International Crisis Group

How I drafted USAID’s Cuba transition plan in the 1990s | Claire Luke

When Mark Schneider drafted the U.S. government’s plan for a Cuban transition back in the late 1990s, it was mocked by Cuba as a theoretical exercise that wasn’t going to transpire anytime soon. Now, nearly two decades later, the leaders of both countries have unveiled a dramatic plan that paints transformation in Cuba as an imminent reality.

U.S. President Barack Obama’s bold declaration to build a U.S. embassy in Cuba, ease travel and trade restrictions, develop Cuba’s business environment and telecommunications, and conduct a prisoner exchange appeared to come out of nowhere.

Schneider, though, was contemplating such changes long before last week.

In a rare and exclusive interview with Devex, Schneider — who now works as senior adviser at the International Crisis Group — shared his thoughts about a plan that, in many ways, echoes the one he drafted almost 20 years ago during Bill Clinton’s presidency. His analysis of the challenges associated with a warming of relations between the United States and Cuba ring as true today as they did then.

FULL INTERVIEW (Devex)

Photo: Peace Corps/flickr

Hagel Leaves Successor With Two Wars Obama Pledged to End | David Lerman, Eltaf Najafizada and Aziz Alwan

Departing U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel will hand his successor two intractable wars that President Barack Obama had promised to end.

The battles against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq and against the Taliban and its allies in Afghanistan show no sign of abating, much less ending, as Obama announced today that he’s nominating Ashton Carter, who spent more than two years as the Pentagon’s No. 2 civilian leader, as his next defense chief.

In Afghanistan, now America’s longest war, the capital city of Kabul has become a battleground for daily bombings. At least 10 attacks late last month killed scores of victims and led to the resignation of the city’s police chief. Obama has quietly authorized a continuation of offensive air and ground operations in 2015 to protect U.S. forces.

In Iraq, the war Obama thought he had ended in 2011, the rise of Islamic State terrorists has forced the president to authorize a renewed air war over Iraq and Syria and the return of a growing number of American troops on the ground.

A number of U.S. officials, who discussed policy disputes on condition of anonymity, say that’s not enough. So do outside analysts such as Anthony Cordesman.

“The Obama administration has yet to demonstrate that it has a successful strategy or plan for dealing with any of these wars,” Cordesman, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, wrote in a report this week titled, “The Obama Administration: From Ending Two Wars to Engagement in Five – with the Risk of a Sixth.”

FULL ARTICLE (Bloomberg)

Photo: DOD Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Chad J. McNeeley/Chuck Hagel/flickr

What Obama Doesn’t Understand About Syria | Noah Bonsey

The U.S. policy to defeat the Islamic State is doomed to failure. Here’s how to fix it.

The current U.S. strategy to destroy the Islamic State is likely doomed to fail. In fact, it risks doing just the opposite of its intended goal: strengthening the jihadis’ appeal in Syria, Iraq, and far beyond, while leaving the door open for the Islamic State to expand into new areas.

This is in large part because the United States so far has addressed the problem of the Islamic State in isolation from other aspects of the trans-border conflict in Syria and Iraq. Unless Barack Obama’s administration takes a broader view, it will be unable to respond effectively to the deteriorating situation on the ground.

The good news is that the White House can still change course – and indeed, President Obama has reportedly requested a review of his administration’s strategy in Syria. In crafting a new way forward, the White House needs to understand three points about the Islamic State and the military landscape in which it operates.

FULL COMMENTARY (Foreign Policy)

Photo: Official White House Photo/Pete Souza

To Stop ISIS in Syria, Support Aleppo | JEAN-MARIE GUÉHENNO and NOAH BONSEY

President Obama’s speech last week signaled a likely expansion into Syria of American airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, yet offered little indication of an immediate strategy to halt ISIS’ gains there. The administration’s first focus thus remains on Iraq, while familiar pledges to work with regional allies and increase support to moderate rebels in Syria — if Congress approves sufficient funding — appear divorced from the urgency of the situation on the ground.

Though Western attention is drawn to Iraq, it is Syria that has witnessed the most significant ISIS gains since June. It is Aleppo, Syria’s largest metropolitan area, that presents ISIS’ best opportunity for expanding its claimed caliphate. An effective strategy for halting, and eventually reversing, ISIS’ expansion should begin there, and soon.

FULL ARTICLE (The New York Times)

Photo: Basma/Foreign & Commonwealth Office/flickr

U.S. Pins Hope on Syrian Rebels With Loyalties All Over the Map | BEN HUBBARD, ERIC SCHMITT and MARK MAZZETTI

BEIRUT, Lebanon — President Obama’s determination to train Syrian rebels to serve as ground troops against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria leaves the United States dependent on a diverse group riven by infighting, with no shared leadership and with hard-line Islamists as its most effective fighters.

After more than three years of civil war, there are hundreds of militias fighting President Bashar al-Assad — and one another. Among them, even the more secular forces have turned to Islamists for support and weapons over the years, and the remaining moderate rebels often fight alongside extremists like the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria.

“You are not going to find this neat, clean, secular rebel group that respects human rights and that is waiting and ready because they don’t exist,” said Aron Lund, a Syria analyst who edits the Syria in Crisis blog for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “It is a very dirty war and you have to deal with what is on offer.”

FULL ARTICLE (The New York Times)

Photo: U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Liesl Marelli/The National Guard/flickr

Barack Obama looks to Muslim countries for help in crushing Isis | Ian Black

Barack Obama has called for a “broad-based international coalition” to “degrade and destroy” Islamic State (Isis) after the beheading of the American journalist Steven Sotloff. But it is not clear which countries would take part in such a grouping and, crucially, whether its mission would be limited to Iraq or include fighting the jihadis in their Syrian strongholds.

In Washington and London, government officials say they had long known that their nationals were being held hostage by the extremist group, so the latest killing, plus the now explicit threat to murder a UK captive, will not change their fundamental calculations.

Talk of building a coalition to tackle Isis has been in the diplomatic air for the past two weeks, but Obama gave deeper insight into his thinking on Wednesday: “The question is going to be making sure we have the right strategy but also making sure that we have got the international will to do it,” the president said. “What we have got to make sure is that we are organising the Arab world, the Middle East, the Muslim world, along with the international community to isolate this cancer.”

FULL ARTICLE (The Guardian)

Photo: Christopher Dilts for Obama for America/flickr

Pentagon confronts militant dilemma in Africa | William Wallis in Washington and Katrina Manson in Nairobi

The hum of US drones is becoming more familiar over African skies.

From Nigeria to Somalia, US military presence on the continent is a creeping reality. US troops may be thin on the ground, with the Pentagon preferring to rely on training and financial support to allied forces, but special forces are now operating at any given moment.

The trend has its most recent roots in the aftermath of the September 2001 attacks on the US, when US officials scoured the globe for “ungoverned spaces” with the potential, like Afghanistan, to foster anti-American extremists. Several African countries cropped up on the radar, notably Somalia. In the semi-desert underbelly of the Sahara, Mali was identified among other weak states vulnerable to jihadi influence spreading south from the Maghreb. Nigeria, too, soon featured in assessments of threats.

These were either prescient musings by US spies or a self-fulfilling prophecy coaxed partly into reality by US meddling – there are subscribers to both camps. Either way, Islamist extremism in Africa has metastasised just as the Pentagon and the CIA assessments predicted.

FULL ARTICLE (Financial Times)

Photo: United States Marine Corps/flickr

How Obama Thinks About Counterterrorism | David Rohde

In a foreign-policy address last week, President Obama gave his clearest outline yet of his counterterrorism strategy. Al-Qaeda splinter groups remain the largest threat to the United States, he said, but Washington must respond to it in a new way: by training local security forces, not deploying American ground troops.

“We have to develop a strategy that matches this diffuse threat—one that expands our reach without sending forces that stretch our military too thin, or stir up local resentments,” Obama said. “We need partners to fight terrorists alongside us.”

But critics say America’s past efforts to train local security forces have had mixed results. Washington has a poor track record of applying the long-term resources, funding, and attention needed to carry out such efforts successfully. In Libya, training by U.S. Special Forces soldiers was suspended after a local militia stole a cache of American-provided weapons. In Mali, American-trained military officers carried out a coup. And in Afghanistan, the United States failed to mount a major training effort until nine years after the fall of the Taliban.

FULL ARTICLE (The Atlantic)

Photo: cmccain202dc/flickr

Obama’s counterterrorism doctrine: Let locals lead the fight | David Rohde

In a foreign policy address this week, U.S. President Barack Obama gave his clearest outline yet of his counterterrorism strategy. Al Qaeda splinter groups remain the largest threat to the United States, he said, but Washington must respond to it in a new way: by training local security forces, not deploying American ground troops.

“We have to develop a strategy that matches this diffuse threat - one that expands our reach without sending forces that stretch our military too thin, or stir up local resentments,” Obama said. “We need partners to fight terrorists alongside us.”

But critics say America’s past efforts to train local security forces have had mixed results. Washington has a poor track record of applying the long-term resources, funding and attention needed to carry out such efforts successfully.

FULL ARTICLE (Reuters)

Photo: NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan/flickr

Relief in Afghanistan after Obama makes troop commitment | Heath Druzin

President Barack Obama’s announcement that the U.S. plans to keep almost 10,000 troops in Afghanistan past the end of the year brought relief to Afghans worried a full withdrawal would leave a security vacuum.

But questions remain about what the post-combat mission in this still-active war zone will look like.

The long wait for Obama’s announcement caused unease in a nation where, nearly 13 years after the U.S. military invasion that ousted the ruling Taliban, a war is still raging in parts of the country, and Afghan troops still rely on U.S. intelligence and technology to fight an entrenched insurgency.

“This will remove a sense of drift from U.S. military policy in Afghanistan and it will bring a sense of reassurement to pro-government enclaves in the country that Americans won’t abandon them after 2014,” said Graeme Smith, the International Crisis Group’s senior analyst in Afghanistan.

FULL ARTICLE (Stars and Stripes)

Photo: isafmedia/flickr