International politics

Saturday

Peter Hoskin

Money talks in Afghanistan

Afghan politics stinks; we all know it.  But it’s still shocking to read how the former governor of Helmand, Sher Mohammed Akhundzada, encouraged his supporters to join the Taliban after he lost his position, in 2005, under a cloud of drug-running allegations.  Here’s what he tells today’s Telegraph:   “When I was no longer governor the government stopped paying for the people who supported me ….  I sent 3,000 of them off to the Taliban because I could not afford to support them but the Taliban was making payments. Lots of people, including my family members, went back to the Taliban because they had lost respect for the government. The

Peter Hoskin

Behind the closed doors of Brussels

Today’s Times carries a cracking account of all the wheeling and dealing that went on during the EU jobs fair this week.  Here are some of the most striking points that I’ve culled from it: i) Brown rejected advice from Mandelson and other ministers that he should try and secure one of the EU’s financial roles for a British candidate. ii) There are claims that Brown was “persuaded” into accepting the EU High Representative role for Britain by Europe’s Socialist leaders along with José Manuel Barroso. iii) There are also claims that Brown did a deal with the French to get Baroness Ashton appointed, by which a French MEP, Michel

Tuesday

John Stokes

The West’s intelligence deficit on Iran

At the headquarters of the Defense Intelligence Agency outside of Washington DC, there are no cardboard mockups of Iran’s nuclear sites that can be used for briefing the military on plans of attack. Instead, there is a very cool 3D map table that allows the viewer to fly into and through the many layers of the nuclear facilities. A movement of the hands can expand or contract the view from an image of an individual room to the perspective from an overhead satellite. On the basis of that briefing, an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites looks easy, right down to the dialing in of the depth at which a new

Daniel Korski

Can you be pro-British and pro-European?

Last night in a speech at the IISS, David Milliband laid out the case against the Tories’ Europe policy. As he started off saying: “It is very strongly in the British national interest for the EU to develop a strong foreign policy; that to be frightened of European foreign policy is blinkered, fatalistic and wrong; that Britain should embrace it, shape it and lead it.” In that one sentence lies the case for Britain’s role in shaping a liberal, open and outward-focused EU. It is probably also the line of attack that the Foreign Secretary will use against the Tories until election day and possibly beyond, if Miliband eventually assumes

Peter Hoskin

Who’s lobbying for Blair?

Isn’t it funny how things change?  A few years ago, Brown could barely stand to talk to Blair.  But now, according to the Guardian, he’s got civil servants lobbying on the former Prime Minister’s behalf in Europe: “Gordon Brown has asked two of his most senior civil servants to lobby discreetly within Europe for Tony Blair to become its new president amid warnings from allies in government that the former prime minister will lose his chance unless he launches a dynamic campaign. John Cunliffe, the prime minister’s most senior Europe adviser, and Kim Darroch, Britain’s EU ambassador, are taking soundings at senior levels. David Miliband, meanwhile, has also intensified Britain’s

Monday

Daniel Korski

Karadzic may be in the dock, but his legacy lives on

After 14 years on the run, Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb wartime leader, is finally being brought to justice. Today, prosecutors at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) charged Karadzic with 11 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. According to the indictment, Karadzic was one of the authors of a plan to “permanently remove” Bosnian Muslims and Croats from Bosnian Serb-claimed territory. It details allegations of two counts of genocide, including for the July 1995 massacre of around 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica. But the charge also details a hellish litany of crimes, including allegations of persecution, extermination, murder, rape, and deportation

Peter Hoskin

What does this mean for the Lisbon Treaty?

To sign or not to sign?  For the past week or so, we’ve been hearing reports about how the Czech President, Václav Klaus, has decided, reluctantly, to accept the Lisbon Treaty.  But a story in today’s Times suggests that he’s still holding out against ratification.  Here’s the key passage: “Václav Klaus, the Czech President, who is the last hurdle to full ratification of the Lisbon treaty, has made a final attempt to derail the agreement. In a submission to the Czech constitutional court, which will decide tomorrow whether the treaty is compatible with the country’s constitution, Mr Klaus has suggested that it should be subject to a referendum. … The

Sunday

Daniel Korski

Karzai the Envoy Slayer

I have just returned from DC, where the talk of the town, or at least of the foreign policy community, is how long Richard Holbrooke has left in the Obama administration. A well-connected friend suggested The Bulldozer has, at most, two months left. Perhaps most telling has been Holbrooke’s absence in the recent efforts to persuade Hamid Karzai to accept a second round of voting in the presidential election. The Economist hailed John Kerry’s impromptu diplomacy, which secured Karzai’s consent and gave Holbrooke the epithet “now-absent”. Diplomats I have spoken to say President Karzai is currently refusing to see Holbrooke at all, possibly sensing a chance to divide and weaken

Tuesday

David Blackburn

Repeating the same mistakes

The BBC reports that President Karzai has given into mounting pressure and called a run-off, to be held on the 7th November. My gut instinct is that the run-off will prove a costly mistake, in terms of money, men and politics. The sole purpose of these elections is to emphasise that Kabul is the centre of government. That the government’s writ hardly extends beyond the bazaar and its authors are discredited is neither here nor there. It is plain that elements of the Taliban are fighting to protect judicial rights from Kabul’s interference; and presumably, these warlords can be bought through a combination of cash and administrative privileges. As Paddy

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

The right decision

There’s little more to add to Alex’s take on the news that Geert Wilders has won his appeal against the Home Office decision to bar him from the UK.  While there’s much about the Dutch MP which makes me feel uneasy, preventing him entry to this country always struck me as a needless and potentially inflammatory move.  Now, happily, that wrong has been righted, and there’s just one question left: will Jacqui issue yet another apology?* *Ahem, of course she won’t.  The Home Office is already saying that it may fight today’s ruling.

Saturday

Peter Hoskin

The Tories will be thrilled if Brown starts playing the World Saver again

Patrick Wintour has an insightful article in today’s Guardian, setting out how and why Brown has dithered when it comes to deploying the c-word.  So far as the current landscape is concerned, this passage is particularly striking: “There is tension between Brown and Darling on how far the campaign can be based on Brown’s achievements in saving the world economy, and how far it must be based on visions of the future. Brown’s determination to dwell on the fact that he made the correct big decisions in the recession has been one cause of his past reluctance to address the future deficit mountain, and how to deal with it. It

Friday

Peter Hoskin

How quickly things change

Spot the difference: 5 September, 2009: Gordon Brown warns G20 countries against reining in spending, The Telegraph “Britain is resisting pressure from Germany and other Euro-currency countries who are planning to moves towards an ‘exit strategy’ that would see some of the planned anti-recessionary spending programmes being scaled back to cut rising national debts.” 18 September, 2009: Gordon Brown to call for international agreement to cut public spending, The Telegraph “Mr Brown says ‘exit strategies’ from the emergency fiscal measures that were introduced to stave off the worst excesses of the recession need to be agreed by all the leading nations. The Prime Minister will tell world leaders that a

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson

An empty chair for Monbiot

Why do the high priests of climate change alarmism fear debate so much? Part of their litany is a desire to avoid coming face to face with academics or scientists who are specialists in their subject and might be able to debunk their prejudices. I actually didn’t put George Monbiot in that category, regarding him as an “informed” opponent of what I regard as global warming realism. One of the things I inherited as editor was an invitation for him to come and debate Ian Plimer, whom James Delingpole interviewed for our cover recently. Today, in what is an act of desperation for any columnist, he has published private emails

Wednesday

Daniel Korski

What happens next in Afghanistan?

The latest results from Afghanistan’s presidential election are showing that the incumbent President Hamid Karzai has garnered 54.1 percent of the vote after 92 percent of polling stations declared. Crucially, this puts him above the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a run-off with rival Abdullah Abdullah. But the result has been greeted with derision by observers, while the Election Complaints Commission (ECC) has said a recount and inspection should be done for any polling station where 600 or more votes were cast, or where any single candidate got more than 95% of votes. So what happens next? First of all, expect a fight to develop between the Independent Election

Monday

James Forsyth

The government contradicts itself on Megrahi

David Miliband on the Today Programme on September 2nd: “We did not want him [Megrahi] to die in prison.” Ed Balls on the Today Programme on September 7th: “None of us wanted to see the release of al-Megrahi” Considering that Megrahi was sentenced to life imprison for his role in the Lockerbie bombing, I cannot see how both of these statements of the government’s view can be correct. If the government did not want him to die in prison, it wanted him to be released.

Sunday

David Blackburn

Gadaffi was the magnet that sent the government’s moral compass awry

The al-Megrahi story has rolled on for two weeks, and CoffeeHousers have probably had more than their fill; but every morning brings new revelations that undermine the government’s position further. Today, the Sunday Times reports that Gordon Brown, having been in favour of such a deal initially, vetoed the proposal that Libya pay compensation to IRA victims who were killed with arms supplied by Gadaffi. In a letter to the victims’ lawyer, dated 7 October 2008 (around the time Alex Salmond urged Jack Straw to take advantage of the fact that the PTA had stalled by renegotiating the agreement to exclude the Lockerbie bomber), Brown wrote: “The UK government does not

Saturday

James Campbell

Blair the chameleon?

A new book on John Howard’s government, by the veteran Australian politcal journalist Paul Kelly, has a nice account of the Australian PM’s first encounter with Tony Blair: “At one point John Howard, trying to be clever, asked Tony Blair: ‘What are you going to do with the Thatcher legacy?’ Blair paused, he sat up straight, extended his arms and broke into a huge grin. ‘I’m going to take the lot,[ he chortled. Blair laughed but Howard seemed stunned. It wasn’t the answer he expected. On his return to the hotel Howard was fuming. ‘That man’s a bloody chameleon. He doesn’t stand for anything,’ Howard declared.”

David Blackburn

Straw: Megrahi included in PTA because of trade concerns 

One question that arises from the publication the Lockerbie documents is why Jack Straw suddenly decided against excluding al-Megrahi from the PTA? Straw justified his change of heart on the grounds of “overwhelming national interests”, though trade and commercial interests were not a contributing factor in that calculation, a point he reiterated last weekend. But, in an interview with the Telegraph today, Straw contradicts himself: ‘”Yes, it (trade deals with Libya) was a very big part of that (including al-Megrahi in the PTA). I’m unapologetic about that. Libya was a rogue state. We wanted to bring it back into the fold and trade is an essential part of it –

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A devastating assessment

This quote from a retired aide to General Petraeus about the British performance in Basra is, as Alex Massie says, devastating: “The British failure in Basra was not due to the conduct of British troops, which was exemplary. It was, rather, a failure by senior British civilian and military leaders to understand the political dynamics … in Iraq, compounded by arrogance that led to an unwillingness to learn and adapt, along with increasing reluctance to risk blood and treasure to conduct effective counter-insurgency warfare… …British commanders attempted to cut deals with local Shia leaders to maintain the peace in southern Iraq, an accommodation that was doomed to failure since the

Friday

David Blackburn

Brown’s Afghanistan speech was encouraging, but the strategy’s still flawed

Brown’s delivery may have been beyond sepulchral, but the content was encouraging. He laid out how Afghan stability is being bolstered by the increased activity and competence of Afghan security forces, the replacement of the heroin crop with wheat, an intensification of government in rural hinterlands and by arresting urban corruption. At least there now seems to be a degree of co-ordination between coalition and Afghan security operations, civic reconstruction and the administration of government. These are welcome changes but there is still no overarching sense of what the ‘Afghan mission’ hopes to achieve, beyond the dubious contention that it will make the West safer. As a result, a number