On Wednesday 24 May, an audience gathered at the Frontline Club for a discussion on corruption and its far-reaching implications. Sarah Chayes and Tom Burgis joined freelance journalist and host of Newshour on the BBC World Service, Owen Bennett-Jones, to talk about their experiences in Africa, Afghanistan and beyond. Chayes is an expert on kleptocracy, anti-corruption and civil-military relations, and is currently senior associate in the Democracy and Rule of Law Program and the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment. Burgis is investigations correspondent at the Financial Times and has worked extensively in Africa.
L-r: Sarah Chayes, Owen Bennett-Jones and Tom Burgis
It has become increasingly clear that corruption exists at every level around the world. Yet there is an ongoing reluctance to understand its complexities and to commit to workable solutions.
Chayes said, “I think there is a bias against this topic … People’s eyes glaze over. It’s not a sexy topic. There is a tendency to dismiss the seriousness of the problem.”
Chayes did not study corruption in depth until she spent time in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Initially working as a journalist and for a number of NGOs, she devoted her time to helping to repair homes that had been damaged by heavy bombing. Chayes recounted how she could not obtain the materials needed, however, because the Governor would award himself stone and sell it at grossly inflated prices to the international military.
Once Chayes left Kandahar she began to realise the extent of endemic corruption, not just in Afghanistan but around the world. She said, “I came to understand that this isn’t a fraying around the edges kind of government system. This kind of corruption network is structured and organised.”
Burgis spoke about his experiences as a correspondent for the Financial Times in South and West Africa. Africa is often described as a paradox of plenty. While the continent is frequently viewed as a symbol of extreme poverty, it is in many regards one of the wealthiest places on earth in terms of its abundance of basic natural resources.
On the subject of corruption in Nigeria, Burgis said: “It happens because the currency gets distorted… It happens because ultimately if you’re a country whose economies depend on shipping out raw resources, the contract or the deal between the rulers and the ruled breaks.”
Corruption is not just a local issue – there are global implications at every level.
Bennett-Jones asked the panellists: “If you take these situations as you described, how much of it ends up at the top of the system in the City of London, Zurich and the banks in New York and therefore will never be resolved because they are just too powerful to deal with?”
Chayes responded: “The countries that are on the positive end on the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index are the ones that are exporting corruption services to the corrupt governments.”
Why is property market in London so inflated? A lot is fuelled by stolen overseas money. Tom Burgis His book Looting Machine #frontlineclub
— Kate Adams (@KateAdams3) June 24, 2015
Even though the extent of widespread corruption may seem impenetrable, Chayes believes that we can all play an individual role in combatting its influence.
“I have my money in HSBC. I intend to take my money out of HSBC. There’s a role for us as custodians of all of our values to play in piercing some of this hypocrisy.”
More information on The Looting Machine: Warlords, Tycoons, Smugglers and the Systematic Theft of Africa’s Wealth by Tom Burgis is available here.
Click here for more information on Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security by Sarah Chayes.
]]>Nearly three years on from President Obama’s infamous ‘red line’ statement, Syrian activist and filmmaker Orwa Nyrabia, Syrian human rights lawyer Laila Alodaat, journalist Jonathan Littell and Nerma Jelacic of the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA), joined an audience at the Frontline Club on Thursday 21 May. In a discussion chaired by Owen Bennett-Jones, host of Newshour on the BBC World Service, the panel discussed Syria’s increasingly fractured reality and seemingly endless turmoil. Also under discussion was the investigative work currently underway to record evidence linking the Syrian regime to the atrocities committed, in the hope that the acting parties will one day be held accountable for their crimes.
L-r: Laila Alodaat, Jonathan Littell, Owen Bennett-Jones, Orwa Nyrabia and Nerma Jelacic
Despite the media frenzy in recent months, the evening’s discussion avoided focusing solely on ISIS.
Nyrabia commented: “I don’t know what sadomasochism western media have towards ISIS, but they always blow it up and make it very attractive for anyone who is angry with the West.”
Instead, the speakers shed light on tangible developments on the ground, ongoing external interests and alliances in the region, and the failure of the international community to intervene.
In the wake of news that same day that ISIS had captured the territories surrounding Palmyra, Bennett-Jones began discussions by asking Nyrabia for a brief overview of the groups currently active in Syria.
Nyrabia answered that, while local Islamist groups and ISIS were gaining ground, the regime was not advancing but rather maintaining its highly populated and strategic strongholds.
On the subject of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Nyrabia commented: “it was made public that the Iranians were not giving him [Assad] the loan he requested.” Nyrabia connected this to Iran’s conflicting objectives in relation to pleasing all facets of the international community over its nuclear program.
Nyrabia went on to lay out the following summary of regional allegiances, useful even to those well-versed in the Syrian conflict: Assad is backed by Iran with Hezbollah support, and is bolstered by Afghan and Iraqi militias. On the other side, aside from ISIS, local Islamist groups have joined together, notably since the beginning of Saudi offences in Yemen, to form part of what is called Al-Fath. Finally, there is the moderate, secular opposition, exemplified by both Nyrabia and Alodaat, which feels increasingly marginalised and underrepresented.
Alodaat asked: “Where is the secular opposition in all of this? I think they have been set up to fail, they have been set up to fail by the international community that gave them no support.”
Bennett-Jones questioned Alodaat on whether the civilian opposition failed due to their low numbers. Alodaat responded: “Are we expecting civilians to have more power than arms? The answer is no.”
Alodaat went on to remind the audience of the dirty tactics used by the regime against its people.
“A perpetrator can spend a lot of arms and take the guilt of killing a thousand people, or can kill the one person who provides healthcare and make sure these people will die. And Assad did that.” The pinnacle of these crimes and the crossing of the red line occurred in August 2013, when 16,000 people were killed by chemical weapons.
An intervention by the United States never followed.
Nyrabia commented on what he saw as the dire consequence of this failure by the international community to act, and the part this played in legitimising the mass-scale crimes that followed. “We believed that after it [a US-led intervention] was mentioned it had to happen, because the cost on our people is going to be even worse than intervention. And that’s what happened.”
L-r: Owen Bennett-Jones, Orwa Nyrabia, Nerma Jelacic
Littell, who was smuggled into Homs for three weeks on an assignment for Le Monde in 2012, spoke of another tipping point.
“Homs, because of the divided nature of the city, was where things got the most conflictual the fastest,” Littell said.
He spoke of the ideals still upheld at that time by the locals who believed that a civil movement, led by the free Syrian Army (FSA), could topple the regime.
Littell commented on the regime’s tactic of allowing and encouraging the growth of radical Islamist groups, in order to do their work of suppressing other, more moderate, opposition, in the hope that they could later defeat these groups. Littell went on to draw parallels with other conflicts in which this tactic had been used.
“To me, this looks exactly like the curve in Chechnya in which the Russian special services fostered the more Islamist Chechen groups to try and crush the more moderate nationalists.”
Jelacic then discussed the work of her organisation, the Commission for International Justice and Accountability, in gathering evidence linking perpetrators to crimes in the Syrian conflict. However, as Syria is not signed to the Rome Treaty, Jelacic explained that a referral must go through the United Nations Security council (UNSC) in order to bring perpetrators to trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC).
On this point, Jelacic commented: “You are more or less doomed if you are in a war and waiting for the UNSC to agree on anything.”
She added: “Even if the referral to the ICC happened, it would not be able to do justice to the widespread crimes that have been committed throughout the years.”
Despite a bleak outlook, Jelacic offered clear progress in the process of compiling evidence against the regime, currently consisting of over 600,000 separate documents.
She went on to explain that, despite popular opinion, harrowing victim testimonies account for little in a case of this nature: “You need to prove the three C’s: Command, Control and Communication… It’s amazing how meticulous autocratic regimes are in documenting their crimes.”
Audience questions ranged from the involvement of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Russia, to the meaning of Syrian identity today.
On the subject of an end to the conflict, Alodaat called for a total disarmament, while Nyrabia suggested that the international community actively support local opposition groups.
Jelacic closed the discussion by commenting: “Human intervention: that is something that this conflict has killed as an idea. The second thing it has killed is diplomacy.”
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The greatest peril comes not from a lack of analysis but from a lack of imagination.”
– Sir William Patey, British Ambassador to Saudi Arabia (2007-10)
Is Saudi Arabia a kingdom in peril? This was the key question under discussion at a packed event held at the Frontline Club on Monday 27 April. Following the accession of King Salman and the ongoing conflict in Yemen, a panel, chaired by journalist Owen Bennett-Jones, discussed the potential destabilisation of the regime and the possibility for change within the country.
Robert Lacey, an author who has covered Saudi Arabia for almost 40 years, said that although talk of its imminent demise and the collapse of the House of Saud had been repeatedly anticipated, these predictions failed to take into account “the Saudis very sophisticated system” that operates extremely effectively within the country.
Carool Kersten, senior lecturer in the study of Islam and the Muslim world at King’s College London, agreed that while in the past the Saudi states have been threatened, the dynasty has always demonstrated an “elasticity” which has “enabled it to bounce back.”
For former ambassador to Saudi Arabia Sir William Patey (2007-10), it boiled down to a question of external perception versus a very different internal reality.
“From Whitehall it was almost a dialectical argument, that [Saudi Arabia] would collapse under its own internal contradictions. But Saudi Arabia is different [from regimes and systems like the Soviet Union]; namely that it is run by the Al Saud who have survival in their DNA. It’s a very cautious, a very slow moving system operating by consensus. But the times when they move quickly are when they are in peril.”
From dealing with the threat of Nasserism in the 1960s to the assassination of King Faisal and the siege of the Grand Mosque in the 1980s, which saw the regime develop a more Islamist approach, the Al Sauds have “a history of doing just enough, just in time,” said Kersten.
On whether there was the potential for regime change in the kingdom, Patey described his experience of the Iranian revolution. From a diplomatic view, the failure to anticipate the overthrow of the Shah “was not a failure of analysis but rather a failure of imagination. We failed to imagine what the Middle East would be like without him.”
In relation to the current context, Patey offered a note of caution: “just because we don’t like the look of the Middle East (and especially the Gulf) without the Al Saud, let us not close off our imagination to the possibility.”
Safa Al Ahmad, a Saudi freelance journalist, said that it is not a question of collapse but a question of peril. Saudi Arabia is entering a new phase of existence and will need to deal with the changing geopolitical and regional realities.
“Saudi Arabia at the moment is too big to fail,” said Kersten. “This is even the view of the population who have too much to lose to really rise up. I think the Al Saud are masters, and have been for 250 years, of playing to this fear and doing the right thing just in time.”
This is represented not only in the often contradictory suppression of opposition and internal dissent – be it of the Shia minority, liberals or online activists (Saudi Arabia has the highest number of Twitter users per capita in the world) – but also through the co-opting of Saudi citizens by the government who play on the turmoil of the Arab spring, which has seen Saudis less willing to take a risk with regime change.
For Kersten, the difference with many of the surrounding countries is that Saudi Arabia is not ruled by a single dictator but by “a dynasty with 3000 potential pretenders to the throne.”
“The country’s not called Saudi Arabia for nothing. It’s a Saudi State, there is no Saudi nation – rather five countries with regional and ethnic differences internally. The Al Saud have capitalised on that to present themselves as the only people who could hold it together.”
On the question of where and how change could originate, the panel were divided. Kersten suggested that it could come from the economic elite who have the means and influence but cannot develop under the Al Saud as they would in other countries, while Al Ahmad reasserted that “the worst case scenario is to have that change come from the outside.”
Citing post-Gaddafi Libya, Al Ahmad said that within Saudi Arabia “everybody wants reform but not to the extent of removing the royal family… the idea of the House of Saud not being there is the scariest option of all.”
For Patey there is no single thing that would bring Saudi Arabia down, but rather a combination of factors.
“There would have to be a perfect storm. A threat from political Islam, a regional crisis, and economic crisis, crucially a division within the Al Saud… all of those things could potentially produce Saudi Arabia in peril, but any one of them on their own is not enough.”
]]>Renowned photojournalist Robert Nickelsberg has documented Afghanistan since 1988, when he accompanied a group of mujahideen crossing the border from Pakistan. Since then he has returned to the country numerous time for Time magazine, capturing the brutality and suffering, and often the beauty, of the convulsions that have engulfed the country.
Afghanistan – A Distant War presents an extraordinary portfolio of the country’s history, from the mujahideen’s expulsion of the Soviet Union to the US withdrawal 25 years later.
Nickelsberg will be joined in conversation by Owen Bennett-Jones, freelance journalist, BBC correspondent in Pakistan between 1998 and 2001 and author of Pakistan: Eye of the Storm.
]]>Following the latest revelations from whistleblower Edward Snowden, the Frontline Club’s First Wednesday panel on 6 November gathered to discuss Has NSA spying “reached too far”?
L-R: Owen Bennett-Jones, Julian Borger, James P. Rubin, Steven Erlanger. Photo: Sally Ashley-Cound
Chair Owen Bennett-Jones, a freelance journalist and a host of Newshour on the BBC World Service started off by asking if anyone really knows how much data has been collected?
Steven Erlanger, London bureau chief for The New York Times said:
“I’m not sure we know the answer to the question to be honest. Because these things have been kept secret and they remain secret.”
Julian Borger, The Guardian’s diplomatic editor, continued:
“There is an awful lot of material and it’s a very lengthy process figuring out what in it is of public interest…it’s the process of discussing with the government agencies involved about what it means and the balance between public interest and national security.”
James Rubin, a visiting scholar at Oxford University’s Rothermere American Institute and former chief spokesperson for the US State Department, added:
“I don’t think Snowden knows. He’s got 50,000 documents from the NSA. I took one of these documents and I actually know something about this stuff …it’s hard to understand even for those who know the code words.”
Nigel Inkster, director of transnational threats and political risk at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), who served in the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) from 1975 to 2006, had some praise for the NSA and GCHQ:
“We’ve got this huge explosion of communications. . . . They were confronted with this new reality which they had to make sense of and I have to say, in the circumstances I think they’ve done a rather remarkable job.”
An audience member asked if “the threats justify the methods”?
Inkster replied:
“We elect a government and this is one of the responsibilities that they are assigned. It is for the government of the day to judge on the basis of the best information it can, what the security environment it faces.”
The panel were asked if the release of these documents has changed anything – has damage been done?
https://twitter.com/caro_schmitt/statuses/398172032355270656
Rubin:
“We’ll never know what changed people’s behaviours. People’s behaviours are going to change.”
Inkster:
“We will never know how different would the course of WWII been if Bletchley park had not broken and read the material that was being transmitted over Enigma. How can we judge? You can never do a counter factual assessment.”
Erlanger:
“There’s another level of damage which is to trust, to international relationships; the United States has a big problem with its allies.”
US goodwill was exhausted by Bush and Obama needs to deposit more goodwill. Remark @frontlineclub debate Why #nsa hit US reputation so hard.
— Karen Melchior (ex-verif) (@karmel80) November 6, 2013
Christoph Scheuermann, London bureau chief for German weekly Der Spiegel, seemed surprised at the panel for thinking that anything had changed:
“I thought this was really naive, we don’t live in an age where terrorists…have to read The Guardian or Der Spiegel or the New York Times to know what intelligence agencies are capable of.”
Borger added:
“We share all of GCHQ material, names of everyone who works there, addresses, what they like to do at the weekend, with 850,000 Americans. Half of those people are private contractors. So the odds of that getting out are very high.”
After all this effort, disruption and political chaos, what were the benefits of the NSA gathering all the information?
Inkster:
“Knowing who’s in touch with who can be as – if not more important than – knowing what they’re saying to each other. This is a business that the bad guys are trying to hide the fact that they’re in communication.
“[Secondly] you can use analysis of big data to ascertain patterns of correlation, which are simply not discernable with lesser data sets. This has applications in all sorts of areas, in retail, public health…you can identify all sorts of things.”
One point the panel agreed on was that the world has completely changed from the days of phone bugging and code-breaking:
Watch the event:
https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/first-wednesday-has-nsa-spying
The Forum opened to a full house on Wednesday evening for a clash of opinions over the problems facing Pakistan.
With BBC journalist Owen Bennett-Jones acting as chair, the government and military soon took centre stage, a relationship described as “A power struggle that has characterised Pakistan since its inception,” by Chatham House associate fellow Dr Farzana Shaikh.
Anatol Lieven, a professor at Kings College London, was quick to dismiss the suggestion of another military coup, and described the army as “with all its dreadful faults, a comparatively efficient institution”.
Ali Dayan Hasan, Pakistan Director at Human Rights Watch, made no effort to hide his disagreement, “It’s a corrupt behemoth that is holding the country hostage. I know that Professor Lieven tends to have a rose-tinted view of the Pakistani military.”
Journalist Omar Waraich backed up this view of the military by describing a string of human rights abuses at the hands of the Pakistani army, including disappearances and torture.
Despite differences of opinion, there was broad agreement of the military’s negative role in vetoing cooperation with India, severely impeding the country’s development prospects.
In the face of such an overbearing military, Shaikh described the “extraordinary measures” taken by the government in recent years such as constitutional amendments, although said the government had perhaps been too preoccupied with political survival over passing legislation.
“It’s important to see these achievements, modest though they may appear, in the context of a country that is also at war; that is mired in conflict,” she added. Hasan agreed, citing mechanisms for a transition of power, devolution to the provinces, and improvements made to women’s rights legislation as key markers of change.
Open to the floor, the Forum buzzed with questions from nuclear weapon sales to Imran Khan’s election prospects.
The people of Pakistan at last made their debut in the debate, described by one audience member as a “resilient” populace – a term which was quickly questioned by Shaikh.
“Because the ordinary person is resilient, he or she can take anything, and nothing will break Pakistan. That in a way is troubled because in a sense it gives license to violence which is inflicted at every level on the assumption that people are resilient.”
As attention moved to the oft-forgotten Balochistan region and its prospects for autonomy, Hasan said the situation was not comparable to Kashmir, as “you can’t use patriarchy as an excuse for military abuses”. In response Lieven denied saying anything of the sort and called on his fellow panellist to correct himself.
It was left to Bennett-Jones to prevent the Pakistan debate descending into its reality, silencing the speakers and reminding the audience that it is the government’s ability to hold onto power until the 2013 election that determines Pakistan’s future.
]]>We will be bringing together a panel of experts to discuss the deepening political crisis in Pakistan and ask what lies ahead.
]]>Political tensions are rising in Pakistan following the the Supreme Court’s decision to charge Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani with contempt for failing to re-open corruption cases against President Asif Ali Zardari.
The government has also been under pressure as a result of what’s become known as “memogate” after an unsigned memo emerged asking for US help to avert a coup by the Pakistani army.
With the outlook for the Pakistani government so uncertain, there is concern that the country’s many and complex problems, including its dire economic situation, dealings with its domestic Taliban, drone attacks, as well as the aftermath of floods and other natural catastrophes will be overlooked.
We will be bringing together a panel of experts to discuss the deepening political crisis in Pakistan and what lies ahead.
Chaired by the BBC’s Owen Bennett-Jones, he was BBC Pakistan correspondent between 1998 and 2001 and is author of Pakistan: Eye Of The Storm.
With:
Omar Waraich, he has been covering Pakistan for TIME Magazine and The Independent since 2007. He regularly appears as a commentator on Al-Jazeera English, CNN and NPR. Twitter: @OmarWaraich
Ali Dayan Hasan, Pakistan Director, Asia Division at Human Rights Watch. Previously he was a senior editor at Pakistan’s premier independent, political news monthly magazine, Herald.
Professor Anatol Lieven, of King’s College London, he has travelled extensively for research in Pakistan and is author of Pakistan: A Hard Country.
Dr Farzana Shaikh, is an associate fellow and convenor of the Pakistan study group at Chatham House. Born and brought up in Pakistan, she has written widely on the country’s history, culture and politics. She has most recently published, Making Sense of Pakistan.
]]>Tonight we discuss the roots of turmoil in Pakistan at the Frontline Club. As usual we start at 7pm GMT/11am PST. If you can’t make it to the Club in person, please join us online on the Frontline Club live channel, on this blog or on the Club events page. Feel free to embed the discussion on your own blog too, leave a comment or email me if you would like some help doing that.
The military offensive against the Taliban near its border with Afghanistan has been viewed as critical for Pakistan’s credibility as the US steps up demands for increased effort in fighting terrorism.
In a new book Making Sense of Pakistan Dr Farzana Shaikh, associate fellow at Chatham House, claims that ultimately Pakistan’s ability to respond to demands that it “do more” to resist terrorism lies in its response to deeper issues about its identity and its relationship with Islam.
Join us at the Frontline to discuss Dr Farzana Shaikh’s claim that uncertainty about Pakistan’s identity lies at the heart of its social and political decline and that its leaders will only be able to combat terrorism once the country’s vexed relationship with Islam is resolved link
Taking part will be; David Loyn, the BBC’s Developing World Correspondent, Dr Farzana Shaikh, associate fellow, Asia Programme, Chatham House, Bronwen Maddox, chief foreign commentator for The Times, Victoria Schofield has been reporting as a writer and broadcaster on Pakistan and South Asia for thirty years and Owen Bennett-Jones, BBC World Service presenter of Newshour and The Interview. He was also the BBC’s correspondent in Pakistan for three years till 2001.
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