Fighting the Last War

Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to spend just under a week with Alvaro Uribe, former president of Colombia and architect of arguably the most dramatic turn-around in the history of the drug war. This month, I have a magazine piece out in the Washington Monthly profiling President Uribe--and looking at what lessons from Colombia's experience are being applied to Mexico. I argue that, because Mexico and Colombia are so fundamentally different, the Uribe model won't necessarily work in Mexico. In fact, the reasons it won't are the same reasons that the strategy is starting to falter in Colombia as well... here's a sample:

Colombia’s incredible turnaround and the strategy credited with bringing it about have become not only a rare success story in the drug war, but also its most formidable brand and export. The governments of Mexico and several other Central American countries that have been plunged into violent confrontation with drug gangs have tried assiduously to replicate their South American peer’s strategy. ...

There are two problems, however. The first is that none of these places, despite years of effort, has yet seen the kind of transformation that Uribe brought about in Colombia. In fact, so far, the momentum runs in the opposite direction. The case of Mexico is particularly striking; roughly 50,000 lives have been lost since the country’s experiment with a Colombian-style militarized drug war began in 2006. ...

The second problem is that, in Colombia itself, Uribe’s strategy has reached a point of sharply diminishing returns. Having largely defeated what was, at bottom, a sweeping leftist insurgency against the state, and having decapitated a relatively cohesive paramilitary force, Colombia now faces a hydra-headed, apolitical, essentially criminal set of groups vying for turf and control over what’s left of the drug trade. None of these groups is as powerful as its precursors, but nor do they seem to be susceptible to the same strategic countermeasures. And violence is starting to drift upward....

The idea that sheer military might and political will can beat back the narcotics trade is a powerful one. Uribe’s ideas and tactics have spread to every corner of the globe marred by the drug trade and nearly every institution that is fighting organized crime. Which means that if those ideas are misguided—or, perhaps more dangerously, misunderstood— then so too is nearly every fight in the drug war.

 Read the whole piece in the Washington Monthly. 

Book release: The Southern Tiger

Announcing the release of a book that I co-edited with Blake Hounshell, managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine! Please have a read -- I hope you'll find it an inspiring story of how dictatorship can be defeated through democracy -- a topic of great importance these days across regions...

The Southern Tiger
Chile's Fight for a Peaceful and Democratic Future

Former Chilean president Ricardo Lagos provides a fascinating glimpse inside his country's meteoric rise on the world stage
"A leader in the underground resistance movement against Augusto Pinochet and his Dirty War, Ricardo Lagos burst onto the national stage in 1988 when he gave a speech denouncing the dictator, the first of its kind. Revolution soon followed, as Chileans took to the streets to oust a criminal despot and pave the way for democracy. In The Southern Tiger, Lagos chronicles Chile's journey from terror and repression to a thriving open society, and from crushing poverty to one of the wealthiest nations in Latin America. His thrilling stories of surviving Chile's political prisons, standing up to President George W. Bush over the war in Iraq, and rebuilding Chile's education system demonstrate why President Obama recently called Chile 'a model for the region and the world.' As citizens across the globe rise up to demand more from their governments, The Southern Tiger is an inspiring story of political and economic rebirth in the wake of fear."

A cold war in Burundi

I've just returned from Burundi--a country that (as I've quickly learned) most editors, let alone readers, couldn't point to on the map. Not that I totally fault them. As I also realized--and as is key to understanding Burundi--its geopolitical significance is almost zero.

Interestingly, I'm starting to wonder if this isn't a mixed blessing--to be totally forgotten. Over the last decade, some pretty exciting things have happened in Burundi, and I can't help wondering if they would have been impossible if Burundi was, say, in the Middle East. A civil war swept through this country in the 1990s. But after a peace treaty in 2000, the international community was able to use slow-and-steady pressure to encourage the government to reform and respect human rights. Unlike say, the Democratic Republic of the Congo next door, there weren't a million cooks in the kitchen. There were just a few, and they were mostly on the same page about how to move Burundi forward. Out of the international spotlight, and with a bit more wiggle room, Burundi has started to be reborn.


But all is not well in Burundi these days--and in this case, a little more international attention could do. In recent months, a cold war has begun between the country's government and its opposition. Bodies have started turning up murdered; young men are going missing. The press say they are under pressure to be quiet; the human rights activists get hauled before court and chastised anytime they speak up too much.

A few of the stories I've written about all this are collected here. I'll be updating these coming days. In the meantime, Burundi's here on the map -->

Nervously Watching the DRC Elections from Burundi

Lake Tanganyika--just across the water from DR Congo.

(Burundi)  Just across the river from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Friday evening was calm—the end of a sunny day in a string of rainy ones. Except for one thing: as the result of DRC’s election are announced, there is an acute understanding that what happens there may have a dramatic impact on whether this tiny country of just over 8 million continues down a path toward long-sought peace—or whether insecurity creeps back into daily life.

For the last decade, Burundi has fought hard to consolidate the peace that finally ended a civil war that began back in 1993 with a mass slaughter that foreshadowed the Rwandan genocide next door. In 2000, the country’s main rebel groups signed the Arusha accords that integrated their forces into one army and brought fighting leaders into civilian life. The country held elections in 2005 and again in 2010; on Thursday, the UN head of mission to Burundi told the Security Council that incredible progress toward peace had been made.
And yet there are signs here that the calm of recent years is starting to slip. Over the past several months, the political opposition appears to have moved underground—where they were during a decade of civil war.

Former rebels may be behind a string of attacks on civilians perpetrated by what the government has dubbed “armed bandits.” Meanwhile, civil society organizations say that 300 members of the opposition have been assassinated in the last half-year; they suspect the government. “Fragile” is analysts’ favorite word to describe the mood.

This is where Congo fits in. Over the past two decades, insurrections in Burundi, Rwanda, and the DRC have intermingled, worked together, and become intrinsically linked. The Eastern Congo remains perhaps the single easiest place for nascent rebellions to grow: It is largely lawless, flush with arms, and booming from a war economy built on minerals, guns, and even daily goods like sugar and coffee. If the DRC is itself destabilized, the power dynamics across the region will shift as new players scramble to fill lucrative holes. And if anyone here in Burundi was inclined to head back to the battlefields, they would almost certainly organize in Congo.

“Everyone talks about Rwanda and Congo, and no one ever talks about Burundi,” notes Kris Berwout, coordinator of a network of 46 European NGOs working in Burundi. “It’s the orphan of the region. But all the local situations in those three countries are so interlinked, that it’s very difficult to find solutions for one country if it’s not part of regional search [for peace.]”

As nightfall arrives in Congo, it won’t only be the Congolese who are kept up worrying. Just a stone’s throw away, there’s also much at stake.

In case you missed Tunisia's elections...

I'm freshly back from Tunisia, where I had the honor/pleasure of reporting on the first democratic elections of the Arab Spring. I've just updated a page with all my coverage from an eventful few weeks; a few more dispatches also still forthcoming so stay tuned!

Tunisia's Elections: The Euphoria, the Aspirations, the Fears

Voters in the Jbel Lahmar, Tunis

Now what?

It's been clear from the beginning of this campaign that the next stage of Tunisia's political tranformation will come in the form of coalition building--consolidating the multiple small parties and getting a workable majority to lead. Here's what we've learned so far about what that will look like... 


One note: the piece for The Atlantic was filed Sunday; we now know quite a bit more...

Unlikely kingmaker emerges in Tunisia's election

www.csmonitor.com

Tunisia's election appears to be giving a strong vote to the moderate Islamist party Ennahda. But the much smaller and secular Ettakatol party may determine who forms the majority in the constituent assembly.

 

Can Tunisia's New Democracy Bridge the Islamist-Secular Divide?
www.theatlantic.com

However Tunisia's political parties fare in the country's first real election, their biggest challenge -- and the one that could determine the fate of Tunisia's democratic experiment -- will not be winning votes but learning how to cooperate with one another

Election day in Tunisia yesterday couldn't have been more humbling to watch. It was the kind of day that reminds you how luck you are for something you have always taken for granted: your vote. I don't think there's a single person who observed the election who will ever miss the chance to cast a ballot again. My two takes from the day:

Tunisia election: Smiles, pride as historic day goes smoothly

www.csmonitor.com

Tunisians turned out in droves to vote in the Arab Spring's first democratic election today. Early indications were that voting went smoothly throughout most of the country.

 

In Revolutionary Tunisia's First Real Election, One Issue Trumps All: Jobs

www.theatlantic.com

Parties and voters, both unfamiliar with the new system that begins today with an election, are struggling to find and agree on solutions to the worsening economy