worldpolicy.org

Tremors from the January 12 earthquake that devastated the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, reached all the way to the Dominican Republic, which shares the eastern two-thirds of the island of Hispaniola. In the Dominican capital, Santo Domingo, new high-rise apartment buildings that have gone up over the past several years swayed but did not collapse. The brand-new metro system closed in case of aftershocks. In most cases, however, the biggest issue was motion sickness.

The tremors will be felt in other ways, particularly in their impact on the long-complicated relationship between the two countries. It may not be a tectonic shift, but more likely a series of lurches for the better, even keeping in mind the new challenges to the ties between the two nations.

Dominicans mark their independence from Haiti, won in 1844 after a brutal and corrupt 22-year occupation which left long-lasting resentment. Yet it’s often forgotten that Haitian revolutionary leader Toussaint Louverture helped Dominicans win independence from Spain in 1821; that Dominican leaders at first welcomed the Haitian presence as a way to discourage European ambitions of reclaiming the entire island; and that Haiti provided essential assistance in re-winning Dominican independence from Spain in 1865, after a relatively brief re-annexation to the European colonial power.

For more on the relationship between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, watch Michele Wucker on the Rachel Maddow Show.

Haitians remember the 1937 massacre of an estimated 25,000 Haitians near the Dominican border, an ethnic cleansing ordered by the Dominican dictator, General Rafael Trujillo, who was openly inspired by Hitler’s eugenics. Yet Haitians were not Trujillo’s only victims; he brutalized his own people as well.

Above all the conflicts between the two countries have stood out, but they have much in common as well. Their shared history of tragedy includes colonial occupations by France and Spain, repeated twentieth-century occupations by the United States, long dictatorships and authoritarian governments supported in part as Cold War proxies who promised to keep Communism at bay, and struggles with poverty and political instability.

In the mid-1990s, a formerly antagonistic relationship between the governments of both countries began to shift as the Dominican Republic and Haiti made significant strides toward greater democracy. In the Dominican Republic, generations of light-skinned presidents—including the octogenarian Joaquin Balaguer, who stoked fear of Haitian and African heritage as a way to stay in power—ceded to the election of a mixed-race young lawyer as president. At his election victory press conference in 1996, Leonel Fernandez made a point of answering questions from Haitian reporters in French.

Relations were improved by the departure of Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was often antagonistic to his cross-island counter parts. Aristide’s early political career was bolstered by criticism of the Dominican deal with the Duvalier dictatorship for Haitian cane cutters, who were treated badly. But Dominicans are so fond of Aristide’s protégé, current Haitian president René Préval, that his nickname is “marasa” (or “twin” in Haiti’s Kreyol language, based on French and African languages).

As a result, trade between the two countries has grown. The number of Dominicans estimated to be living in Haiti more than doubled as Dominican businesses have capitalized on relative stability in Haiti and improved cross-border ties.

But over the past few years even as government relations have mostly been at a high, there have been setbacks, devolving into lynchings of Haitians in a few well-publicized cases. Some observers attribute the tensions to perceived increases in Haitian migration—a long-standing sore point between the two countries—following a series of hurricanes that devastated homes and crops in Haiti. In another setback to relations, feathers were ruffled (so to speak) when Haiti banned poultry imports after avian flu was detected in Dominican chickens.

Nevertheless, just as the tsunami altered the dynamic of the long-standing civil war in Sri Lanka, the earthquake has put human compassion above historical and political difference. All Dominican government buildings flew flags at half mast over the weekend following the earthquake with two days of official national mourning decreed on behalf of Haiti.
Read the rest of this entry »

Iran appears to be stalling a UN-drafted deal on its nuclear program, failing to accept the terms of the agreement as Friday’s deadline loomed. The deal, which International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) head Mohamed ElBaradei announced earlier this week, followed days of talks between the UN, Iran, and three interlocutors—Russia, France, and the United States. It arranged for Iran to export roughly 70 percent of its uranium to Russia and France for enrichment, which would greatly ease international concerns about its nuclear program by reducing its stockpile below the threshold needed to produce a weapon. But Iranian state television reported that though it hasn’t rejected the plan outright, the government preferred to buy fuel from foreign suppliers for its nuclear reactor, which has been producing medical isotopes for the last few decades. The report quoted an unnamed source close to Iran’s negotiation team saying, “Iran is interested in buying fuel for the Tehran research reactor within the framework of a clear proposal…. We are waiting for the other party’s constructive and trust-building response.” Such a move would not only fail to reduce Iran’s stock of nuclear material, but would also require waiving UN sanctions that currently bar Iran from making these types of purchases. As of this writing, Tehran had not yet offered an official decision on the IAEA’s deal, but French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said that “via the indications we are receiving, matters are not very positive.” Iran’s rejection of the deal would certainly come as a disappointment to the United States, Russia, and France, which all had endorsed the plan by Friday, and might make future negotiations more difficult, reported the BBC from Vienna.

The U.S. Justice Department announced Thursday it’s “largest ever” operation against a drug cartel. More than 3,000 Justice Department agents have been involved in the ongoing Project Coronado, which has led to the arrests of almost 1,200 people in the last four years. The target is La Familia Michoacana, a drug cartel and criminal organization accused of murdering Mexican anti-narcotic officials and of trafficking large amounts of illicit drugs and weapons into the United States. In a two-day raid announced yesterday, the Justice Department seized $3.4 million in cash, 144 weapons, more than 100 vehicles, and stashes of methamphetamines, cocaine, and marijuana. Patricia Espinosa, Mexico’s foreign minister, said the operation “is a very clear example of how co-operation [in the fight against drugs] has deepened. It is the result not only of the transfer of equipment but also of collaboration in general.” A grand jury in New York has indicted the alleged leaders of La Familia on charges of conspiracy to import cocaine and methamphetamines.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) inaugurated its first human rights commission on Friday, hailing it as a milestone for the regional bloc as it opened a three-day summit in Thailand. “The issue of human rights is not about condemnation, but about awareness, empowerment and improvement,” said Thailand’s prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva. “We shall not only demonstrate to the world that human rights is a priority but also show them realistic and constructive ways to deal with it,” he continued. According to a statement distributed by the Thai government, the commission would “promote and protect human rights by promoting public awareness and education,” but it will have no power to investigate governments or impose sanctions. This has raised concerns among some human rights activists, who called the body toothless and questioned its credibility, especially when “civil society” representatives from several countries were rejected by their governments at the meetings. “The commission has not been designed to be effective and impartial,” said Debbie Stothard, a human rights activist from Malaysia. Southeast Asia’s human rights record is blemished at best—Myanmar’s military government is currently detaining more than 2,000 political prisoners, including opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi; Cambodia’s parliament passed a law this week barring demonstrations of more than 200 people; Malaysia, which maintains tight controls on its media outlets, also detains people it deems a threat to national security without trial; and in southern Thailand, an ongoing military offensive against an Islamic separatist insurgency has drawn criticism from organizations like Human Rights Watch for its brutal policing tactics.

Meanwhile, the UN envoy to North Korea called that nation’s human rights situation “abysmal,” saying that about one third of its people are needlessly going hungry. In a report to a meeting of UN members, envoy Vitit Muntarbhorn said, “the human rights situation in the country remains abysmal owing to the repressive nature of the power base: at once cloistered, controlled and callous.” Though North Korea is “endowed with vast mineral resources controlled by the authorities,” millions still live in “abject poverty and suffer the prolonged deprivations linked with shortage of food and other necessities…. The exploitation of the ordinary people has become the pernicious prerogative of the ruling elite,” he continued. But Pak Tok-hun, North Korea’s deputy ambassador to the UN, said the report was “full of distortion, lies, falsity, devised by hostile forces.” Fresh UN sanctions were imposed on North Korea this year in response to its nuclear program, and international aid reaching the country fell significantly. Because of this shortfall, the UN’s World Food Program has been able to support fewer than 2 million people; earlier this year, it was feeding nearly 6 million.

Chinese officials on Friday celebrated the launching of ChiNext, China’s growth enterprise market (GEM), which seeks to attract investment to its emerging entrepreneurial sector. The launch emphasizes China’s ongoing experiment with privatization and innovation as a means of creating jobs and stimulating robust economic growth—heralding a growing focus on smaller enterprise. He Chengying, a development manager with Guosen Securities, noted that ChiNext “is especially necessary to help the small and medium-sized enterprises to raise funds after the global financial crisis. The time is ripe to launch the new board.” China’s other two stock exchanges, in Shanghai and Shenzhen, are dominated by state-owned enterprises, mostly large, industrial firms. The first group of 28 GEM firms will debut October 30 and include sectors of innovative energy and materials, pharmaceuticals and medical equipment, advanced manufacturing, information technology, and modern service industries. The initial public offerings (IPOs) raised a combined $2.3 billion, though some analysts remarked that the stocks are overvalued and might precipitate speculation and market manipulation—ills that have plagued some Western economies and which China has sought to avoid.

Meanwhile, the U.S. congressional advisory panel, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, reported Thursday that Chinese cyberspying, apparently supported by the government in Beijing, has successfully penetrated several U.S. “high technology development” firms, a move likely intended to steal intellectual property and assess its competitors. The Commission did not, however, publicly name the firms or provide a damage assessment. A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington flatly denied the accusation.

The following is excerpted from a talk Nicolaus Mills will deliver Oct. 24, 2009, at the Marshall Foundation. It is part of a symposium marking the 50th anniversary of the General George Marshall’s death.

Fifty years ago this month, George Marshall, army chief of staff throughout World War II and in Winston Churchill’s words, “the organizer of victory,” died as a result of a crippling stroke. Marshall, at the request of Eleanor Roosevelt, was responsible for planning the funeral of President Franklin Roosevelt, but he had no desire for a state funeral of his own. In the instructions he wrote out for the arrangements at his own death, he forbade a funeral service in the National Cathedral, ruled out lying in state in the Capital Rotunda, and asked that no eulogy be said for him.

This modesty was consistent with the way Marshall conducted his life and is one reason why he is not as well known today as many of the generals who served under him. Throughout World War II, Marshall refused all United States decorations. Even at his Pentagon retirement ceremony in 1945, he relented only long enough to allow President Truman to add a second Oak Leaf cluster to the Distinguished Service Medal he had been awarded in 1919.

In this era of self-promotion, Marshall’s personal example sends a powerful message. But as the United States struggles with how to engage in nation building in a post-9/11 world, it is Marshall’s crowning achievement as secretary of state—the post-World War II Marshall Plan that from 1948 to 1952 provided the foreign aid essential to Europe’s economic recovery—that really shows what national modesty can achieve. Read the rest of this entry »

Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party has “disengaged” from Zimbabwe’s coalition government, and noted that President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party was an “unreliable” partner. Tsvangirai and Mugabe agreed to a power-sharing deal in February after disputed elections in 2008 led to widespread political violence, but the parties have since disagreed on several issues, especially the particulars of government appointments. On Friday, Tsvangirai announced that MDC would officially pull out from cabinet, council of ministers, and other routine government meetings after senior MDC official Roy Bennett was jailed Wednesday on terrorism charges. “Roy Bennett is not being prosecuted; he is being persecuted,” Tsvangirai told reporters. “It has brought home the reality that as a movement we have an unreliable and unrepentant partner in the transitional government.” Zimbabwe’s High Court released Bennett on bail following Tsvangirai’s remarks, but the prime minister maintained that MDC and Zanu-PF had critical issues that must be worked out before he would agree to re-engage the power-sharing process. “Until confidence has been restored, we can’t continue to pretend that everything is well,” he said.

A runoff election is expected in Afghanistan. The U.N.-backed Afghan Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC), which on Thursday completed its audit of suspect ballots from August’s disputed presidential vote, significantly reduced President Hamid Karzai’s margin of victory. The ECC’s tally, which one official called “stunning,” gave Karzai 47 percent of the vote—much lower than the 54.6 percent originally reported and below the 50 percent required to avoid a second round of elections. Afghanistan’s ambassador in Washington, Said Tayeb Jawad, said Thursday that a runoff election between Karzai and second-place challenger Abdullah Abdullah is “a very likely scenario.” Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission will now subtract the votes that were disqualified by the ECC, and results are expected this weekend. The results weigh heavily on President Obama’s thinking regarding solidifying his Afghanistan war strategy, and The New York Times reports his advisers are split over whether to deploy additional troops while the political situation in Kabul is still so tenuous.

For more on the possible implications of electoral fraud in Afghanistan, see last week’s The Big Question on the World Policy Blog.

Five new members to the U.N. Security Council were chosen on Thursday after running uncontested races for non-permanent, non-veto-wielding seats. Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Gabon, Lebanon, and Nigeria were elected by secret ballot in the General Assembly for the two-year terms, which are allocated by region. As of January 2010, these five new nations will join Austria, Japan, Mexico, Turkey, and Uganda, whose terms run from 2009-10. “It’s going to be an even stronger Security Council, I think, next year,” John Sawers, Britain’s ambassador to the U.N., told reporters. “We have two large countries in Brazil and Nigeria who carry the weight of being a regional power. We have two countries in Lebanon and Bosnia that have been through conflict and can bring their own national experiences to the Security Council,” he continued. This will be Bosnia and Herzegovina’s first time serving on the council, which has the authority to impose sanctions and send peacekeeping troops.

Today marks World Food Day, designated by the United Nations as October 16. In addition to report released by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) earlier this week, the U.K.-based non-governmental organization ActionAid also released a new report on global hunger. In it, ActionAid praises China and India for its efforts to reduce chronic hunger, but sharply criticizes India for policies that actually worsened its hunger crisis; draughts have plagued India this year especially but, with little government help, over the last decade more than 30 million more Indians are now suffering chronic hunger. China, meanwhile, has helped feed an additional 58 million of its citizens through strong support of small farmers. The report ranks the efforts of advanced industrialized nations to help end global hunger, and puts the United States and New Zealand at the bottom, under the label: “miserly.” On Thursday, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced $120 million in grants for agricultural research and development, in addition to previous foundation grants of $1.4 billion. Speaking to hunger activists at the World Food Prize symposium in Iowa, Gates said, “The world’s attention is back on your cause. The food crisis has forced hunger higher on the world’s agenda.” This summer the G-8 approved the L’Aquila Food Security Initiative to commit $20 billion to sustainable agricultural development.

Iran is “moving closer” to being able to build a nuclear bomb, U.S. envoy Glyn Davies said to the United Nation’s nuclear watchdog agency on Wednesday. Davies told the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Iran, which insists its atomic program is for peaceful purposes, almost or already has enough low-enriched uranium to produce a bomb, which could be enriched to weapons-grade. “We have serious concerns that Iran is deliberately attempting, at a minimum, to preserve a nuclear weapons option,” Davies told the IAEA’s 35-nation governing board. This would be “a dangerous and destabilizing possible break-out capacity,” said Davies. Earlier this week, the IAEA reported that it was at a “stalemate” with Iran over its nuclear enrichment program. “Iran has not suspended its enrichment-related activities or its work on heavy-water related projects as required by the Security Council,” agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said Monday. While the Iranian nuclear program will be a priority when the UN General Assembly meets later this month, in a recent interview with the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, ElBaradei was quoted as saying that “in many ways, I think the [Iranian nuclear] threat has been hyped.” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said his country is willing to cooperate on the “peaceful use” of nuclear energy, and this week handed over new proposals to the major powers working to resolve the dispute over its program. The proposals, which were given to the five permanent members of the Security Council, plus Germany, include compromises on security, economic, and nuclear issues, according to Aliasghar Soltanieh, Iran’s ambassador to the IAEA. However, Iran refuses to negotiate on what it sees as its right to develop nuclear technology.

The South African Development Community (SADC) called for an end to international sanctions on Zimbabwe as it concluded this week’s summit. The regional bloc, whose leaders met for two days in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, noted progress by Zimbabwe’s government in implementing the terms of a power-sharing agreement, which was set out last September in the wake of violently disputed election results. It urged the international community to unconditionally lift all sanctions against Zimbabwe, rejecting a proposal by Zimbabwe’s prime minister and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai to condition their removal upon the results of a special assessment meeting. “Considering the positive evolution of the situation, considering the progress that has been made, we believe it is now high time that the sanctions are lifted,” said incoming SADC Chairman and Congolese President Joseph Kabila. This call, explained Deputy President of South Africa Kgalema Motlanthe, “is meant to attract the necessary investment into Zimbabwe so that their economic recovery plan can take effect.” However, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has countered that it is too soon to remove the sanctions, which are intended to pressure President Robert Mugabe’s government to honor its democratic obligations. Doing so now will benefit the very people they were meant to punish, says HRW’s Georgette Gagnon: “The levers of power are still very much in the hands of the oppressors…. [Mugabe] has managed to persuade SADC to call for the end to sanctions without making any significant improvement in the human rights situation in Zimbabwe.”

Before leaving for a trip to Russia, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez suggested that Belarus should form a “union” with his country. “We need to create a new union of republics,” Chavez said. “This will not be a union of Soviet or socialist republics. It will be free republics with their own systems, but united in a union.” Both Belarus and Venezuela are wary of Western influence within their countries. Chavez was in Belarus meeting with his counterpart, Alexander Lukashenko, before he was scheduled to meet with Russian president Dmitry Medvedev and prime minister Vladimir Putin Thursday. Chavez and the Russian leaders are expected to discuss deals on Russian arms and military vehicles. Venezuela has become a leading buyer of Russian arms, purchasing more than $4 billion worth of Russian weapons since 2005. The talks may also focus on joint plans to develop a large oil field in Venezuela’s Orinoco River region. A number of Russian oil companies plan to work with Petroleos, a Venezuelan national oil company, to develop the site, which could potentially hold 1.2 trillion barrels of crude.

South Korean officials are accusing the North of intentionally flooding the southern side of the demilitarized zone, in a deluge that swept away six people on Sunday. “I think the North did it intentionally,” South Korea’s unification minister told the Korea Times. North Korean officials admitted that they had released the water, which amounted to millions of cubic meters from the North’s Hwanggang Dam, but said they did it only to offset rising waters on its side. South Korean officials have demanded an apology, noting there had been no recent heavy rain in the North that would explain such a surge. The current row between the two countries comes after a number of signs of easing tensions between the two countries, which included easing restrictions on cross-border traffic last month.

At the summit meeting that opens in Italy on Wednesday, the leaders of the G8 are expected to announce a food security initiative—an effort to reverse “the tendency of decreasing official development aid to agriculture” and, instead, to increase investment in food production in the developing world.

According to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Washington spends 20 times more on short-term food aid in Africa than it does on long-term agricultural programs to develop local food production. A similar bias exists in the policies of the European Union, which uses the guise of food aid to dump production surpluses in developing nations.

Nothing may come of the new promises, as nothing came of the big hoo-ha at the G8 summit four years ago when a massive increase in aid, especially to Africa, was agreed upon. But long-term investment in food production is just what poorer countries need.

Most of the world’s poor live in the rural backwaters of Africa, Asia, and Latin America; most are small farmers or landless farm workers. Despite the cries in 2007-08 when world food prices suddenly shot up to historic highs, there was actual benefit, albeit long term, for the global poor.

Last summer’s price spike was a long-overdue correction in the terms of trade. For too long, the world’s urban minority (whether they be shanty-town dwellers in Lagos or the inhabitants of middle-class suburb in Mumbai) has been subsidized by the cheap food produced by the poorest of the poor—those left behind in the remote reaches of the countryside. For the majority of the world’s rural poor, there exist far too few schools, agricultural advisers, or health clinics; a lack of investment has not even fixed the rutted roads and battered trucks that bring their produce to market.

I was in the Nigerian countryside in 2007, as prices were beginning to skyrocket. The peasants I talked to, who were largely growing the local staple crop, cassava, were happy about the turn in events. It meant they could sell their produce at a substantially higher price than before. They planned to expand their seeding the following year, and have done so, though prices have now fallen. Fortunately for the farmers, the prices have not yet hit bottom. Read the rest of this entry »