May, 2008

Peering at Pakistan

Flickr photo by rchughtai under the Creative Commons.

West Bank, Palestine

Flickr photo by FREEPAL under the Creative Commons license.

PCR Project Co-Director Rick Barton was a speaker at the World Affairs Council of Northern California's ASILOMAR CONFERENCE 2008 -- "From London to Moscow: New Faces, Old Alliances." Please

Adding on to Shannon’s post, the Global Peace Index released video footage from the CSIS GPI 2008 launch, featuring Clyde McConaghy, President, Global Peace Index, Institute for Economics and Peace and Leo

Building a Pathway to Peace

Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution
George Mason University

Graduation Ceremony Address
May 17, 2008

Charles F. Dambach
President, Alliance for Peacebuilding

Thank you, Sara Cobb for all you do for this remarkable institution and for giving me this opportunity. Several of the people on your faculty and staff are very special to me. I wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for Susan Alan Nan who was vice chair of the Alliance for Peacebuilding board when I was hired. Kevin Avruch currently serves on our board, and he provides wise advice whenever I need it. I also want to recognize Michael Shank who is raising the public consciousness about peacebuilding with his essays that appear regularly in major media outlets. Dennis Sandole also deserves an award for his frequently published letters and op-eds. Financial Times should pay him as he gets more ink than their staff journalists!

I am here today because I admire you, the graduating students. I hope your families are proud of you. They should be. You have chosen a vital path; you have studied hard, learned a lot, and passed your exams. I know many on your faculty, and they are among the very best. You have met their high standards, and you are well-equipped to launch your careers. You have taken that famous first step on your thousand mile journey. May the rest be enjoyable and fruitful.

Every older generation criticizes the next younger generation. It’s a prerogative we earn by living so long. But I can’t do that today. Yes, I worry about self-indulgence, eyes glued to computer screens, and muscle-bound thumbs from excessive exercise on the X-box controls. But that’s not what I see. I’ve met hundreds of students and young professionals, and I am overwhelmed with your knowledge, your values, your skills, and your commitment. You inspire me, and I know the world is in good hands. I’m not the older generation criticizing the younger generation. I look to you as the generation that will correct the dreadful mistakes my generation has made and put squarely in your laps.

We hosted an official launch for this last week, but here's some more information on this year's Global Peace Index, from the Financial Times. Check out the full link below, but the top five countries this year are:

Iceland
Denmark
Norway
New Zealand
Japan

Lisa Curtis of the Heritage Foundation is recently back from Pakistan and has published a great memo on the political and security challenges confronting the country after February's elections:

Full details after the jump.

Zbigniew Brzezinski and retired Lt. General William Odom argue in today's Washington Post that the current U.S.

The Wilson Center's Africa Program and ENOUGH are pleased to invite you to a discussion of the upcoming Presidential Run-off election in Zimbabwe.

With: Ray Choto, Senior Editor, Voice of America, Zimbabwe Desk

Jamal Jafari, Senior Peace Fellow, Public International Law and Policy Group (PILPG), and Consultant, ENOUGH Campaign

Dileepan Sivapathasundaram, Senior Program Officer, National Democratic Institute for International Affairs

Gayle Smith, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress and Co-Chair of the ENOUGH Campaign

Moderator: Howard Wolpe, Director, Africa Program

Date: Wednesday, May 28th, 2008, 10:00 to 11:30AM

Where: 6th Floor Auditorium of the Woodrow Wilson Center in the Ronald Reagan Building. One Woodrow Wilson Plaza, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Washington, DC

Dara International Presents: The Humanitarian Response Index

Assessing the effectiveness of humanitarian aid from the U.S. and other donors
and measuring commitment to best practices.

Featuring:

• Moises Naim, Editor-in-Chief, Foreign Policy
• Larry Minear, Director of the Humanitarianism & War Project, Tufts
  University’s Feinstein Famine Center
• Augusto Lopez-Claros, Director, Humanitarian Response Index
• Riccardo Polastro, Head, Evaluation Department, DARA

Wednesday, May 21, 2008
9:00 - 11:00 a.m.
(continental breakfast begins at 8:30 a.m.)

Location: 1800 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Room #2006 (2nd Fl), Washington DC
One block off Dupont Circle, next to Carnegie and SAIS

A roundup of relevant hearings on the Hill this week:

Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
2:45pm
419 Dirksen

Pakistan's FATA Challenge: Securing One of the World's Most Dangerous Areas
Presiding: Senator Kerry

Panel 1:

• The Honorable John D. Negroponte
  Deputy Secretary of State, Department of State

Panel 2:

• Mr. Gene Dodaro
  Acting Comptroller General, Government Accountability Office

House Committee on Foreign Affairs
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
1:00pm
2172 Rayburn

The U.S.-Israel-Egypt Trilateral Relationship: Shoring Up the Foundation of Regional Peace
Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia
Gary L. Ackerman (D-NY), Chairman

Witnesses:

• The Honorable Daniel C. Kurtzer
  Lecturer and S. Daniel Abraham Professor, Middle Eastern Policy Studies, Princeton University
• Mr. David Makovsky
  Senior Fellow and Director, Project on the Middle East Peace Process, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy

A bus in Pakistan, taken from the PCR Project Co-Directors trip to Pakistan in April 2008.

This is a couple of weeks old, but it's worth drawing attention to, especially ahead of John Negroponte's Amateur Innovators

From Yglesias, there's a new paper out discussing a shift in what prompts innovations.

Contributed by Mehlaqa Samdani, adviser to the PCR Project, CSIS

18th Amendment

Mohammad Ehsan Zia wrote an article for the Christian Science Monitor detailing the success of the National Solidarity Program (NSP) in Afghanistan.

Check out this great map of the Federally Administered Tribal Regions (FATA) and the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) in Pakistan. Source: Wikimedia Commons

In our report last September, "A Perilous Course," the PCR Project found that the United States was spending a significant amount of aid to Pakistan on it's military.

According to James Glanz (NY Times), Patrick Cockburn's (a former ISP, PCR Project Fellow) newest book, "Muqtada," "goes a l

With the junta's intransigence, it's been suggested that the best way to get food aid to the victims of the cyclone in Burma is just to do airdrops - with or without the Burmese government's approval.

Research Associate position (scroll down on link)– Future of Peace Operations program at the Henry L. Stimson Center.

Each year, the International Journalism Exchange program invites up to 10 editors from print media in the developing countries where media assistance is needed.The International Journalism Exchange is administered by the International Center for Journalists, in partnership with the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

Brian Vogt, a Senior Advisor at the Partnership for a Secure America (PSA), wrote a great blog post on PSA's blog,

The U.S. Army Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute (PKSOI) was established in 2003 as an integral component of the Center for Strategic Leaderhsip at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pa. The Institute's charter and structure are designed to meet the future needs of the U.S. Army and the U.S.

A picture from PCR Project Co-directors, Rick Barton and Karin von Hippel's trip to Pakistan in mid-April.

Please join us tomorrow! 

Wednesday, May 14, 2008
3:00pm-4:30pm

4th floor conference room
CSIS | 1800 K Street, NW | Washington, DC 20006

Featuring:
Nicholas Schmidle, Fellow, New American Foundation
Joshua White, Research Fellow, Council on Faith and International Affairs

Moderated by:
Rick Barton and Karin von Hippel, Co-Directors, PCR Project, CSIS

Rsvp to pcrproject@csis.org.
Bios and more info after the jump.

Cool new book out (Peace as Governance) that looks at negotiation incentives used in peace agreements - excerpt:

In order to end armed conflict, and ensure that it does not recur, numerous tactics are used by national governments, the international community, and others engaged in conflict resolution. These tactics include amnesties, financial rewards, offers of inclusion in structures of power, and threats of reprisal and use of force, among myriad others. There is a thriving debate in the literature regarding the appropriate tactics and incentives for peace negotiations, as well as the peacebuilding processes promoted by the international community.

Back on the innovations front, this article from the New Yorker takes a look at how (and how often) big ideas come about.

Full details after the jump.

SEARCH FOR COMMON GROUND

Program Director, Middle East

Based in Jerusalem, Israel

Job Description / Announcement

Alliance for Peacebuilding is pleased to invite you to participate in a Collaboration Connections meeting on Sri Lanka on Thursday, June 12, 2008 from 9:30am – 1:00pm in the Alliance for Peacebuilding conference room (11 Dupont Circle, NW, 2nd Floor).

Contributed by Mehlaqa Samdani, adviser to the PCR Project, CSIS

The Restoration Issue:

May 12 – the new deadline for the restoration of the deposed judges is only three days away and there appears to be no breakthrough in negotiations between the two main parties, the PPP and the PML-N.  Could this prove to be the beginning of the end of the Zardari-Sharif partnership?

 Hezbollah is seizing control of Beirut in continued fighting:

The Washington Post created a satellite view of the flooding in Myanmar after cyclone Nargis hit last weekend.

Fred Kaplan explains that any increase in U.S.

Badshahi Mosque, Lahore, Pakistan

Flickr photo by Michael Foley Photography under the Creative Commons license.

 Sperwan Ghar, Afghanistan

Flickr photo by lafrancevi under the Creative Commons license.

Foreign aid is a complex issue.  Oxfam’s new Foreign Aid 101: a quick and easy guide to understanding foreign aid helps break it down into something everyone can understand. A couple of the main points:

The Washington Quarterly published a graphical representation of the 2002 and 2007 Pew polls showing the decline in favorable opinion of the United States in the world.

Listen to PCR Project Co-Director Karin von Hippel on BFBS Radio (UK) discussing her recent trip to Pakistan and the role the country plays in the war in Afghanistan.

Devastation hits Myanmar with approx. 4,000 reported dead from the cyclone over the weekend. In the fall, Myanmar was in the headlines for the brutal crackdown of the junta government on monks protesting what they considered harsh military rule. It will be interesting to see how the military government responds to this major natural disaster.

Full details after the jump.

On April 29th, the PCR Project and the South Asia Program hosted "A Democratic Opening? Impressions from Post-Election Pakistan." (For more information on speakers and background on the event, see Shannon's post.)

A roundup of relevant hearings on the Hill next week:

House Committee on Foreign Affairs
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
10:00am
2172 Rayburn

Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health
Oversight Hearing: Higher Education in Africa: Making the Link between Intellectual Capital and Regional Development

Witnesses:
Panel I

• Mr. Franklin Moore
  Deputy Assistant Administrator, Bureau for Africa, U.S. Agency for International Development

Panel II

• M. Peter McPherson, Ph.D.
  President, National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges
• Suresh Babu, Ph.D.
  Senior Research Fellow, International Food Policy Research Institute

We've been looking into extraterritorial application of the Establishment Clause lately and are discovering more and more how unclear and confusiong legal points can be.  This story on whether or

Here's a cool site that shows the results from interviews with 1,050 residents in the FATA (Freely-Administered Tribal Areas) in Pakistan. The report is impressive and comprehensive, with tidbits like the following: