Theater kids

Theater kids Received this from a friend? [SUBSCRIBE]( CRITICAL STATE Your weekly foreign policy fix. [The World]( [INKSTICK]( If you read just one thing … … read about self-fulfilling prophecies. When the US began sending security assistance to counter terrorism in Burkina Faso in 2009, there wasn’t much terrorism to counter. By 2020, however, over a million civilians had been displaced by conflicts between the government and various Islamist militant groups, including affiliates of al-Qaeda and ISIS. Between 2015 and 2020, militants, government forces, and pro-government militias killed well over 2,000 civilians in the country. That’s a bleak record of preventing terrorism by any measure, but, according to a new [report]( from the Costs of War project, US security assistance not only failed to stop the killing, it actually helped drive the expanding violence. By vastly increasing Burkina Faso’s military budget and drawing the country into a global war-on-terror narrative that pitted the US and its partners against al-Qaeda and ISIS, US intervention helped turn local Burkinabe political issues into international problems that demanded a military solution. Displacement in Iraq A new [report]( from American University of Iraq details the political challenges involved in getting internally displaced Iraqis who wish to return home back to their places of origin. Though the security situation in much of Iraq is far more stable than it was at the heights of the various civil wars that have gripped the country since the US invasion in 2003, sovereignty is still fragmented in many areas. Often, aspiring returnees need to navigate a dizzying array of militias and local organizations to be allowed back into their old homes. In Anbar province, for example, it is much more difficult for displaced people to return to areas on the edge of the province because those areas are under the de facto control of mostly Shiite militias that do not recognize the permits issued by the provincial government. The Iraqi government continues closing camps for displaced people in an effort to encourage people to return to their homes. Understanding who does and does not have the political capacity to return will be crucial to determining who is made most vulnerable by the closures. [FORWARD TO A FRIEND]( Gertler out of jail free card The US sanctioned Israeli mining magnate Dan Gertler in 2017 in an attempt to prevent him from continuing to make what the Treasury Department called “opaque and corrupt mining and oil deals” in Democratic Republic of Congo. According to the designation, Gertler had established a self-dealing monopoly on mining rights in DR Congo, costing the Congolese government $1.36 billion in lost mining revenues over a three-year period. At the end of his presidency, however, Donald Trump [issued]( a waiver that put Gertler back in business. Now, the Biden administration has [revoked that waiver](. The waiver came after Gertler hired Alan Dershowitz, a prominent member of Trump’s defense team in his first impeachment trial, to advocate on his behalf. Along with the Congolese government, Congolese miners were also often the victims of Gertler’s schemes. In one case, he sold a mine that he had bought for cheap in a corrupt deal at a huge profit, failing to pay severance to any of the workers who lost their jobs in the deal. [FORWARD TO A FRIEND]( [• • •] DEEP DIVE When it rains, it wars: Part II Last week on Deep Dive, we began our look at interactions between different forms of insecurity with an article about how post-electoral tensions condition sexual violence against civilians. This week, we’ll turn from threats facing civilians to threats facing combatants. A new [article]( by political scientists Yasutaka Tominaga and Chia-yi Lee examines incidents in which, to use their evocative title, “disasters hit civil wars.” There is a great deal of back and forth in the literature about what actually happens when a hurricane or volcanic eruption or the like hits an area primed for — or already embroiled in — civil conflict. Some researchers look at the deprivations brought on by natural disasters and see flames hitting a tinderbox: Disasters can separate people further from the central government and disrupt the established economy in a way that opens up opportunities for violent political contestation. In their view, disasters are actual drivers of conflict. Other researchers, though, see disasters as snuffing those same flames. To them, the disruptions caused by disasters prevent potential rebels from gathering the resources they need to launch a real rebellion, leading to a reduction in the risk of conflict. Both sides have compelling examples that illustrate their arguments, which suggests, unsatisfyingly, that they’re both right some of the time. How can we tell who to trust in which cases, though? Enter Tominaga and Lee, who offer a theory about when disasters help and hurt rebel resilience. Their theory relies on an explanatory variable familiar to scholars of civil wars: the extent to which rebels rely on exploiting natural resources to earn their money. In the past, natural resource reliance has been put forward as an explanation for rebel violence against civilians, sexual violence, and coercive recruitment strategies, all through somewhat roundabout logical pathways. For Tominaga and Lee, however, the connection between natural resource reliance and rebel resilience after disasters is very clear: The disasters destroy the resources (or at least make them harder to access). No more natural resources for a resource-reliant insurgency means no more money, which in turn means a dramatically reduced capacity to carry on the fight. To test their theory, Tominaga and Lee put together a list of all the rapid-onset natural disasters in recent years that had hit areas of civil conflict and a list of all the insurgencies in those areas coded by the extent of their reliance on natural resources. Before the disasters hit, they found, the resource-reliant insurgencies were quite strong. If there are mines, farms, or oil wells, and you can access their wealth in one way or another, it turns out you can keep your rebel groups going for quite a while, even under state pressure. After disasters, however, the resource-reliant groups were greatly weakened in comparison to their non-resource-reliant counterparts. What’s more, the worse the disaster, the worse the disparity became. A storm bad enough to kill a few people was a major annoyance to resource-reliant rebels, but a storm bad enough to kill hundreds was a potential death knell. The two main ways rebels extract money from the natural resource trade is extortion and smuggling. Extortion takes place at the source — rebels take protection payments from farmers or mine owners. Smuggling, however, is a fee-for-service business and requires rebels to set up significant infrastructure to be able to move goods effectively. In normal times, Tominaga and Lee found, being an extorter is better than being a smuggler — there are fewer costs, and the profit margin can be astronomical. After disasters, however, smugglers fare better than extorters. If the disaster has flooded the mine or washed away the crop, there’s nothing to protect. But smuggling infrastructure is adaptable — and there are always things to be smuggled. These kinds of small, tangible distinctions between conflicts make for fertile ground for researchers. When no single overall theory can explain the interaction between two forms of insecurity, differences in outcomes often come down to a rebel group’s choice between smuggling and extortion as a money-making scheme. As researchers continue to investigate the intersections between drivers of insecurity, more small inflection points will reveal themselves. [FORWARD TO A FRIEND]( [• • •] SHOW US THE RECEIPTS Rupa Shenoy [examined]( the Biden administration’s curious lack of movement on rolling back US sanctions against staff at the International Criminal Court at The Hague. The Trump administration imposed the sanctions in response to the ICC’s investigation of alleged war crimes by US troops in Afghanistan, prompting mass international outcry. Many assumed that Biden would immediately cancel the sanctions as part of the new administration's break with the Trump era, but the sanctions remain under review. Part of the reason may be a recent ruling by the court giving itself jurisdiction over Palestinian territories occupied by Israel. The ruling enraged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and has made the prospect of targeting functionaries at a major international institution appealing to some of Netanyahu’s allies. Alexander Thurston [interrogated]( the international community’s response to recent presidential elections in Niger. The two rounds of voting were marred by irregularities and the final vote tallies strained credulity among experts. Yet, both regional governments and France — which plays an outsized role in Nigerien politics — have rushed to congratulate the ostensible winner and prevent an investigation into election processes. The rush, Thurston argues, is the result of a misplaced preference for stability in Niger. If Nigeriens can’t hold their government accountable through elections, things there may not remain stable for long. Shirin Jaafari [reported]( on the deadly challenges facing Pakistani health workers attempting to deliver COVID-19 vaccines in the country. Mistrust of vaccines is widespread in Pakistan, especially in rural areas near the border with Afghanistan, where a 2011 CIA operation that used vaccinations as a cover to hunt Osama bin Laden still reverberates. Sometimes the mistrust can turn deadly — over 100 people have been killed doing public health work in Pakistan since 2012. The Pakistani government has launched a major campaign to convince people to embrace the COVID-19 vaccine, but early returns are discouraging. Almost half of respondents in a recent poll said they would not get vaccinated. [FORWARD TO A FRIEND]( [ ] WELL PLAYED Jack actually has this slightly wrong [here]( — it’s not movie theaters that the Pentagon is obsessed with, but the stages of the West End and the Great White Way. That’s why all the military academies redact the title of the Scottish play in their English classes and every time there’s a uniform redesign someone suggests making dress uniforms out of red and yellow leather. [This]( was a compelling pitch, but Air Force officials thought Colorado Springs offered a better setting for planned yearly productions of “The Sound of Music” put on by the European theater kids. [This]( is the confirmation hearing version of this (except that Kahl is scoring more of an own goal with his opposition to No First Use). Shame on the editor who didn’t [title]( this story “Cs In Paris.” “[Kill Everything](.” If you want to learn more about the specifics of the Geneva Conventions, check out [this]( Twitter account about how video games let you violate them. [FORWARD TO A FRIEND]( Follow The World: [fb]( [tw]( [ig]( [www]( [DONATE TO THE WORLD]( Follow Inkstick: [fb]( [tw]( [ig]( [www]( [DONATE TO INKSTICK]( Critical State is written by Sam Ratner and is a collaboration between The World and Inkstick Media. The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news and insights from PRX and GBH. With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.” Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. [Preferences]( | [Web Version]( [Unsubscribe](