The past year brought remarkable change to the Korean peninsula, and with his father Kim Jong-il’s death last December, Kim Jong-un has assumed control of North Korea. His public appearances have been geared towards shaping the political neophyte into a stately, confident ruler. In terms of actual policy, he has aimed to consolidate power by visiting elite military units and taking a hard-line stance against defectors.

Kim Jong-un’s ascension as Supreme Leader has experts like Scott Snyder of the Council on Foreign Relations reevaluating North Korea. Many wonder how the hermit state will maintain domestic stability while asserting itself on the international stage. Yet, the new leader’s role remains ambiguous, with Snyder telling the HPR, “What’s more difficult to discern is whether he is a figurehead or a decision-maker.” The youngest head of state in the world, Jong-un will face immense pressure from military brass and senior advisers to maintain North Korean strength and stability. However, if Jong-un takes brash actions to drum up support and prove his bravado, he risks alienating China and fraying the one relationship that the regime depends upon for its survival.

False Promises?

Weeks into his tenure, Jong-un surprised the world by announcing that North Korea would suspend part of its nuclear fuel enrichment program, halt long-range missile tests, and invite international nuclear inspectors back into the country. Named the Leap Year deal, the proclamation hinted at mutual cooperation between the new regime and the United States. In exchange for these concessions, the United States would provide 240,000 metric tons of food aid to the impoverished nation. As reference points, according to the Congressional Research Service, the United States provided 148,270 and 21,000 metric tons of food aid in 2008 and 2009 respectively.

But the plans quickly fell through after North Korea announced March 16 that it would launch a satellite rocket into space. The United States dismissed this as pretense for another missile test, and the Obama Administration cancelled its $250 million pledge, given that the formal written agreement had not been concluded.

This latest episode suggests that the problems and tensions emblematic of international relations under Kim Jong-Il will persist while the son employs his father’s tactics. Andrew Cobel of the RAND Corporation told the HPR that, “it’s going to be a continuity of his father’s policies.” This affair suggests strongly that Kim Jong-un will act for his government’s self-interest, despite pressure from the West.

A Leader Untested

Since World War II ended, only two other leaders have governed North Korea. While the first transfer of power occurred over many years before the death of Kim Il-Sung, the first North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un’s ascendancy took place over mere months. Consequently, the young ruler has had to operate within the multilateral framework of the Workers’ Party, the People’s Army, and the Central Military Commission. He must navigate these various factions to accumulate the widespread support and faith of the ruling elite that is requisite to maintaining power.

While the media has attempted to craft a cult of personality around the leader, Snyder notes, “concerns over a potential power struggle are unlikely to subside in the near term given the uncertainties surrounding the legitimacy of Kim Jong-un.” For example, despite having minimal experience, Jong-un was promoted to vice chairman of the Central Military Commission and four-star general. He will undoubtedly have to use his powers to project authority over the country.

China’s Strategic Interests

Despite having demonstrated a tendency toward brash actions, Jong-un is likely to consider China’s interests, given that the regional powerhouse is North Korea’s largest trading partner and closest ally. However, the bilateral relationship has weakened over the past few years, as North Korean aggression necessitated Beijing’s reassessment of the alliance. According to Snyder, China’s principal aims are to maintain regional stability and, “ensure that the leadership won’t falter.”

China has previously reined in North Korea when the rogue state threatened the existing balance of power. When North Korea first tested a nuclear weapon in fall 2006, China agreed to U.N. sanctions, then an unprecedented move for the regional titan. While the sanctions did not preclude China from trading with North Korea, given that bilateral trade between the two nations actually increased, the policy shift did send a message to Pyongyang that Beijing can pull the plug anytime. According to Scobell, “Pyongyang and Beijing don’t particularly like each other, but they need each other.” China’s willingness to publicly condemn North Korea is likely a harbinger of future economic sanctions.

China must carefully balance between pressuring North Korea and imposing harsh sanctions, which could have the unintended effect of spurring regional imbalance and political retrenchment. Accordingly, North Korea can push the envelope and test Beijing’s patience in tolerating such behavior, but Jong-un must not stray too far. “Although Chinese officials have publicly expressed support for a stable leadership…Kim Jong Il’s sudden death is likely to intensify China’s internal debates on its future North Korea policy,” said Snyder. The Chinese are fully prepared to push back should the situation warrant it.

The Fallout

According to Scobell, Kim Jong-un’s actions are largely explained because he is, “young, and still trying to exert his authority.” To shore up institutional support and retain an iron grip, Kim Jong-un will implement forceful strategies from his father’s playbook. But Beijing is monitoring the situation, and will not stand idly if the North Korean regime crosses the line.

North Korea’s actions remain difficult to predict precisely because the totalitarian state has few parallels. However, its actions over the past decade help paint a clearer picture, and despite a nominal leadership switch, little has changed in North Korea under Kim Jong-un. With its singular self-interest and recent pattern of dealings with the United States and China, North Korea is not likely to change its security policy anytime soon, despite the veneer of the new Supreme Leader.

Today, I awoke to a punch in the gut. Somewhere in the middle of Joshua Keating’s commentary on a recent University of Chicago sociology study on atheism and religiosity around the world, a disturbing revelation written off as a footnote: “Israel saw the largest increase in belief in God (23 percent)”. To most readers, there is nothing particularly incongruous about thinking of Israel and God in the same breath: after all, Israel is the Jewish state, its capital city is a focal point of three religions, and its Iron Age name is literally suffixed with divinity (El, the Canaanite-Hebrew word whose Arabic synonym is Allah).

I have always had to explain to schoolmates: “No, not everyone in Israel walks around in black hats. In fact, it’s one of the most atheistic countries out there!” Watching the American religious right tout a fanatical, shallow love of a biblicized Israel, I have long wanted to show Glenn Beck and Michele Bachmann on a tour of the robust Euro-debauchery that gives Tel Aviv its charm. Despite Israel’s immutable significance in religious imagination and its lack of separation between church and state, the revived Jewish society has always been fundamentally secular at its cultural and political core.

As the years go by, it looks increasingly as though I’ll have to revise my story. Keating mistakenly explains Israel’s religious revival as the result of an “influx of ultra-Orthodox Jews”. If he has the right definition of influx, this explanation is patently false—most recent immigrants to Israel are secular types from the former Soviet Union. Neither can it be explained in terms of the contemporary American religious narrative—unlike the individualistic ‘born-again’ movement some might imagine, it’s exceedingly rare to hear of secular Tel Aviv hipsters leaving the clubs for a life of pietistic self-denial in nearby Bnei Brak.

Rather, Israel is growing more religious as a result of the state-subsidized mass breeding of a once-tiny, now-burgeoning ultra-Orthodox community. It’s no secret that the Jewish state has been bucking global trends in reproduction: because of pro-natalist campaigns to maintain Israel’s demographic heft, the country’s fertility rate of 2.96 children per woman far outstrips all of its socioeconomic peers. And although the secular Jewish elite has ventured forth in search of a reproductive holy grail—a higher secular Jewish birthrate—the greatest gains have been accrued to the ultra-Orthodox community.

Since Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion struck a detail on the eve of Israel’s independence with what he saw as a dying religious minority—allowing them exemptions from army service, a separate state-funded school system, and trappings of theocracy in the civil state in exchange for their acceptance of Zionism—the numerical strength and political clout of the ultra-Orthodox community has taken off. But as I’ve written before, we’d be deeply mistaken to think of ultra-Orthodoxy in Israel as comparable at all to religious traditionalism in the United States. Judaism, whose legal-ritualistic framework bears little similarity to the faith-based creeds of Protestantism, cannot be enjoyed primarily as an individual experience; in Israel, your level of religiosity is almost inextricable from your social identity, neighborhood of residence, and political alignment.

So when Tom Smith’s study, “Beliefs about God across Time and Countries”, shows young Israelis to be far less atheistic and more certain about God’s existence than old Israelis—at variance with the trend in Ireland, Chile, the United States, Russia, and almost every other country—the numbers do not depict some sort of evangelical revival of Orthodox Judaism among the masses. Rather, they are the product of differential birth rates, with the seculars at the heart of Israel’s art, poetry, and political thought falling behind. Although old Israelis are far less religious than old Americans, young Israelis (a staggering proportion of them from the ultra-Orthodox community) have begun to overtake young Americans in their devotion to a higher power. To what I can only imagine would be the deep dismay of Herzl, Bialik, and Ben-Gurion, Israel is now one of the few most devout countries in the OECD.

If you are expecting a rapture any time soon, this is cause to be heartened. But the Smith numbers should be sounding alarms for Israeli policymakers and secular advocates of Israeli culture. For one, they signal an age in which a growing proportion of the population elects not to teach its children about democratic values, global engagement, gainful employment, and secular science—in other words, the transformation of Israel into what Israelis accuse its neighbors of being.

More tangibly, they tell a story already well-known to political economists: while one sector of Israeli society is contributing vigorously to the global exchange of capital and ideas, another, reliant on the dole, is wallowing in some of the First World’s worst developmental conditions. As the two separate societies become set in their respective cultural ways and comfortable with their respective economic situations, the prospects for reconciliation continue on a trend to oblivion.

But I won’t refrain from value judgments: it is the rise of religious fanaticism in Israel that poses the greatest threat to the country’s future. In such a contested space as the biblically-based Land of Israel, growing certainty in the existence of a personal god who is concerned with human affairs justifies self-defeating, morally problematic ideas about West Bank settlement expansion and the peace process in general. As the religious ranks have swollen, the level of access these delusional ideas have to policymaking channels has only increased.

Luckily, brave voices of liberal Zionism like Gershom Gorenberg and Peter Beinart have set out on a polemical campaign to warn the Jewish community of Israel’s policy mistakes before the dream of a lasting Jewish democracy à la Herzl becomes untenable. However, they fail in offering too narrow a diagnosis of Israel’s problems. Yes, the inability to achieve peace with the Palestinians represents a fundamental threat to Israel’s existence. But equally damning, independent of threats to state coffers or the peace process, is the rising religious tide in Israel—something to which Gorenberg and Beinart, both self-identified Orthodox liberal Zionists, are reconciled in some form.

All else aside, somebody needs to speak up for the secular Hebrew culture that produced the Haganah and parliamentary democracy, Tchernichovsky’s sonnets and Amichai’s love poems, Tel Aviv’s symphony orchestra and gay pride parades, the Weizmann Institute and Hebrew University. A growing proportion of Israelis, sadly, would prefer to go without all these Hellenistic trappings, travel back two thousand years, and give alleged assimilationists like us a hard drubbing. But as Jonathan Haidt reminds us, we seculars are generally terrible at arguing our message: we are less sure of ourselves, less group-oriented, and less inclined to hyperbole than our religious brethren. Something has to give.

Yair Lapid’s entry into politics on the platform of an end to religious privilege is a step in the right direction. If Binyamin Netanyahu and Shaul Mofaz can muster the support to overturn the Tal Law, there is some hope for a national conversation on the proper place of religion in Israeli public life. But above all, Israel’s waning secular majority needs the support of liberals, secularists, and Zionists around the world—lest they lose the soul of the country they struggled to build. The stakes are far greater than the difference between belief and disbelief in the existence of God.

A Player in Transition

With immense wealth, a novel brand, and a distinctive foreign policy agenda, Qatar has emerged as a rising power in the Persian Gulf. Abetted by 13 percent of the world’s total natural gas reserves and the preeminence of its national news outlet, Al-Jazeera, Qatar has demonstrated a unique capacity for promulgating its own soft power. Indeed, with traditionally dominant states such as Egypt and Syria engrossed in internal conflicts and political turmoil, Qatar is taking advantage of a shifting geopolitical landscape. Because Qatar’s agenda and strategic objectives remain ambiguous, one must wonder whether its current prominence is merely a transitory phenomenon or if it signals the arrival of a new dominant force in the Middle East.

Activism in the Arab Spring

A catalyst for the Arab League’s support for intervention in Libya, Qatar was also the first Arab country to recognize the Transitional National Council established by rebel forces. During Gaddafi’s overthrow, Qatar not only supplied financial and logistical support to insurgents, but also put several hundred special-forces personnel on the ground. These instances of intervention mark a substantial departure from a Qatari foreign policy that traditionally exhibited a neutral disposition. However, according to Dr. Ibrahim Sharqieh, Deputy Director of the Brookings Doha Center, this agenda emerged from an ideological shift among neighboring Middle Eastern states whereby most governments are increasingly less averse to interventionism.

Elsewhere, Qatar, both independently and through the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), has undertaken an activist role. Within the GCC, sustained rapprochement and close collaboration between Qatar and Saudi Arabia have allowed Qataris to act with unprecedented strength. Although they are traditional rivals, the two nations have been bound by mutual interests. Justin Dargin, currently a Research Associate with The Dubai Initiative and a Fulbright Scholar studying the Persian Gulf, characterized these states as, “less willing to allow intra-Gulf issues” to impede cooperation. The GCC-brokered deal that eased Ali Abdullah Saleh out of power in Yemen and pro-monarchy intervention in Bahrain exemplify this. More recently, a meeting with the Friends of Syria opposition movement in Istanbul resulted in a joint pledge by Qatar and Saudi Arabia to provide financial aid and weaponry to rebels.

Reconciling the Irreconcilable

Through its newly acquired position in international politics, Qatar has been able to develop strategic partnerships with many actors, balancing relationships between seemingly irreconcilable groups. Indeed, Qatar has long enjoyed U.S. protection and friendship, even hosting several American military bases. Simultaneously, Qatar maintains amicable relationships with groups conventionally opposed to U.S. interests. Qatar’s support of Islamist movements including the Muslim Brotherhood has been viewed with suspicion by U.S. administrations. Qatar also has close and relatively congenial relations with Iran and, partially stemming from its connections with Taliban leadership, it facilitated the proposed Taliban office in Doha, encouraging now stalled negotiations to end the Afghanistan conflict. In Egypt, Qatar has close ties with the Muslim Brotherhood and is a substantial, yet opaque source of funds to affiliated political parties.

Qatar has long used economic tools to establish and maintain alliances outside of traditional political or diplomatic frameworks. Previously, due to rivalry with Saudi Arabia, Qatar sought to form independent relations with its neighbors in what Dargin described as an “alternative power bloc.” In the Dolphin Gas Project, initiated in 1999, Qatar spearheaded the construction of a natural gas pipeline to establish closer ties with the United Arab Emirates and Oman. Qatar has also improved friendships with its Gulf neighbors by selling natural gas below market price. Paralleling this, with goodwill accumulated from its economic and military aid during the Libyan Revolution, Qatar has moved toward establishing strong partnerships with Libya’s energy sector.

Strategy or Sentiment?

In general, Qatar’s objectives are framed as a combination of security concerns and symbolic considerations. Dr. Michael Herb, author of All in the Family: Absolutism, Revolution, and Democracy in the Middle Eastern Monarchies, tells the HPR that Qatar’s primary security interest is defending its petroleum wealth. In addition, he notes that the vast natural gas field shared with Iran, “adds another dimension to the necessity to cooperate,” facilitating the maintenance of generally amicable relations.

However, Qatar’s policies have gone beyond what is necessary for ensuring these interests. Herb believes that, “the degree of activity in international politics has something to do with the desires of the leadership to make an impact.”  As Dr. Gregory Gause, an expert on the Persian Gulf with the Brookings Institute, asserted to the HPR, it is, “hard to characterize Qatari foreign policy” because it tends to be “very much driven by the Emir and the Prime Minister…[and] not based on anything you would argue is national interest.” From his perspective, “personality-driven” policies and ambition have driven these leaders to seek status and power for Qatar. For instance, Qatar mounted an aggressive campaign, under the leadership of the Emir himself, to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup and will be the first Arab state to do so. In preparation, massive infrastructure projects, such as an expanded metro system and a Qatar-Bahrain causeway, are being planned. Through domestic infrastructural investment, Qatar is seeking symbolic recognition along with geopolitical dominance.

Yet, simultaneously, Qatar has ample reason to seek alliances. As a small nation in an ever-perilous region, Qatar faces fundamental challenges to its security. In particular, the escalating confrontation surrounding Iran’s nuclear program puts Qatar at risk. As Gause points out, while the U.S. base in Qatar does provide protection, this could also drag Qatar, however unwilling, into a future confrontation or make it a target for retaliation. He characterizes the presence of air bases as a “double-edged sword” as it has the potential to make Qatar collateral damage in a massive geopolitical conflict.   For instance, a potential U.S. air strike on Iran could best be launched from these bases, yet recent statements by Qatar have expressed strong opposition to such an attack. Dargin describes Qatar as, “attempting to serve as a moderating voice in the conflict” by seeking, “to balance various forces in the region.”  Yet ultimately, as Sharqieh warns, “When great powers fight… small players would be likely to pay the price.” Thus, Qatar’s use of financial and soft power to build influence and goodwill are likely fundamentally motivated by concerns for its security.

The Honest Broker?

Although Qatar has only recently garnered a central role in Middle Eastern power politics, the nation has long played the part of intermediary and problem-solver. Past successes include brokering a solution to political gridlock in Lebanon and facilitating the entente between Fatah and Hamas. Through maintaining and further developing relationships with emerging power centers, Qatar could fulfill the increasingly essential role of an honest broker in the Middle East, even if these initiatives are driven by personal ambition and self-protection. Ultimately, although Qatar’s privileged geopolitical position may not be sustainable, its liminal position and critical role will make it integral to the future stability of the region.

Iraqis protesting the potential explusion of refugees from Camp Ashraf.

With the closing of Camp Ashraf, one of the most remarkable untold stories of American involvement in Iraq is concluding. With support from the United States and United Nations, the Iraqi government has begun moving long-time residents of Ashraf, the Mujahedin e-Khalq in Iraq’s Diyala province, to another location called “Camp Liberty,” potentially the first step in allowing them to leave the country. Composed mostly of Iranian dissidents, the population of Ashraf has consented to the transfer, fearing a crackdown by pro-Iranian elements in the Iraqi government that emerged with the U.S. military withdrawal.

Without much evident consideration, the international community has trusted this very government as the primary overseer of the relocation process. In response, a growing movement is speaking out against perceived irresponsible trust in the Iraqi government. In American circles, many are questioning the extent to which the U.S. is responsible for the saga of Ashraf’s imperiled residents, a problem that demands a deeper exploration of the base, its history, and its future.

Camp Ashraf: A Community of Exiles

Amidst the arid desert of Iraq’s Diyala province, an area stretching northeast from Baghdad to the Iranian border, Ashraf lies on the Tigris River. Despite the surrounding area’s impoverishment, the longstanding base contains schools, parks and trees, swimming pools, mosques, a museum, and a university. Ashraf is a self-sufficient, hermetically-sealed enclave amidst Iraq’s geopolitical chaos.

Ashraf’s origins however, lie across the border in revolutionary Iran. In 1965, Iranian leftists who strongly opposed the Shah founded a group known as the Mujahedin e-Khalq (MEK), or The People’s Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI). They heavily partook in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, but found their humanitarian and democratic goals at odds with the Shiite Islamist regime that ultimately seized power. Amir Emadi, co-founder of campashraf.org, explained to the HPR that these Iranian citizens were severely persecuted for their political and social beliefs. Out of fear and a desire to continue their democratic struggle, they sought refuge in Iraq, establishing Ashraf in 1986.

Over the last two decades, Ashraf has grown into a community of 3,500 MEK members, sympathizers, and their families, playing an integral role in Diyala’s politics and society. Despite the camp’s partial isolation, Emadi detailed Ashraf’s importance to nearby Iraqi locals: its construction services, shops, museums, and park-like beauty drew those searching for otherwise rare residential and commercial amenities. Moreover, residents of Ashraf, Shiite Iranians under the patronage of Iraqi Sunnis, helped facilitate peace talks between local Sunnis and Shiites during bouts of sectarian violence. Compelled by these experiences, over 525,000 Iraqis showed their support in April 2011 for the residents of Ashraf, declaring, “We, the people of Diyala, view the PMOI as our esteemed guests, and consider their presence in Iraq and in Ashraf as a national imperative against the Iranian regime’s meddling.”

Under U.S. Occupation

Because of its anti-Iranian platform, the MEK had been friendly with Saddam Hussein and his Sunni regime. During the Hussein years, the Iraqi government provided most of the group’s funding, weapons, and protection, directly helping construct Ashraf. However, Hussein’s removal in 2003 quickly ended the MEK’s long standing protection and privilege. Residents were viewed as enemy targets by coalition forces, whose attacks resulted in several casualties and considerable structural damage. According to Emadi, the MEK deliberately did not retaliate, declaring their neutrality to demonstrate their cooperation with the U.S. military. By April 2003, the group signed a cease-fire agreement with the United States, handing over their arsenal of weapons in exchange for guaranteed protection. By 2004, the residents of Ashraf were granted “protected persons” status under the Geneva Convention, ushering in years of continued security and stability.

Since the Withdrawal

When the United States began withdrawing from Iraq, the security of Ashraf was gradually handed over to the new Iraqi government on the stipulation that residents would continue to be protected. However, upon the narrow re-election of Iranian-backed Nouri al-Maliki to Iraq’s highest office, the Iraqi government has dramatically reversed its policy, even conducting organized attacks against Ashraf.  Emadi explains that if the Iraqi government could act without American encumbrance, it would immediately arrest and, “repatriate the residents to Iran, where they would face certain death for their political beliefs.”

Beginning in July 2009, conflict erupted when Iraqi forces entered the camp to establish police stations without the MEK’s consent, leading to a skirmish that killed nine residents. An additional 36 were detained and subjected to harsh beatings and torture. After a series of smaller attacks, April 2011 saw a full-fledged raid by Iraqi forces, leaving 34 dead and over 300 wounded. Although international observers responded negatively, scrutiny was mostly deflected when Iraqi officials claimed that security forces were responding to rocks thrown during a “riot.” Meanwhile, the Iraqi government has maintained a blockade of the camp, depriving its residents of basic services including proper medical care. Though humanitarian groups have begun analyzing the Iraqi government’s conduct for potential human rights violations, the process has been extremely slow and ineffective.

The Current Situation

According to Emadi, although the residents of Ashraf would prefer to remain, “they are not seeking a bloody confrontation with the Iraqi government.” Therefore, their only viable option is resettlement outside of Iraq. Last December, the Iraqi government and United Nations agreed to a phased plan that would transport the residents of Ashraf to a temporary location called Camp Hurriya, a deserted U.S. military base formally known as Camp Liberty. Residents did not anticipate, however, that their lives would once again be controlled by the Iraqi government. The U.S. State Department’s special advisor on Ashraf, Ambassador Daniel Fried, said that, “The Government of Iraq has committed itself to the security of the people at Camp Hurriya, and is aware that the United States expects it to fulfill its responsibilities.”

Reports from the first wave of 400 residents who were relocated on February 18^th this year have demonstrated that Camp Liberty, contrary to its name, is merely a prison that the Iraqi government controls with brutal force. Iraqi police stations surround the camp’s enclosing wall, armed troops are on constant guard, and surveillance devices dominate the landscape. These 400 residents have publicly accused the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), whose responsibility is ensuring that the camp meets “international humanitarian standards,” of lying. Nonetheless, the United States has continued its support for closing Ashraf, trusting the Iraqi government to fulfill its humanitarian responsibility.

The MEK’s “Terrorist” Problem

To complicate the issue further, the MEK was added to the U.S. government’s Foreign Terrorist Organization list by the Clinton administration in 1997. Alan Dershowitz of Harvard Law School calls the move a “mistake.” Dershowitz tells the HPR that including the MEK on this list was a political strategy used by the Clinton Administration to “open [America’s] doors” to Iran. Published in 1995, the book titled Democracy Betrayed claims that the then-drafted State Department’s report on MEK is, “characterized by innumerable discrepancies, falsifications, and distortions of simple, unambiguous facts.” Furthermore, many American officials have acknowledged that the MEK has provided intelligence on the Iranian nuclear program and the Islamic Republic’s growing influence in Iraq, critical to shaping America’s security policy.

Promises to Keep

American advocates for Ashraf’s residents have been emphatic in calling for the U.S. government to maintain its protection. These backers charge America with two tasks to combat the situation: first, the U.S. must take MEK off the list of designated terrorist organizations. According to Dershowitz, their affiliation with this list has made European countries that would normally accept Ashraf’s residents as refugees reluctant or unwilling to do so. Perhaps Secretary of State Clinton’s recent remarks that, “MEK cooperation…will be a key factor in any decision regarding the MEK’s [Foreign Terrorist Organization] status” signal a shift in American policy. Second, they call on the United States to ensure that the evacuation from Ashraf proceeds rapidly and that the Iraqi government adheres to humanitarian standards. The livelihood and security of these residents depends on whether they can escape stifling repression.

Should the United States fail to act, it will abrogate the promise made to Camp Ashraf’s residents in 2003. Devastating consequences will result for an American-aligned group at the nexus of Iraq-Iran relations. To promote regional stability and human dignity, the international community would do well to pay greater attention.

Tying the Knot: Gay Marriage

Marriage equality continues to dominate the gay rights debate, both in the United States and abroad. Yet, only 10 countries and 11 U.S. states currently recognize same-sex marriages. Even in the United Kingdom, which has shown strong leadership in international affairs and equal rights movements, gay marriage remains a contentious subject, with many politicians opposing its legalization. The continued controversy over gay marriage in Northern Europe, a bastion of LGBT toleration, is indicative of the movement’s struggles. Meanwhile, Spain and Argentina, with strong Catholic influences, are unexpected countries that legalized gay marriage.

Even more surprising, with the African continent’s historical hostility to gay rights, South Africa legalized gay marriage in 2006. Timothy McCarthy, a Harvard Kennedy School Professor and founding member of President Obama’s National LGBT Leadership Council, told the HPR that, “in the aftermath of the fall of apartheid, there was a nearly unprecedented commitment to reconstructing the country in such a way that no one would become the victim of the kind of repression, violence, prejudice, and discrimination that black South Africans had been subjected to.” Indeed, the horrors of apartheid led to strong demand for protecting all individuals.

Infected: Blood Donations

These advances are evidence that universal marriage equality is a closer possibility than expected, despite the challenges faced. However, less glamorous elements of the gay rights struggle remain unresolved, among them blood donations from gay men. Since the outbreak of the HIV epidemic, most nations have prohibited gay men from donating blood. Chris Viveiros from Fenway Health, a Boston-based health provider for the LGBT community, tells the HPR that this occurs because, “men who have sex with men have higher rates of HIV infection than the general population.” In fact, the Centers for Disease Control reports that gay and bisexual men comprise a majority of new infections, accounting for 61 percent of new HIV transmissions in 2009.

However, many countries have relaxed their policies regarding gay male blood donations. France and Italy, for example, no longer question their donors about their sexual history, and with great struggle activists in Britain reduced the lifelong donor ban on gay men to one year for only those that are sexually active. One important factor in this trend is the realization that other demographic groups are also at increased risk. Thus, singling out all homosexual men for life-long bans imposes an unjust stigma, especially when heterosexuals with HIV-positive partners are not subjected to the same standards. But even though this issue is arguably more scientific than social, some countries have adopted relatively liberal policies: Russia, with its general restrictions on liberty, nevertheless lifted all blood donor restrictions in 2008.

Homosexuality and Transsexuality: A False Dichotomy?         

The area of transsexuality precisely highlights the inconsistency that pervades LGBT policies around the world. In the otherwise liberal country of Sweden, legislation related to gender reassignment surgery has sparked controversy and international attention. Dating back to 1972, Sweden imposes sterilization and divorce upon individuals undertaking gender reassignment surgery. Despite the outdated nature of this policy and clear support from many in government for repealing it, the process has been delayed due to the opposition of a small conservative party in the governing coalition.

Conversely, in Iran, where homosexuality is legally punishable by death, transsexuals enjoy relatively positive treatment. Gender reassignment surgery is preferred over having transgender individuals retain their birth sex. Afsaneh Najmabadi, Harvard Professor of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, tells the HPR that a, “sex change [operation] is explicitly framed as the cure for a diseased abnormality, and on occasion it is proposed as a religio-legally sanctioned option for hetero-normalizing people with same-sex desires and practices.” There, transsexuality is viewed as a condition that can be remedied through surgery. While this justification is founded on discriminatory assumptions, it has allowed transsexuals to live safer and more fulfilling lives.

The Future of Gay Rights

The road ahead for international gay rights is characterized by the difficult need to prioritize goals. Marcelo Ferreyra, a program coordinator for the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, tells the HPR that, “the pace of progress around civil and human rights throughout the world is frequently slow [and] uneven… The right to marriage seems to be in the foreground these days: it is one that affords recognition, dignity and parity to openly love your partner of choice.”

Nevertheless, international trends hint at movement toward a more open dialogue about LGBT rights. Waqas Jawaid, a second year graduate student and an LGBT freshman proctor at Harvard University, spoke to the HPR about the policies in his home country of Pakistan. He notes that, “especially in the cities, there’s a lot of conversation, activism, and support. It has to do with the globalization that has allowed the conversations happening here [in the West] to percolate within the global community, and the cities in Pakistan are part of this global community that has become very accepting.”

Overall, the belief that Uganda and many other countries need fundamental change in their treatment of LGBT individuals is uncontested by many. However, too often advocates forget to fight for closing the gaps in liberal states where other human conditions are satisfactory. By drawing attention to these cases and commending progressive policies wherever they might be found, equality can finally be realized throughout the world.

The future Brooks is looking for.

From “Sam Spade at Starbucks”:

It’s hard not to feel inspired by all these idealists, but their service religion does have some shortcomings. In the first place, many of these social entrepreneurs think they can evade politics. They have little faith in the political process and believe that real change happens on the ground beneath it. That’s a delusion. You can cram all the nongovernmental organizations you want into a country, but if there is no rule of law and if the ruling class is predatory then your achievements won’t add up to much.

Yesterday the NY Times ran a David Brooks op-ed on the limited worldview of “wonderful young” idealists. Brooks praises these optimistic people for the “uplifting” good they do in the world but proceeds to lay out the limitations of their “hip” service religion, namely that NGOs and microfinance can only go so far in helping people. For Brooks, these idealists do not care enough about politics, the process whereby corruption, venality, and disorder in the government and civil society are confronted and solved. He proposes rough and tumble noir hero Sam Spade from The Maltese Falcon as a new paradigm for these well-intentioned but misguided philanthropists who are only able to do so much good in the current format of social entrepreneurship and apolitical involvement. Spade is reticent, allergic to self-righteousness and appears unfeeling, but he is motivated by a disillusioned sense of honor. He stands for a basic sense of good order, the idea that crime should be punished, and that bad behavior shouldn’t go uncorrected.

Brooks points out that these traits are not only lacking in idealist culture but sorely needed if the good intentioned young men and women of today are going to solve the world’s problems tomorrow. On behalf of said good intentioned idealists, I feel that Mr. Brooks’s piece deserves a response.

Brooks makes a great point. You cannot avoid politics. Microloans only help so long as a stable economy exists for entrepreneurs to enter into. Predation of aid funds by the government and elite in developing nations sees billions of dollars diverted from needy people to Swiss bank accounts. These are issues that, as Brooks points out, must be dealt with if genuine societal change is going to come to those in need.

Yet, the article’s criticism is in my opinion misplaced. It does not give enough credit to the egalitarianism of the NGO. In a world where increasing expertization demands years of experience and expensive degrees, the nonprofit sector offers millions of people the chance to go out into the world and do something. Qualifications pale in importance next to a commitment to alleviating human suffering.

Herein lies the purpose of this massive coterie of NGOs: the alleviation of human suffering. Brooks is correct to point out that the government is the only way to bring about long term solutions, but misses the fact that many NGOs are not looking at the long term. They see millions of people suffering from disease, poverty, or abuse, and attempt to treat on an individual or local level. Their mission, perhaps best incapsulated by Doctor’s Without Borders, is to help people in need, seeing all people as people rather than just statistics. These idealists read articles about 400,000 children dying of famine in the Horn of Africa, and see them as 400,000 distinct individuals instead of some amorphous mass of suffering. Conversely, within the bureaucratized system of governance, computability often trumps humanity.

Example from Rwanda 1994:

Ahead of their arrival, Dallaire says he got a phone call. A U.S. officer was wondering precisely how many Rwandans had died. Dallier was puzzled and asked why he wanted to know. ‘We are doing our calculations back here,’ the U.S. Officer said, ‘and one American casualty is worth about 85,000 Rwandan dead.” - Samantha Power

Brooks mistakes the apolitical nature of NGOs as apathy without taking into account the importance of neutrality in their mission. Politicized organizations often lose access to the people they are trying to help along ideological grounds, especially in warzones. NGOs are apolitical because it allows them to operate wherever people are suffering. You cannot criticize idealists in these organizations for avoiding politics without acknowledging how essential (and pragmatic0 this is to their line of work.

That said, Brooks is correct in pointing out the limitations of apolitical action. People defer to the international bodies in place too much. The UN, World Bank, and IMF (among others) have been left to deal with the political fallout of struggling nations while the majority of manpower has gone into short term fixes.

Perhaps the solution is for hybrid NGO-lobbyist-consultant organizations to emerge, potentially following the model of Amnesty International, that push international actors to take firmer stances on structural flaws in the world system (i.e. the international arms trade). This is the work I see policy students doing, mainly because they have the educational clout to be taken seriously as “experts.”  This work is not something that should be confused with what aid organizations do.

Politics is the ultimate solution to the big problems out there, but operating on a regional or national level cannot solve all of the world’s problems. Laws are only effective if people follow them, and as the continued plight of women in Pakistan has shown, political solutions can only extend as far as local enforcement is willing to take them. Thus NGOs and governments need to work in tandem to tackle major problems. Brooks brings up a great point but misses the existence of this dichotomy in how the world deals with problems. NGOs look to help suffering people on an individual level. Governments look to create the structures whereby these changes become norms.

We should encourage more promising students to take the necessary next steps to make policy changes, perhaps highlighting the steps needed to work as a civil or international servant. We need both young idealists and young realists working together to solve the world’s problems.

Photocredit: Council on Foreign Relations

Sanctions: An Ineffective Tool

Despite decades of sanctions, Iran has persisted in its efforts to develop nuclear capabilities. Whether attempting to preserve domestic legitimacy through a longstanding narrative of tensions with Israel, seeking a guarantee of security from perceived foreign threats, or desiring the capacity to exert regional hegemony, Iran has been driven by powerful incentives and imperatives. Ongoing efforts, largely unilateral, often degenerate into cycles of increasingly stringent sanctions without corresponding concessions from Iran. Breaking this unproductive cycle to move towards a sustainable settlement requires an understanding of the flaws of this strategy, in theory and in practice.

Sanctions can be manipulated by elites on both sides for political benefits, and they tend to further polarize already tense situations. Indeed, sanctions establish perverse incentives for leaders to manipulate public sentiment and seek domestic support for aggressive policies. Ultimately, sanctions often bolster the popularity of political figures by creating the perception of a proactive and hardline approach. Imposing stringent sanctions in today’s political climate carries benefits for President Obama, whereas reversing the current trend in favor of a more flexible approach would leave him vulnerable to accusations of naiveté. After facing political scorn after offering to negotiate with Iran “without preconditions” early in his presidency, Obama has taken a progressively stronger stance.

Directly counter to the aim of weakening the current regime through sanctions, these measures instead seem to have strengthened the regime at the expense of civil society and potential opposition forces. The Iranian government’s ability to withstand the challenge of the 2009 popular protests could perhaps be attributed in part to sanctions’ role in perpetuating a preexisting imbalance of resources between state and society. Oil exports, the dominant sector of Iran’s economy and source of half of its government revenues, are exclusively controlled by state-owned companies like the National Iranian Oil Company, which is in turn supervised directly by the Ministry of Petroleum. Such absolute control of economic resources allows political elites to withstand the economic impact of sanctions, leaving ordinary citizens to suffer the brunt of punitive measures. These inadvertent effects often create structural challenges, inhibiting the development of education and the emergence of a stronger civil society. As such, sanctions intended to change regime behavior may only strengthen the position of those elites responsible for current policy choices, enabling them to push ahead in their nuclear quest.

Remembering History

The sanctions imposed on Japan prior to World War II provide a useful analogy with which to view our current situation. U.S. policymakers thought, at the time, that it would be entirely irrational for Japan to attack the United States, and Pearl Harbor was entirely unanticipated. Today, conventional explanations for this sequence of events tend to focus on ideological factors, such as considerations of pride and honor on the part of Japan. However, from an economic perspective, this strategy can be considered wholly rational. As an island nation, Japan’s economy was entirely dependent on the import of natural resources, particularly for its energy needs. The U.S. embargo on oil represented an existential threat to Japanese power, in terms of both economic and military capacity. With oil supplies cut off, Japan would have had to surrender completely, seek oil elsewhere through war, or act quickly and decisively to end the economic stranglehold before its options were further limited.

Now too, sanctions on Iran might create perverse incentives for further aggressive behavior, seen as a last resort in the face of overwhelming international pressure. Completely cut off from the international economy and with pressure increasing, policymakers in Iran may seek short-term aggressive action as a last resort. As such, sanctions could ultimately become more an instrument of war than of peace. With the upcoming negotiations in Turkey, Iran seems to have expressed a tentative willingness to compromise. Although these talks hardly seem promising, this could be the last opportunity for leaders on both sides to reevaluate their policies and the paths ahead.

5:47PM: Zeenia Framroze here at the Kennedy School’s Forum featuring a public address by The Honorable Dilma Rousseff, President of Brazil. The event looks packed – tickets were lotteried amongst the Harvard community, and it looks like everyone who got a ticket has shown up. I’m here with Sarah Siskind, who will be analyzing the address later today!

6:02PM: We just received headsets – it looks like the address is going to be in Portuguese. Simply titled, “A Public Address,” attendees are unsure of exactly what the President’s comments will entail, but President Rousseff, who took office in January 2011 is known to be an engaging speaker. Rousseff has just taken the stage to resounding applause.

6:07PM: President Rousseff, the first female head state of Brazil, is welcomed to the Forum by Scott M. Black Professor of Political Economy, and Kennedy School Dean, David T. Ellwood and Merilee Grindle, the Director for the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. The introduction is almost a little hard to hear given the Q/A in the pressroom.

6:10PM: President Rousseff takes the podium after we were given a brief history of her political life, from her role resisting military persecution to her time Minister of Mines and Energy. Rousseff mentions her past experiences with Harvard, when she came to learn more about electric energy technology in order to revolutionize systems in Brazil.

6:13PM: “The level of society can be assessed by the role that women play in it. To have men and women in perfect positions to work and act – as the President of Harvard and the President of Brazil no less.” An interesting point made by President Rousseff. She and Drew Faust have more in common than their short hair though. In a short time, Rousseff has had a significant impact on Brazilian politics and energy development, given the country’s relatively recent discovery of oil off the coast.

Photo courtesy of Gina Kim '15

6:17PM: Brazil’s ability to actively work has been substantially improved according to Rousseff, as is exemplified by the tremendous changes in the country’s development and trade in different markets, including the Argentine market, the growth of the middle class, billions of dollars in reserves and a growing sense of ownership of economic and social policies.

6:18PM: Brazil has managed to lift about 4 million Brazilians into the middle class from extreme levels of poverty by creating hundreds of new jobs. But how much has this actually impacted social inequality in the country? The increase of wealth isn’t always a good thing – arguably, this growth in Brazil has been disparate based on urban and rural areas. Brazil is one of the most diverse countries in the world, oddly more unaffected by social and ethnic classifications – one wonders whether the growth of the middle class has altered this dynamic.

6:21PM: Rousseff’s assessment of Brazilian growth and development seems to correlate with the Modernization theory of development (thank you Prof. Levitsky and Government 20). Rousseff is expressing her hope that the influx of wealth and growth of the middle class will help improve social conditions, particularly education.

6:24PM: Rousseff’s priorities (and there are many that Brazil must try to juggle simultaneously): science and technology, research and design, wealth, social policy and educational policy, labor adjustment measures, emerging from the economic stagnation, sanitation. She notes again that the expanse of electrical accessibility has been a major government landmark.

6:26PM: One of the problems that Brazil faces amid its own domestic development, is likely going to be its relationship with the international market. Rousseff asserted that the crisis seems to have lingered in Europe, which will undoubtedly cause problems for Brazilian trade. As countries’ economies suffer and social issues seem to fall on the back-burner, how will Brazil’s democracy respond?

6:30PM: Rousseff notes that Brazil has learnt its democratic lesson from a history of dictatorships. Indeed, she is very much aware of the dangers of totalitarianism, having spent almost three years in a penitentiary in the city of São Paolo. Looking at the United States and Brazil: both are young, multiethnic democracies, with common economic and behavioral features. The Brazilian president makes note of the shared ethnic roots with Africa – an important part of Brazilian pride. She makes note of the Brazilian connection with the BRIC countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China. Though they may not experience broad consensus, in some ways they’ve learned more from their discourse.

6:40PM: Oh, how I wish I could understand Portuguese – Rousseff is a passionate speaker and the press room seems enraptured. Rousseff hopes to improve the quality of university education, but believes that to truly solve this problem, they must have a greater system of pedagogical stimuli from a very young age. All of the efforts made thus far by the government, in the forms of scholarships and funding, are only small steps in a sequential process of improving education. This, of course, is undoubtedly a way to ultimately improve the R&D conditions in the Brazilian education system. Rousseff also notes that one of the most successful endeavors the Brazilian government has endorsed is Science Without Borders. The scientific mobility group allows students to share information, experiences and research with senior researchers both in Brazil and around the world.

6:45PM: As she comes to the end of her remarks, President Rousseff acknowledges Harvard’s own involvement in scientific research. Sustainable development is high on her priority list – what kind of sustainable development do we want in the 21st century?Brazil’s mantra? One can grow economically, one can improve socially, and one can have sustainability. The current state of affairs has expanded social inequalities in the world – Brazil has brought to the fore the symbiotic nature of political and economic affairs.

6:48PM: “Brazil needs Harvard, as one of the world’s largest economies, it’s probably not a bad idea for Harvard to have Brazil.”

6:51PM: Question and Answer Session (we’re repeating the question). Forum Question: What advice would you give to girls around the world, who look to you as a role model? Answer: President Rousseff gives us a humorous anecdote where she talks about how girls can do anything – from being firefighters to Presidents, including President’s at Harvard!

6:55PM: An excellent question for the audience concerning political prisoners in Brazil and the state of international human rights. Specifically, he asks about the complex issue concerning the imprisonment of Judge Afiuni.

7:10PM: Conclusively, President Rousseff’s public address was a success. Her eloquence in answering questions for the audience ranging from the stain of government corruption to being a role model for young women was admirable. The Brazilian approach to the future, that hopes to incorporate benefits for the environment, the sociopolitical system and the economy seems like a well-intentioned policy direction, but ambitious. It will be difficult for the President and her government to juggle these issues while maintaining popularity and sustained growth. However, President Rousseff seems to be a determined woman, keen to tackle every problem this large, diverse country will face. All in all, the Harvard Political Review will have its eye on Brazil – looking forward to RIO2016!

Back in January the Economist ran a cover feature on the rise of state capitalism in developing economies, detailing the popularity of state-owned nationals in rising economic powers. China has long adopted this model, dating back to the Great Opening of the 1970s, but recent government-brokered deals in Brazil and rumblings in South Africa imply that the emerging world elite economies are increasingly seeing this hybridized capitalist model as a viable system. This development has fascinating implications for international aid, as the merging of government and business sectors offers the potentiality for a newer, more corporatized humanitarian assistance model more akin to that of the colonial era.

Chinese expansion into African aid has been going on for the greater part of the last two decades. Beginning with construction of a highway connecting copper mines in Zambia to the port city Dar es Salaam in Tanzania in the 1970s, the Chinese have pursued relentless infrastructural aid in much of resource-rich Africa. Continually seeking new ways to ensure cheap natural resources, China has constructed over thousands of miles of roads, hospitals, and other infrastructure projects to accommodate its large corporate interests in the region. Chinese settlers have flocked to the region as construction and administrative workers as well as managers of these new holdings. The holdings of Eximbank, ZTE, and the Chinese Railway Construction Corp already stand as three of the largest in East Africa.

This development aid model is in stark contrast to the more charitable method of Western nations, who for the most part just pour money into African states and communities with the hope that it will filter through the layers of corruption down to the people who need it most. The European nations, the United States, and Canada have sent an average $50 billion to Sub-Saharan Africa every year for the last half decade and yet every country in the region remains mired in infrastructural, governmental, and economic malaise. Shining stars have recently hit snags with endemic corruption in South Africa and a coup and secession movement undermining a functional democracy in Mali and more than half of Foreign Policy’s top ten in its Failed States Index are African ones.

Zambian academic Dambisa Moyo wrote a scathing critique of Western blind aid in her 2009 book Dead Aid, going so far as to claim that the massive influx of money into African nations retarded their development by making “failed” a profitable model for state elite. She called for the West to withdraw its patronage and force African nations to confront their multitude of internal problems, a potentially helpful, but far more likely calamitous prospect. Short of going cold turkey on aid, she provides an alternative in the Chinese model described above. Foreign firms come into Africa, set up the powerful economic actors that the African nations are too weak to establish, build roads and hospitals providing positive externalities to everyone, and at least churn some money into the system through taxes and the creation of new jobs. She points out the massive highway project in Ethiopia as an example of foreign business interests providing the poor with a necessary infrastructural good.

Yet there are serious colonial underpinnings to this humanitarianism for profit scheme that is increasingly coming into vogue. England went into India and Spain went into Latin America, built roads, and extracted natural resources under national corporations hundreds of years ago. The East India Trading company is the most famous example of the state capitalistic model. Building roads and hospitals is great, unless they fall down, but foreign multinationals or nationals carving up spheres of interest already happened ironically in China throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is hard to criticize what the Chinese are doing because they are simply coming late to a party that every other major economy joined one hundred years ago (see Dutch Shell or Rio Tinto). Of the fifty largest African companies only 2 lie outside of North Africa or South Africa (Nigeria’s First Bank of Nigeria and Zimbabwe’s Pretoria Portland Co), and as it stands most of the portions of African economies not tied up in aid are largely dependent on the revenue generated by foreign companies within their borders.

Until African nations reform to the point that viable businesses can emerge uninhibited by the cronyism of state politics, corporate colonization will continue and thus corporate aid models will increase. Governmental colonialism may have ended in 1977 with the end of French rule in Djibouti but corporate colonialism seems here to stay for a while, and savvy businesses willing to take the risk of placing capital in volatile regions with massive upsides are increasingly going to go about getting things done without the meddling and bureaucracy of stumbling states. The next twenty years will likely see a host of airports, highways, power stations, and high-speed cables with Chinese, Brazilian, and Indian company’s names on them bringing much needed benefits to millions.

This is not to say that countries will not continue to dump enormous amounts of money into poor countries. The non-profit sector is a massive economic entity in itself and is largely self-sustaining, thus many rich countries have a vested interest in maintaining aid, despite what conservative voters would like to think. But corporate aid is here to stay, and while it may not be perfect, it is at least doing some good in regions that could use the help.

For more coverage of this issue check out Deborah Brautigam’s great blog China in Africa: The Real Story.

Photocredit: China Talking Points

How far has the Karzai Administration come?

To understand the Afghan government’s hopes for the reconciliation movement, it is first critical to understand the challenges that Afghan women have faced. The Taliban’s war on women extended far and wide. With no constitution or rule of law, municipal authorities used the Taliban’s interpretation of Shari’a law. Severe restrictions on movement, dress and work were in place: women were forced to wear the burqa, were not allowed to wear high-heeled shoes or to be seen in public without a male blood relative and were largely prohibited from working. A woman was expected to be a homemaker that was “neither seen nor heard.” Since women were not allowed out in public, women’s physical and mental health suffered tremendously under the Taliban. With no judicial system but their own, the Taliban “terrorized the city of Kabul by publicly punishing alleged wrongdoers in the Kabul sports stadium and requiring public attendance at the floggings, shootings, hangings, beheadings, and amputations,” says Amnesty International.

President Hamid Karzai’s rise to power in 2001 brought hope to Afghanistan. Karzai was instrumental in reforming the Afghan state and in passing the 2003 Afghan Constitution. On his second Inauguration Day in 2009, Karzai promised to rid the country of corruption and create a safe environment for each Afghan. However, Karzai’s rhetoric is far from the reality of the situation in Afghanistan. Though women have returned to public life and NGOs have been invaluable in providing women with support, Karzai has failed on protecting women’s rights on several fronts. For example, Karzai approved a law in 2009 that, according to the UN, sanctioned marital rape. In March 2009, he approved the Shi’a Personal Status Law, which denied Shiite women numerous rights, including child custody and freedom of movement. Two convicted gang rapists were even granted presidential pardons. Conclusively, Karzai has been unable to resist pressures from radicals within the country, making the possibility of reconciliation even more concerning for the future of women’s rights in Afghanistan.

The Risks of Reconciliation

What does reconciliation entail?

In June 2010, Karzai made a speech imploring the “dear Taliban” to be “welcome on their own soil” and “come to us,” explaining that, “[The Taliban] are normal people. They are just like you.” Political reconciliation would allow the integration of the Taliban into the parliament and local governing bodies like the Loya Jirga. Heather Barr, the Afghanistan analyst for Human Rights Watch, speaking to the HPR from Kabul, believes that the push towards reconciliation started about a year ago, when “the international community, specifically the US, suddenly started to sound very serious about leaving by 2014.” Few have faith in the Afghan Security Forces’ ability to hold their ground without international support, particularly with the current levels of conflict as intense as they are in certain regions of the country. Karzai should be preventing those against whom there are credible criminal allegations of war crimes are excluded from the proposed reconciliation process. Unfortunately, Karzai’s recent reconciliation attempts have proceeded without these assurances for women. Instead, as reported by former Human Rights Watch Afghanistan analyst, Rachel Reid, members of the Karzai government, such as the Minister of Economy, Abdul Hade Arghandilwal, reportedly told a gathering of women leaders that they would have to “sacrifice their interests” for the sake of peace in the country. One wonders exactly how the modest gains made by women from 2003 to 2008 will possibly develop into enduring, durable rights if they are under constant attack from fundamentalist factions within the country.

How will reconciliation put women in jeopardy?

Progress in Afghanistan has not come without significant setbacks and scrutiny. Reid noted that in the last few years prominent Afghan women have been murdered in urban areas: provincial counselor and peace activist Sitara Achakzai; senior (and sole female) police commander Malalai Kakar; journalist Zakia Zaki; and Women’s Affairs director Safia Amajan, while women in rural areas receive “night letters” threatening them with violence if they choose to work with government officials. Most human rights activists believe that reconciliation with the Taliban will only worsen the problem. Esther Hyneman, a former professor of W

omen’s Studies and Gender Studies at Long Island University, and current board member of the Women for Afghan Women organization told the HPR that she believes with certainty that “women will suffer.” Women’s activists groups fear that once the Taliban sign the Reconciliation Agreement, they will disregard all its clauses, and will use their regained “political power to literally control 50% of the Afghan population, like they did when they were last in power.” Much of the progress made will either be stalled or even reversed, and that is a path that the Afghan government can certainly not go down.

So what is to be done? 

The Karzai government has been backed into a corner, but raising the white flag now would compromise everything that the Afghan government, NATO and NGOs on the ground have worked so hard to achieve in the field of women’s rights. Women in Afghanistan are not yet empowered enough that they can use arms and opium-yielding fields as leverage, which is why the Afghan government must strive to represent and defend them. The idea that women are a part of the trade-off for a more peaceful, stable Afghan democracy, however, Hyneman put it succinctly when she said, “democracy can’t exist without women’s rights.” Karzai’s rhetoric must start to match the reality of his actions; instead of backing down on the issue women’s rights, he should focus on the realistic integration of the Elimination of Violence Against Women document and the bolstering of NGO work in rural areas. Reconciliation in itself is by no means a futile policy, but the reconciliation with the Taliban, a rapidly growing, misogynistic group, would be an absolute betrayal of Afghan women.

Photo courtesy, The Guardian, UK.