Amnesty: The Price of Peace?

In my last post, I briefly hinted at the idea of fringe or terrorist groups being brought into the political fold.  Now I'd like to talk about a related topic: amnesty for those groups.

Colombia is the latest example of amnesty issues plaguing a war-torn country seeking peace.  Just yesterday, its senate passed -- by a razor-thin 65-3 margin -- a constitutional amendment (dubbed the "Legal Framework for Peace") that gives Colombia's Congress more authority to legislate the conditions under which rebels are prosecuted.  This means, for example, that the Congress could pass legislation directing prosecutors to only go after rebel leaders or making sentences for rebel crimes more lenient.  Former president Uribe has criticized the amendment, deeming any potential amnesty an inappropriate tool with which to handle FARC and other terrorist or rebel groups.

Also interesting: opposition to this law, and many other amnesty laws, comes from human rights organizations.  Human Rights Watch, for example, opposes the amendment because of its potential for amnesty.  A chief source of contention is amnesty for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and similar crimes that are the focus of international criminal law prosecutions.  Indeed, this is a problem in the international law field: international criminal law relies upon the idea that violators of certain egregious crimes are brought to justice, but countries may have to forego some prosecution (or provide lighter sentences) in order to achieve lasting peace.  Some international legal scholars go so far as to claim that countries cannot provide amnesty to those who violate international criminal law.  This, I believe, is a mistake.  While one does not want to diminish the import of crimes committed in the past, it would be a disservice to the people of a country, not to mention the global community at large, if chances for peace were thwarted in favor of an unyielding prosecutorial principle.

This is not to say, of course, that any peace is good peace.  History will always find ways to remind us of the potential for folly -- Chamberlain's peace with Hitler being the most commonplace example.  Still, countries must have the flexibility to develop unique solutions to their unique situations.  Colombia's constitutional amendment is the latest iteration of this concept.  If its execution turns out to be poor, then Colombia will deserve the criticism it will undoubtedly receive.  The law in its current form, however, is more designed to give the Colombian government greater flexibility in dealing with rebel groups -- something with which I believe most reasonable people could agree.

In a bid to stay relevant, Al Shabaab Places Bounty on Obama, Clinton

One curious item picked up by the major news outlets over the last 24 hours is the bounty placed on President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton (Click here if you haven't read it yet, though it's made yahoo's headlines since this post has been written). Clearly, the bounties are a play in a pretend tit-for-tat game with the United States. A few days prior, US officials leaked information on up to $33 million in bounties for Al Shabaab leadership (here). In return, Al Shabaab offered 10 camels for Obama and 2 camels for Clinton. The CNN article linked above mentions that the average price of a camel is $700 in Somalia, though a number of websites selling camels (likely not in Somalia) indicate that prices can be a few thousand per camel. So a guy with a $5 million dollar bounty on his head puts one of a up to a few ten thousands on his opponent.

Is the bounty price meant as an insult, or is it truly a sign of weakness? The information available so far does not indicate any insult. In fact, military strategy often notes to respect the strength of your opponent, until you can secure victory. The one exception is where an insult can lead to your opponent's position becoming unwound, none of which seems to apply here.

Let's also compare this bounty to others. There has been a $100,000 bounty on a rapper who insulted Islam and a $2.2 million bounty on the pastor who burnt the Koran, just to name a few. On the other side, a British parliamentarian supposedly offered (though later denied offering) a bounty of £10 million on President Obama. So this helps put the no more than $10,000 camel bounty placed by Al Shabaab in perspective.

At the same time, it is widely believed that Al Shabaab's power has diminished over the past year or so. Its tactics and strategies seem to be less and less effective. So much so that it has been forced to partner with Al Qaeda, which reflects on the diminishing power of both groups. It is rapidly losing territory and influence (ex: here and here). On a related note, despite there existing a lack of government, it has been argued that the Somali economy is no where near as absent as its government. This means that there should be more "money" for such a bounty. Perhaps. But many signs point to less capacity within Al Shabaab.

So what is the end goal? Al Shabaab is not capable of a tit for tat with the US, unless it is an imaginary one from the Islamist perspective wherein the small group from Somalia is fighting with the hegemon on the world stage. It's important to remember that terrorism is meant to spread an effect and any opportunity for publicity is critical. Islamist compete, much like nonprofits and politicians, for donations and funding. This is Al Shabaab's grab at a larger slice of the media pie and thereby, the funding critical for them to retain their previous power.

The Arab Spring: Ideals, Stability, and Security Issues

With the first free and fair(ish) democratic elections taking place in Egypt, the United States must once again evaluate its strategic interests with this and other states in the region.  As has been the case for decades now, we find ourselves struggling to balance our democracy-promoting idealism with the take-it-as-we-find-it realpolitik of working with dictators and other dubious allies.

Barring unforeseen circumstances, the runoff in the Egyptian presidential elections will feature Mubarak’s former prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, and the Muslim Brotherhood’s champion, Mohammed Mursi.  People argue that Shafiq is no fan of the revolution; indeed, he refers to Mubarak as his idol and promises to clamp down on dissent with an “iron fist.”  Mursi, meanwhile, hails from a party that promises greater influence of Islam in Egyptian law and affairs.  Many Egyptians see no good choice at all and, indeed, analysts expect voter turnout to be low.

Just glancing at another Arab Spring country, one can see continued turmoil in Yemen.  Yemen held elections a few months ago, though the fact that there was one candidate (Vice President Abdurabu Mansur Hadi, who had been acting president after Saleh stepped down) made the use of the word “election” questionable.  Still, the situation in Yemen makes one question what U.S. priorities should be: do we push for Hadi to keep his promises and move toward free and fair elections, or do we focus on the burgeoning problem of Yemen becoming a major breeding ground for terrorism and the fact that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is now considered by many the “most active and lethal Qaeda affiliate”?  One might argue that the two options are not mutually exclusive, and hopefully they can co-exist.  However, our prior support for dictators like Mubarak and Saleh (and Qaddafi) makes the U.S. uniquely ill-positioned to be a champion of the Arab Spring – an irony when one takes into account our unique status as the largest democracy in the world with the oldest written constitution.

People sometimes call democracies “natural allies” and argue that democracies don’t go to war with each other.  If so, it follows that the U.S. should promote free elections and democracy everywhere.  On the other hand, one consequence of democracy is that we might not always like how elections turn out (see Palestinian elections in 2006).  For many reasons, Hamas winning elections was not something the U.S. had hoped for.  Still, the very fact that Hamas was able to win elections should have sent some signals to the world community – Palestinians were unhappy with the PA, with their lot in life, and with a multitude of other things that Hamas was able to exploit.  Hamas is a terrorist organization that needs to fundamentally change before it can be an acceptable partner in negotiations on a two-state solution.  While one part of me wants to argue that Hamas is too rotten to its core to ever be a legitimate political partner in negotiations, history reminds us that the Palestinian Authority itself was once a terrorist organization.  This isn’t to say that “terrorism works.”  To the contrary, I think that history has shown that terrorist organizations can sometimes evolve into political organizations (Sinn Fein and the Palestinian Authority immediately come to mind, though I know there are others).

This brings us back to the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt.  Although the Muslim Brotherhood is not a terrorist organization, it is an Islamist political party.  This in and of itself has made many Westerners uncomfortable.  Western countries are unsure whether the Muslim Brotherhood would, for example, continue to let Egypt be the state in the Middle East that helps maintain the regional peace with Israel.  Would the Muslim Brotherhood take a more anti-Israeli stance that could threaten the always-tenuous regional stability?  For that matter, is the alternative – which may well include a violent crackdown on peaceful demonstrations – a better option?

While laudable, democracy can often be messy.  Right now, many people look at Egypt’s upcoming elections and see two bad choices.  Many people look at U.S. presidential elections, however, and often see the same thing.  We in America are often told that we are “throwing away” our vote if we don’t vote for one of the two major political party candidates, even if we don’t truly support either of them (one of the problems with not having a runoff system).  Egypt’s experiment with democracy will undoubtedly face many obstacles, but the very fact that it’s having these elections is something to celebrate.

The hope, ultimately, is that the U.S. can have good relations with democratic states in the Middle East, and that those states can be allies in the war on terror.  We tried our hand with dictatorial allies – from Musharraf to Mubarak to Saleh to Qaddafi – because we needed allies to fight terrorism.  We’ve been making the same compromises for decades, however, supporting several dictatorships in the Cold War when they professed to be anti-Communist.  I’m not saying the choices we made were wrong.  I’m just pointing out that supporting dictatorships comes with a cost – aside from exposing ourselves to claims of hypocrisy, we run the risk of losing a potential alliance with a democratic government in the future.  Building a good relationship with a Muslim Brotherhood government, for example, would be complicated by both our prior support for Mubarak and the fact that many in the U.S. are skeptical of any Islamist government, democratic or not.  Would those same people prefer an Egyptian dictatorship?  Perhaps it will require the continued sale of billions of dollars’ worth of arms to Egypt to smooth over any rough edges in such a relationship.  My personal hope is that, in Egypt and other countries where democratic elections might lead to results we might not find ideal, we can still develop positive relations and find common ground where our democratic principles align.