central Eurasia Standard, a new forum that is a one-stop shop for information and key stories from Central Asia. It acts as a bridge to the region for casual foreign policy watchers – to that end, it is trying to convey key stories in accessible and digestible formats. You can follow me and my efforts at @ingridpederson.

Kathryn will continue her work at Journalists for Human Rights. You can follow her efforts on Twitter at @ksheppo.

We hope to bring this blog back soon and this will stay up until we get the time to come back to it! Thanks for everyone’s support, please check out and follow Central Eurasia Standard – it’s a fascinating place to study, and we’re really excited about where the project could go.

“Despite an extensive process for planning, monitoring, and evaluating projects, USAID has no systematic way of considering unanticipated or undesirable human rights-related side effects of its programming. Essentially, it sets goals and then establishes indicators for meeting them — but it does not monitor for unintended consequences of its actions.”

This undermines USAID as an organization. USAID is a massive bureaucracy and despite Rajiv Shah’s push for reforms, clearly there are a lot of existing projects that aren’t subjected to enough scrutiny. In addition, there’s also the problem of programs outlasting their effectiveness and efficiency – contributing to wasting time and money that could be spent elsewhere.

The article states:

“USAID also has to be willing to drop or find alternatives to non-essential programs in countries where programming is more likely to further repression than provide any real support to vulnerable populations.”

One suggestion is developing a more robust mechanism for monitoring within USAID – this poses obvious problems that come with all internal investigations – or more dialogue with civil society groups in countries where projects are located that can act as watch dogs/monitors/etc. (we could send more people to DynCorp’s training on how to be a watchdog reporter – private security companies just love watchdogs). Again, this brings us back to giving more agency to local groups/entities (where possible), complimenting existing structures rather than fully supplementing them.

However, both of these fairly obvious suggestions are in vain. Regarding the obvious problems with internal monitoring – well – it was deemed too expensive and unnecessary. As for local coordinators – well:

A formerly mandatory policy requiring USAID to analyze a project’s social impact during the planning phase was made optional and effectively discontinued in the early 2000s; it was dismissed as time-consuming and unwieldy, and nothing has replaced it. A position for an indigenous peoples’ coordinator at USAID was also scrapped. Today, no specific mechanisms exist to prevent harm to indigenous people or forcible displacement of local groups in conjunction with economic, agricultural, mining, or infrastructure programs.

This is actually sort of shocking. The first step is to bring back local coordinators and safeguards within USAID. For the ‘what’s next,’  private sector involvement could be a great source of money and advice. I’m sure there will be cries that they are likely to ignore similar abuses or worse, perpetrate them. However, if USAID has a partnership with a company, they’ll be held somewhat responsible for abuses committed by that company via affiliation - a check on the private sector. Private sector involvement could push for greater efficiencies measure, which is a strength they have compared to large, public bureaucracies, as well as local involvement to build better business relationships for the ‘business’ aspect of their in-country roles. There is room here where both sides can improve the other, and hopefully help curtail the incidences of human rights abuses perpetuated by USAID programs.

“I will be talking about what that means, about a model of sustainable partnership that adds value rather than extracts it,” Clinton told a university audience in this West African capital. “That’s America’s commitment to Africa.”

This need for resources, particularly minerals and oil, could lead to extractive partnerships in which the African nations don’t benefit as much as they potentially could. Additionally, China has not shied away from doing business with nations that the US considers unsavory, the obvious example being Sudan throughout the Darfur crisis:

China’s thirst for oil is causing bloodshed. So says New York-based nongovernmental organization Human Rights First, which on Mar. 13 released a report linking China’s rising imports of Sudanese oil with sales of Chinese small weapons to Khartoum, used to further the deadly conflict in the western region of Darfur.

China’s engagement with Africa supports a broader strategy for China in two main ways:

1. China often presents itself as the champion of developing countries. They grew quickly economically and have become a major player. Often, they present themselves as the juxtaposition to the developed, Western nations, an outsider who has power inside and is always looking out for other developing states. This is very good PR for the country, giving it strength and leadership in international organizations. It can also makes the US look as though they have no interest in the agendas of developing states, an advantage that China manipulates very effectively.

2. Expansion. China is looking to establish and economic, and in some cases, military, presence wherever they can. The String of Pearls refers to China’s extensive lines of communications between mainland China and South Sudan. China has increased economic ties to Venezuela recently. Africa is a place where the US is hogtied by ideals – the government doesn’t want to be seen doing business with dirty players, but it is at the expense of natural resources that are being snapped up by China. China already controls the majority of the world’s cobalt supply, an essential mineral for electronics found in Madagascar and the Congo. The more control they have over the resources available, the more leverage they have over the countries that need them – especially if they have near-monopoly over them.

So, while I am 100% sure that Clinton is very much invested in the human rights aspects of African nations dealing with China, her comments encouraging countries away from the monolithic country are very much about preserving US power. It’s all part of the game.

The cost to American taxpayers is on track to top $2 billion for this year, and the companies are expecting their biggest cut of that yet in the next few years thanks to government plans for new facilities to house the 400,000 immigrants detained annually.

The growth is far from over, despite the sheer drop in illegal immigration in recent years.

In 2011, nearly half the beds in the nation’s civil detention system were in private facilities with little federal oversight, up from just 10 percent a decade ago.

The companies also have raked in cash from subsidiaries that provide health care and transportation. And they are holding more immigrants convicted of federal crimes in their privately-run prisons.

The financial boom, which has helped save some of these companies from the brink of bankruptcy, has occurred even though federal officials acknowledge privatization isn’t necessarily cheaper.

A lot of these stories in the past few months have come out of Miami, which holds a large number of detained persons, but as the article notes these facilities are expansive and all over the country.

This is particularly counter-productive when it comes to detention of immigrants. Some of these prisons hold immigrants accused of crime, and yes, people who commit crime should pay their debt to society, incarceration is one form of that payback. But the people who are detained because they are illegal immigrants or because they are caught crossing the border, languish in these prisons. Sometimes they are there for months or even years in extreme cases. This just costs more money to taxpayers. Political beliefs about taxpayers and prisons aside, the amount of money spent on the issue of detaining people is staggering, and people are kept from going about their lives in these institutions, all at a cost to taxpayers:

The total average nightly cost to taxpayers to detain an illegal immigrant, including health care and guards’ salaries, is about $166, ICE confirmed only after the AP calculated that figure and presented it to the agency.

That’s up from $80 in 2004. ICE said the $80 didn’t include all of the same costs but declined to provide details. (AP)

Lending credence to the idea that private prisons are ducking out of accountability is this story from Tuscon, which reports that Arizona repealed a law asking private prisons to demonstrate their cost saving measures – and as we saw in the AP report, it seems that private prisons aren’t actually saving that much yet can claim they do without having to show proof in a state plagued with contention over immigration issues. As the AP reports, “One fundamental difference between private detention facilities and their publicly-run counterparts is transparency. The private ones don’t have to follow the same public records and access requirements.”

The Global Policy Forum‘s report, Dangerous Partnerships, states that this is a worrying trend due to the lack of impunity enjoyed by PSCs, as well as their repeated involvement in international scandals involving rendition, torture, and sex trafficking.

The firms named in the report are indeed controversial, particularly G4S, who is currently at the center of a maelstrom of bad PR due to their poor handling of the Olympic contracts in London. The company failed to deliver an adequate number of security guards to the event, leaving the military and police to attempt to fill in the gaps. Additionally, DynCorp is one of the other top UN contractors, and the report singles DynCorp out for their involvement in a sexual abuse scandal in Bosnia during the 90s as well as their role in operating covert rendition flights for the US. Other private security companies involved include ”Securitas, Aegis, Mission Essential Personnel and IDG Security.”

The BBC reports that Dyncorp received “contracts totalling some $3m with the UN in 2010 and Saracen was hired in Uganda to provide security services to the Monusco peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2010 and 2011. Meanwhile, G4S and its subsidiaries, including Armor Group, had UN contracts worth almost $3m”

The Global Policy Forum states that one central issue is that many of the companies also have close ties to the US and UK governments and are using these ties to lobby for contracts in the UN:

One aspect that has stifled real discussion is the influence two of the biggest players within the U.N., the U.K and the U.S. governments, he said, both of whom are major clients of these firms, rendering any discussion dead on arrival.

The industry, in turn, makes use of this access to their governments to secure support on bids within the U.N., which are not the most lucrative financially but lend prestige and increase the companies’ image, according to Pingeot’s research.

The cozy relationship between member states and private contractors also fuels “bunkerizations”, the report finds, as the increased use of PMSCs and their involvement in determining U.N. and national policy means that countries end up with an increasing “need” for security.

The UN has defended itself and says it will continue to use PSCs. A spokesman said the use of contractors is ‘appropriate’ and that the UN would carry out due diligence and is working to implement a policy for PSCs that would be carried out across the organizations.

Personally I don’t find this news surprising, but I’m more surprised that, according to reports, there’s been almost no dialogue about the use of PSCs by the UN prior to now. Hopefully this report will be a good starting point for further dialogue. I’ll be curious to read the PSC policy when the UN does release it, and see how it stacks up to reports of their behavior in-country.

Over the past month, numerous articles have come to light attempting to make sense of this new technology and what the ramifications are strategically, politically and morally. This round up looks at those articles in the mainstream media since July 1, that discuss the morality of drones.

But first – allow me to weigh in.

For me, I think this debate boils down to this central question:

Are lethal drone strikes a last resort, that is to say, have all feasible alternatives really been exhausted?

And I think the answer is no – lethal drones have become a first resort. President Obama getting pulled aside and told to make a choice about when to use them seems like it shouldn’t happen too often – yet we hear about strikes regularly. So in this lies the danger- we’ve expedited warfare and made the deterrent the norm. And people – as they always will – in the regions under siege have adjusted and learned how to live life under the constant hum of a drone. Learned how to operate insurgencies under that hum, how to traffic drugs despite the threat of surveillance or aerial attack. Those two activities should not be in the jurisdiction of drone strikes – yes, they’re bad, but they’re also, frankly, mundane in a way. But everyone’s so worked up about AQ that we’ve decided we have to target these specific groups with our heaviest weaponry at all times, though these two activities happen, in tandem or separately in Lebanon/Jordan/Iraq/Mexico/Peru/Indonesia/Malaysia/half of the continent of Africa/Central Asia/Russia/etc etc etc etc ad nauseum.

So do I still agree with drones (specifically lethal air attacks) as a weapon of counterterrorism tactics? Yes. Do I think they’re overused to the point of saturation, diminishing returns and negative impacts that completely negate the positive impacts? Absolutely. Should we stop drone strikes? Yes – unless it is a last resort. We curry no favors using them now, and would probably take more long term value from a focus on human & terrain intelligence.

Without further ado…

The Round Up

Flying Under the Influence:  written from the perspective of a predator drone with a penchant for the drink, this tongue in cheek article makes some great points: all new forms of warfare are subjected to the same criticisms and eventually assimilated; and people on the ground don’t care if the thing shooting at them has a pilot or not.

The Moral Hazard of Drones: “the many moral perils of drone use that have been overlooked. It shows that our attempts to avoid obvious ethical pitfalls of actions like firebombing may leave us vulnerable to other, more subtle, moral dangers”

The Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama: “In so doing, you have changed a technological capability into a moral imperative and have convinced your countrymen to see the necessity without seeing the downside. Politically, there is no downside. Historically, there is only the irony of the upside — that you, of all presidents, have become the lethal one”

The Moral Case for Drones: “You have to start by asking, as for any military action, is the cause just?” Mr. Strawser said. But for extremists who are indeed plotting violence against innocents, he said, “all the evidence we have so far suggests that drones do better at both identifying the terrorist and avoiding collateral damage than anything else we have.”

Can We Wage a Just Drone War: “All this suggests that when it comes to fighting Al-Qaeda and other like-minded organizations, the threshold of last resort has long ago been crossed, and that some application of force is seen as necessary to quell the threat. But what does necessity mean in relation to a drone strike? What constitutes an imminent threat? Are all active terrorists, assuming we can correctly identify them, a sufficient threat legitimizing lethal drone strikes? Could other non-lethal tactics, such as arresting terrorists, freezing assets, and working with foreign partners to isolate and diminish their influence, be employed instead?”

Drones and Collateral Damage: “Perhaps when the U.S. takes stock of the drone program, it will recognize that it is feeding radicalization, giving propaganda advantage to the extremists and ultimately undermining efforts to bring peace to the region. As public opinion in Pakistan increasingly sees the U.S. as an enemy and not an ally, President Obama should assert his moral authority regarding the drone program and restore the human element to the use of military force. The unique technology which makes the drone possible should not separate military force from human emotion. Hopefully the U.S. will opt for humanity.”

This isn’t from July, but this post from Slouching Toward Columbia is too relevant to leave out:

Drones are a symptom, not a cause: ”They are a useful instrument in the toolbox. But it’s the toolbox, not any one tool in it, that’s shaping policy. Giving the drones the kind of hype they receive from critics and proponents alike shifts debate obscures what’s really allowing policymakers to conduct today’s wars.”

So without further ado, I’ll leave it to these three, who have covered the ground very well.

Hitler Would Not Have Made a Good CEO, and Other Reasons Warfare and Business Are Different, by Jill Sargent Russell: “Nevertheless, the simple fact is that points of convergence shared by the two activities pale in comparison with their fundamental differences. Taking one business concept as an example, if you ask an infantryman he will tell you that ‘just in time’ bullets are a bad, bad idea. I use this example specifically because it highlights the critical distinction between the two, that of imperatives and bottom lines. And so, where the military seeks effectiveness, the private sector follows the dictates of efficiency. Effective means you have bullets waiting for the infantryman, and that is the right answer in war; efficiency looks good on paper until, in reality, it means you lose the battle, the campaign or the war because ‘just in time’ is unreliable when there is an enemy attempting to thwart your logistics.”

Disruptive Thinking: The military is not a business (With a nod to Ex), by Crispin J. Burke: “It makes good sense to have two medics instead of one–the team can split up into two groups without losing a critical member. And knowing Murphy’s law, you don’t want the first person shot in a firefight to be the team’s only medic. In the private sector, though, redundancy isn’t viewed in such a pragmatic light–two people performing the same job translates into double the wages for the same amount of work. Don’t believe me? Witness how private-sector employees horde knowledge. If knowledge is power, they share it like Sauron.”

(Author’s Note: This article is the most accessible of the three – all three have good points – but I find Burke’s writing is very clear, especially to those who are not as familiar with the military)

Universities Are Not Businesses, and Neither Is the Military, by Andrew Exum: “Over the weekend, I began to wonder why so many professional military reading lists contain business books that you would be less surprised to find on sale in an airport bookstore’s “Management Excellence” section. Some of these books — no disrespect to the authors — can be summarized in a five-slide PowerPoint presentation. They probably were once a five-slide PowerPoint presentation but now push other, worthier books — like Paret’s Makers of Modern Strategy — off the list of books we’re telling military officers to read. The result is an officer class raised to believe their role in life is to manage organizations rather than, as the late Sam Huntington would have said it, to manage violence.”

Sincere apologies to all our subscribers, this post went out early due to technical glitches.

Foreign Policy magazine posted an article today about Rajiv Shah’s plans to reform USAID, moving away from contractors and funneling money directly into local governments and organizations – doubling the amount of assistance these in-country entities recieve. Naturally, contractors are unhappy about this so this is an uphill battle against lobbyists, contractors and the congressmen that they sign on to fight for them, but I wish Rajiv Shah success in this one:

Given the degree to which USAID works with contractors, some of Shah’s language has been delightfully undiplomatic. In a 2011 speech, he drew parallels between the agency’s reliance on for-profit firms and Eisenhower’s warnings about the emergence of a military-industrial complex. Saying that USAID was “no longer satisfied with writing big checks to big contractors and calling it development,” Shah argued that development firms were more interested in keeping themselves in business than seeing countries graduate from the need for aid. “There is always another high-priced consultant that must take another flight to attend another conference or lead another training,” he complained.

This is the second article in the last two days that has pushed for greater local involvement, the first being a Small Wars Journal article that put emphasis on counterinsurgency (COIN) campaigns going through host nation institutions, rather than essentially replacing them in the short term:

In my opinion, one of the biggest problems with the 2006 COIN manual is that it doesn’t emphasize enough the need to work through the Host Nation; it doesn’t focus enough on the “by, with, and through” advisory part of the mission.  To be fair, there is quite a bit of discussion about building security forces, but the tone of the book still screams ‘heavy footprint,’ with 50:1 ratios and coalition civilians and military doing the heavy lifting. I was just flipping through the pages of the manual again this morning, and I had to smile when I saw that ’Host Nation actors’ is literally last on the list of ‘likely participants in counterinsurgency.’  What we really should be writing is a ‘Support to Counterinsurgency’ manual–how we “help others help themselves,” as Secretary Gates has written.  And that doesn’t always require the kinds of resources and methods described in the book.

I feel the need to defend FM-324 (the Army counterinsurgency manuel written by Petraeus and a few others, considered the ‘bible’ by some of current COIN tactics and strategy) here – I’ve read it once or twice, and took away a lot about building up local forces, and felt there was a strong emphasis on this. However, I thought this article had a lot of value in reminding the general public, particularly those that are armchair security watchers like myself, that there are a lot of options on the spectrum of what is considered ‘counterinsurgency.’ It was also really interesting to read more about operations in Latin America, a region largely forgotten recently with the emphasis on the Middle East and Afghanistan/Pakistan.

The purpose of PeaceTXT is to leverage mobile messaging to catalyze behavior change around peace and conflict issues. In the context of Chicago, the joint project with CeaseFire aims to leverage SMS reminders to interrupt gun violence in marginalized neighborhoods. Several studies in other fields of public health have already shown the massive impact that SMS reminders can have on behavior change, e.g., improving drug adherence behavior among AIDS and TB patients in Africa, Asia and South America.

But where there is a medium that affects consumer behavior for the good, expect the bad (or in this case, the extremely annoying) to come with it. I don’t have a Pakistani cell phone, so I can’t verify a lot of these claims, but the New York Times posted a blog this week about religious text messages that seem to be more about making money than changing behavior, offering teaser texts and then charging quite a bit to access interesting religious information. These texts are received along with dozens of other spam media, a problem reportedly plaguing Pakistani consumers:

Under the guise of outreach, religious organizations are mimicking advertisers and trying to tap the vast market of cellphone users in Pakistan, which boasted more than 114 million subscribers as of January. In addition to promoting religious textbooks and deals for travel to Mecca, the text messages invite users to access more religious content via SMS after paying a premium.

I reiterate – I don’t think this should stop the use of the mobile phone as a medium for transmitting information. This is another example of the different ways in which the boom of new media is utilized for different purposes. I’d hazard a guess that most people are willing to tolerate spam in order to continue using their phones. Stronger consumer protection and privacy laws will ultimately prove the best way to stop spam messages, while preserving access to information.

In South Sudan, Internews has established several community radio stations. They, like many other media development organizations (for example Journalists for Human Rights) understand that a free, independent and strong media sector is a necessary factor to building a strong and stable state.

Internews’ report Light in the Darkness from May 2011 is an incredibly fascinating look at the power of community radio in Southern Sudan. The report may be over a year old, but it definitely provides a strong case for media development in the region, as well as the potential impact when there is investment in community radio.

A few highlights that caught my eye:

In the Blue Nile State, focus groups revealed that many male listeners stated that the first time they heard females speak publicly in the community was on their community radio station.

Across all sites monitored, 85% of listeners attributed change in behaviour towards women and girls to their community radio station.

67% of people interviewed strongly agreed that community radio helped them to become more culturally tolerant.

If you have a few minutes, check out the report.