Terror

Following Up on Gaslighting – Why This Is So Dangerous – About Recent German Police Raids Related to Reichsbuerger

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December 04, just four days ago, I wrote “The Reason For Storytelling: If You and I Don’t, Only Others Do – On Gaslighting Taken To a Global Level“. I referred to the outrageous remarks of the 45th President of the United States, with which he called for dissolving the Constitution of the United States. He continues to insist that widespread fraud and manipulation of the elections would have taken the Presidency away from him, claiming that the entire system of U.S. governance, the Democratic Party, and a cabale of secret networks is conspiring against “the people”. Until today he claims to be the rightful winner of the 2020 elections. On that basis he doubled down once more, and not for the last time, ever more eroding values and norms. The result just being a continuation of a discourse on the basis of outrage, and antagonisation. Like on so many occasions before, the world is waking up after such remarks with a new extreme, and because of that also a “new normal”. The next escalation, as always, is just around the corner.

The point of my concern continues to be that any strategy which is just explaining this as a M.O. of a sociopathic narcissistic individual is disregarding the wider picture: Of course a delusional persona with such disorders has no other means at hand. Such a person is simply not able to back down. If allowed, Nr. 45 will be like the Roman Emperor Nero. And I do remember having read that Nr. 45 studied Hitler’s “Mein Kampf”. People wrote about that book on his bedside table. From there, I also remember Hitlers “Beer Hall Putsch” in November 1923. Jailed after this putsch attempt, Hitler wrote “Mein Kampf”. I can’t help but think of January 6, 2021, as a possible prelude to the worse.

I made my choice to consider a red line being crossed a long time ago: January 26, 2017 Nr 45, newly elected to Presidential office, sat in front of TV cameras and said “Torture works“. We know what happened since then, it was just the beginning.

The point is, as said above, that everytime a line is crossed, something unimaginable has become the new order. This reality then permeates into the lifes of many people, not only into the minds of sick extremists, racists, anti-semites, conspiracy theorists. Society at large undergoes a shift in perception. It is there where the responsibility of the many kicks in. Disregarding, denying, ridiculing, minimising, instead of forcefully rejecting, it is the real factor in how previous norms erode.

No doubt, strategic minds on the side of hateful extremists (who are globally networked) know that, and use these tactics to perfection. In the concrete example at hand, the recent cycle started with a dinner of Ye and Fuentes in Mar-El-Lago. Next thing we saw was Nr. 45 throwing smoke grenades of minimising, and pretendiung innocence. Next thing were even more awful public statements from Ye, and Fuentes, in Alex Jones’ show. After which Nr. 45 then moved to calling for the dissolution of the Constitution. Finally, what we saw after that, was another interview of Ye, calling on Jewish people to forgive Hitler. He did so in a conversation with Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes. If you google it, you also see what I said earlier: The number of hits in mainstream news where this was reported is huge. Another “new normal”. And this, let me be clear here, with a statement that, in Germany, would lead to prosecutors investigating a possible crime. To me, a sentence like this one is almost unspeakable. I am horrified, and I hope that Ye will pay a price for this. Unfortunately, I am not so optimistic. Instead, let me apologize to Jewish people, and assure we will undertake everything to not allow the real Holocaust being forgotten, minimised, denied, or justified.

The cool-minded analysis, meanwhile, needs to focus on the larger implications of norms being shifted. John Bolton is a former National Security Adviser to Nr. 45. I know him from his time as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Whilst I disagree with his rude Republican hawkishness which was painfully making life at the U.N. difficult during his Ambassadorship, I deeply credit his analytical skills. December 05, 2022, in an interview with NBC News, he called the former president’s declaration “an existential threat to the republic itself“. If you listen to the interview, everything counts, including what he only indicates: That, if Republican leadership does not denounce this behavior in full, consequences for democracy will be serious.

Why am I focusing on U.S. politics again?

Because, as I wrote in my earlier article, this gaslighting is working like a global set of echo-chambers. It reverberates, it transmits energy, it receives energy, and if the extremist movement manages to create something like “synergy in chaos”, it constitutes a global threat to democracy. May be the most severe we ever witnessed since World War II.

That is why I said: “So, one of my hypothetical thoughts is about whether there will be people on the far-right in Germany who think about how to establish a narrative that the German constitutional order is subject to removal from within, by justifying their resistance in saying that the government and the establishment is the enemy of what the Forefathers, the Founders of our Constitution, meant. This is not far-fetched, and it is the same logic.”

I drew a comparison to how post-WW II-Germany incorporated provisions into our German constitution in order to protect the Constitution from enemies within. In doing that, I referred to how the Nazis managed to overthrow the Constitution of Weimar, and I also linked a song “Kristallnaach”, performed by the German Rock Band “BAP” in the 1980s. “Kristallnaach” is a word in the dialect spoken in the German Region of Cologne. It refers to “Kristallnacht”. The BAP song itself compares xenophobia and fascism and violence which we observed in the 1980s with what happened throughout the real events of the “Reichskristallnacht Progrom” in November 1938. The song was visionary, and provocative in the 1980s, and entirely appropriate. Timeless. And moving me in 2016, when I thought about what was happening in the United States during that time.

If I look back onto those events from January 06, 2021, this was not so far-fetched. Looking onto those incendiary calls from Nr 45 a few days ago, for sure even less.

That was all on December 04, 2022, when I wrote that.

Of course, my thoughts about similar violent phantasies on the side of German far-right extremists are far from hypothetical, but at that moment I wanted to keep it in a thought-realm on far-right extremism, which is on the rise in Germany since a number of years. Like it is in other places in Europe, whether inside the European Union, whether in South-East Europe, or Eastern Europe. Or, in the United States. A number of my blog articles have referred to this awful global “ping-pong-game.” This rise of reactionary fascist xenophobic thinking, with a global attitude including to take rights away from women, and now going far beyond white supremacy by mainstreaming awful anti-semitism, it comes with many different facets. Recently, Indonesia decided on a law making extra-marital sex a crime. Just an example.

Well, a few days later, German and international news are filled with reporting about a huge raid by German authorities, under the lead of the “Generalbundesanwaltschaft”, in English the “German Federal Prosecution Office”.

Here are a few links to recent raids targeting suspected armed members of the far-right extremist Reichsbuerger-Bewegung: Tagesschau as of December 07 (GERMAN); German Federal Minister of the Interior in Tagesschau as of December 07 (GERMAN); Tagesschau on Reichsbuerger Background as of December 07 (GERMAN); Reporting on the German raid in BBC as of December 07 (ENGLISH); Reporting on the German raid in New York Times as of December 07 (ENGLISH).

The headline of The New York Times as of December 07 tells it all in one sentence: “Germany Arrests Dozens Suspected of Planning to Overthrow Government“.

What happened?

A German noble-man, together with a far-right female member of the German Parliament (also being a judge in Germany), soldiers and former soldiers, as far as I know also an individual with a history of being a police officer, overall as far as the public knows until today at least 25 persons are subject to an unprecedented investigation of German authorities. I’m not repeating the details here, since the article is already too long. But it looks not only like one of the largest raids in German history, involving more than 3000 police officers. It may look like the tip of an ice-berg. The Head of the Federal Intelligence Agency “Bundesverfassungsschutz” is quoted with estimating some 25.000 people radically poisoned by the “Reichsbuerger-Ideology”, with systematic efforts of at least at part of those to arm themselves, with plans of some of them for terrorist attacks, and plans for a larger putsch. At least some investigative links also point towards contacts with dubious Russian operatives.

An incredible story, and ongoing and likely widening. Being a police officer (retired) myself, I am, of course, proud of this vigilance. And certainly, more will be revealed.

Yet, this needs to be understood within the general context of where the shift of values brings us to, as I pointed out above. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier is calling on more civic engagement preserving democratic values.

To quote him: “Die Wehrhaftigkeit der Demokratie beweist sich auch darin, dass sich diejenigen, die anderer Meinung sind, die ein liberales, ein demokratisches, ein offenes Deutschland wollen, lauter äußern, als das gelegentlich der Fall ist.”

In my translation: “The ability of democracy to protect itself is also a function of the extent with which those, who stand in for a liberal, democratic, and open Germany are speaking up with a louder voice than we see it, at times.”

That’s what I mean with the necessity to cultivate storytelling. And these are my humble small contributions.

Some Thoughts on “Never Forget”

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The idea to this post goes back to late summer 2021. Since then, the text sat in my “drafts folder”. Now, one year later, with unprecedented developments happening in East Europe, it is time to pick it up again, to rewrite it according to what has happened since the Russian war of aggression began to rage through the Ukraine, and to finalise it.

September 09, 2021, I came across an article in Balkan Insight, titled “In the Balkans, Let Us Remember to Forget“. The somewhat contradicting title caught my attention. I was enjoying a late summer espresso in a Belgrade street cafe, looking back at living and traveling for more than a decade in the Western Balkans. I love being here, the Western Balkans are somewhat home to me, and I have made it a habit to always connect to the local neighborhoods and to listen to local friends. Like that day in September 2021, in Belgrade’s Innercity, when I had a conversation with a youth activist. Of course, the conversation touched on the question as to which extent people identifying with different nationalities do co-exist. Do they feel like belonging to something they share in common, other than an ever more distant past of an entity called Yugoslavia? How do they establish a joint identity, based on commonly shared memories? The assessment of my friend was somewhat sober: Young generations carry the same feeling of belonging to entities based on “ethnic” narratives. We spoke about how to learn to effectively talk to each other by listening. But the memories of those who talk to each other, including in young generations, they are very different from one place to another.

I spend a lot of time as a digital nomad. The great thing is that I happen to listen to new people everyday, meeting people from all walks of life. Academic discussions are rare, and when I explain what I do, I always struggle with making it as simple as possible.

When I travel to Kopacki Rit, a stunning nature reserve in East Croatia, I sometimes pass through the city of Vucovar, which has a wartime past of unspeakable atrocities. During 87 days of siege in 1991, the city was shelled into rubble by the Yugoslav People’s Army JNA. To quote Wikipedia: “The damage to Vukovar during the siege has been called the worst in Europe since World War II, drawing comparisons with Stalingrad.”

Today, you will see mostly new and non-descript buildings not telling anything about that time long gone. Believe me, under the surface the memories and tensions are still there. Also, I am not so sure any longer that the damage to Vukovar stands out the way it did when the Wikipedia article was written: The damage to cities, towns and villages in the Ukraine is increasing day by day.

If you happen to come to Mostar in Bosnia&Hercegovina as a tourist, you will marvel at the beauty of a historic town with the famously destroyed bridge nicely rebuilt. Not much will give away tension, and segregation. But people on one side of the bridge are identifying as Croats, on the other side as Bosniaks. Live there, and you will soon become aware of the segregation running underneath.

More visible is this segregation, of course, in Mitrovica in Kosovo, the northern part inhabited by Kosovo-Serbs, the southern parts by Kosovo-Albanians. I can not count how often I have been on the West Bridge between 2000 and 2004, with tensions and, at times, violence, flying high.

When, in 2008, I asked a friend in Bosnia&Hercegovina, whether we were still driving in East-Sarajevo or would already be close to central Sarajevo, he responded “No, we are still on our side”. My friend identifies as a Croat, and he was referring to a specific area through which the front-line of Bosnian defence moved forward and backward throughout Sarajevo’s siege by the JNA. He said this more than twenty years later, realized what he had just said, looked surprised, and apologised for his Freudian error. At the same time, our Nanny, who identifies as a Bosniak, would be scared when we were taking our children and her for a walk up at Trebevic, an area from where Serb snipers were killing Sarajevan citizens during the siege.

When, early after the beginning of Russia’s war against the Ukraine, in February and March 2022, I would talk to friends in Serbia, notably here in Belgrade, I would always hear them also talking about their memories of the NATO bombing campaign in 1999. Like with everyone else, including related to those examples I have used above, on Croatia, Bosnia&Hercegovina, and Kosovo, collective memories of the wartime past are still very present here in Serbia. The historical connotation in which those memories happen, they are different from place to place, and so is the narrative related to what happened, or whether it happened at all, why it happened, whether some of these events constitute acts of genocide, or whether things which happened were justified, and just.

But here is the thing which I note these days: There is a collective memory of the trauma which happens when civilian populations suffer, whether through a siege, of through a bombing campaign, or anything else. The memory of trauma and fear, the memory of injury and death, it persists, notwithstanding historical reasons, established narratives, or narratives attempting to falsify history. Whilst the article in Balkan Insight in 2021 is arguing the necessity also to forget, in order to support reconciliation, this is not yet the situation here: These memories are very present.

Over the last days, when I am having coffees with Serbian friends and when I bring up the situation in the Ukraine, their voices go very low. I will hear great sympathy for the suffering of the Ukrainian people, and I see expressions of pain on my friend’s faces. I will hear very clear voices telling me that indiscriminate shelling of the civilian population, that rape, murder, torture of Ukrainian’s by the Russian Army are upsetting my Serbian friends very much, that there is no justification for it, at all. There is a clear distancing from those acts of war crimes, crimes against humanity, other severe crimes. And it appears those feelings go deep. I always will hear references to the fear which my friends remember from their own trauma. Whether the bombing campaign here in Belgrade, whether the siege of Sarajevo. And I guess it is similar elsewhere.

This is where I close the loop between finishing this blog article which I have sitting in my draft folder since one year, and what is in my draft folder since a few days:

First, a select collection of links which I have been compiling:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62922674

https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/europa/isjum-ukraine-graeber-leichen-folter-101.html

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62931224

https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/europa/selenskyj-ukraine-massengrab-103.html

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62945155

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63181475

I could go on an on, but I guess it is enough. From Bucha to Izium, one atrocity is piling on another war crime. To this, the indiscriminate bombing, rocketing, shelling over the past days, justified by the Russian President as revenge for the attack on the Crimean Bridge, it adds. I don’t want to throw even more links into the hodgepodge above, but it is especially this revenge action of the past days which clearly increases the feeling of people here of being upset.

When this war is over, Russia will be remembered for this. The long-term image of how we look at the Russian people will be severely damaged for a generation, or more. What this murderous Russian regime and the atrocities committed by the Russian army is doing pales anything we have seen on the European continent since the Yugoslav wars. The impact on the World order is so huge because one of the constituting powers defining the post WW2 order, dealing with the unimaginable atrocities committed by Germany, and others (notably including Russia), now tramples down the very foundations of what we collectively hoped to set up in the name of humanity.

Though genocide is genocide, and holding every nation accountable for systematic violations of the laws regulating armed conflict is a necessity of applying justice to violations of international laws, it has always been psychologically different to see these crimes being committed by nations far away, or so-called minor powers.

Yet, here we have a former superpower committing atrocities, whether in Chechnya, or in Syria, or through delegation to mercenaries in places like Africa or the Middle East. But the fact that this now is also happening in the very heart of Europe, with systemic occurrence and being part of a brutal plan of intimidation and oppression, it will haunt the individual Russian and the Russian society for decades to come. I was a child in post-war Germany and I have many individual memories about people from other nations neighbouring Germany hissing at me. As a little child, I wouldn’t understand. As a little child from Russia, they will not understand. Any process of reconciliation will last decades. And the responsibility for this, including criminal liability, lies with Russian leadership, including the person holding the office of President of the Russian Federation.

Yes, it is, in some ways, important to be able to forget, in order to forgive. But some things shall never be forgotten, otherwise the term “Never Again” becomes not only violated in so many cases, but becomes simply irrelevant. Whether it is the Holocaust, or the genocides of Srebrenica, Rwanda, or so many other places, or the crimes against humanity committed by Russia in the Ukraine, they shall never be forgotten.

Predictability in Complex Environments – Cognitive Bias Codex

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April 20, 2021 I wrote a blog post “Futuretelling” on occasion of media informing about the report “Global Trends 2040”, a product of the collective of American intelligence agencies, issued then on occasion of a new Presidential administration (the Biden administration) taking the helm. I’d like to revisit the issue, almost one and a half years later.

“Global Trends 2040” revolves around five core assessments:

Global challenges include climate change, disease, financial crises, and technology disruptions. The report stated that they are likely to manifest more frequently and intensely in almost every region and country. Their impact on states and societies will create stress, or even catastrophic shock. The report assessed the pandemic as “the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come.“

Fragmentation flows from the predicted transnational or global challenges. Overwhelming threats will lead to a reflex breaking apart, or threatening, globalisation.

Disequilibrium was the third theme of the report. The report focusses on its effects in a widening gap between what societies, communities, and individuals expect from governance and services, and what they can deliver. Doubts in the benefits of democratic governance, the profound inability of systems of international order to provide peace, security, and other important challenges to the sixteen Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations create a perfect storm.

Contestation was the fourth theme. Wealthy societies pump their reserves into handling the crisis, and into the race of getting out on the other side in the best position for competing, on economical and power levels. Conflict, violence, exodus, displacement, migration will have an effect on more developed societies. In a way, this amplifies fragmentation and antagonisation.

Adaption being the final theme, it means that profound changes will ultimately end in a new equilibrium. The question is how such a new system state may look like. Or, how much of our current one is left, and what will be the new reality.

To me, the core statement of “Global Trends 2040” is that we are passing through a phase of profound global system change, or paradigm change.

That was spring 2021. “Global Trends 2040” was written during the Covid-19 pandemic, so it was somewhat easy for the authors to qualify an existing pandemic as “the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II“. Then, summer 2021 brought the catastrophic events around the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taleban, and a crushing defeat of the West’s ambitions for Afghanistan over two decades. Spring 2022 saw the beginning of a war of aggression by the Russian Federation against the Ukraine. Motivation and publicly voiced rationale by the Russian President went, from the outset on, far beyond his claims related to the Ukraine, and related to overthrow the Ukrainian government. From the West’s perspective it is an attack against the West, it’s systems and it’s values. The Russian President describes this as a threat against Russia, claiming to act in self-defense. Of course, I have a clear position here joining those who state this is a brazen and aggressive move attempting to overthrow an existing order, and violating fundamental principles enshrined in international treaties. But on various occasions since then I have also acknowledged that it depends on where people live, and which cultural and historical ties they have grown up with, whether they join this assessment, or blame the West. This is a war on multiple levels, including information warfare, a war of systems against each other, a war of economies, a war of dogma how to prevail, and to govern. The physical battlefields are local or regional, information warfare happens in cyberspace, and the conflict is ultimately global.

So I wonder how the events of 2021 and 2022 would have been reflected in the wording of the report issued in spring 2021, if these events would already have been on the books of history by the time of writing. If already the pandemic posed the greatest disruption since WWII, it has only gotten worse since then.

With lightning speed, the World is continuing to change. Nobody would have anticipated, even in early spring 2021, that the situation went so haywire in summer 2021 in Afghanistan. And after that, if someone would have asked “What’s next?”, I doubt many people would have anticipated the developments in the Ukraine bringing us closer to World War III. May be, many years in the future, historians will assess that we already were in WW III. Because, even the forms and shapes of warfare have changed. Some of it started in 2001, when we began to see consequences of asymmetric warfare. And at that time, people would have found it unimaginabe that we would see conventional armies battling each other, on European soil, 21 years later.

What else do we know about battlefields of such larger warfare? I could go on about Asia and the ever increasing tension between China and Taiwan, just recently blowing up again on occasion of Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, bringing likelihood of yet another massive conflict into the equation. I could refer to how we all, internationally, after 9/11/2001 made critical assessments related to terrorist attacks against nuclear power plants. Now we are finding ourselves in a situation where Russian military forces conduct their attacks using the biggest nuclear powerplant in mainland Europe as a shield. Of course, following the same logic as outlined above, two sides accuse each other of being responsible for it. From a perspective of the threat being real, and grave, even this mutual accusation, being part of information warfare, adds to how scary the situation has become.

The Doomsday Clock has, once again, moved closer to 12, with the UN Secretary General telling us August 07, 2022, that the risk of nuclear confrontation is back after decades.

I could refer to the many developments in Africa, and since I am not a paid professional analyst with own staffing resources, my list of critical developments in the World would be highly selective, and certainly biased. Of course, it would include a whole chapter on instability in the Western Balkans, where I spend much of my time.

So, what can be said about “What’s next?” now, mid summer 2022?

The almost natural reflex is about looking around and to assess specific situations, specific countries or regions, and to attempt making predictions about how things may remain stable, or not. But more often than not, previous developments have taught us that destabilisation, system change, conflict and war occur almost to the surprise of professional analysts, and intelligence systems. The short term developments may be subject to correct analysis, like intelligence organisations unequivocally warned about Russia being serious about invading the Ukraine, once there was enough evidential data. But that was a short-term prediction, being put out into the public domain only from end of 2021 onwards, also in order to convince those who still, until February 23, 2022, doubted that Russia would follow-through on building up her military power alongside the borders of the Ukraine. Did we have enough data to predict this already, say in April 2021, at the time when “Global Trends 2040” was issued? From what I know through publicly avalable information, I would doubt it. So, this is not about “I told you so”.

The same will be the case related to anything up in the future, any new conflict development, where we then, again, will ask ourselves with hindsight whether we would have been able to predict it. In a highly complex and unstable environment, the fault-lines of where conflict arises next, and which physical or virtual dimension it takes, are difficult to predict medium-term, and impossible to predict long-term.

However, this makes the highly abstract level of “Global Trends 2040”, which I summarised above so profoundly valuable. Because, whilst we cannot be sure about “What’s next?”, we can be reasonably certain about that we have not reached rock-bottom. “Global Trends 2040” predicts a fundamental paradigm change and a war of systems, not a state of “rock bottom” from where things might recover to an old or only slightly changed equilibrium.

One of my favorite Youtube channels is called “Veritasium”. The channel is run by Derek Muller. Veritasium is covering a broad range of subjects, based on scientific evidence. According to its own website, “Veritasium is a channel of science and engineering videos featuring experiments, expert interviews, cool demos, and discussions with the public about everything science.” You will find a vlog as of August 2, 2022 there, called “The 4 things it takes to be an expert“. This piece is amazing:

In attempting to answer the question which experts have real expertise, the vlog includes a long list of references related to scientific evidence for its statements. The four things that make somebody a real expert, in ANY field of expertise, are based on long and ardous training, the vlog talks of a rule of thumb of 10.000 hours. In order to become an expert, one has to go through many repeated attempts with feedback. At one point of the video, Veritasium refers to a sample of 284 people who make their living on offering analysis or commenting on complex issues related to politcal and economic trends. These people were followed and questioned over two decades. The results, in a nutshell, are sobering. Any so-called expert with only education, but without extended feedback loops, was doing terribly. These “experts” were not significantly better in their predictions than non-specialists.

Watch the vlog. But what is the issue here? At least, that we have to be very careful in attempting to make predictions. And secondly, that we need to have a healthy and limited expectation in relation to what pundits will tell us. In my own self-assessment, I would certainly qualify for the 10.000 hour rule in relation to my own field of expertise (peace & security). But it would not make me believe that I would be able to find anything more than short-term answers to the question “What’s next?”.

Something which is called “cognitive bias” adds to the problem. This is what is behind the picture attached to this blog, and you can find the picture in wikipedia’s list of 188 cognitive biases, grouped into categories and rendered by John Manoogian III. In essence, according to the website teachthought, “a cognitive bias is an inherent thinking ‘blind spot’ that reduces thinking accuracy and results inaccurate–and often irrational–conclusions.” The graphical summary is listing 180 (!!) of them.

With having said that on our limitations to predict the future reliably, I will finally come back again to “Global Trends 2040”. What I, in sum, subscribe to, is the general statement about a time of system change which “Global Trends 2040” has, in my view correctly, deducted from available assessed information, which we call intelligence.

After President Nr 45 of the United States of America took power, I would find it comparatively easy to anticipate the scenarios that were possible to happen, and my worst case scenarios were pretty much along the lines of what we witnessed, until including January 06, 2021, and what we see coming up as a continuing threat for democracy in the United States, until today.

But compared with the complexity of fragility which we experience, this prediction was a piece of cake, since it was largely based on a psychological analysis of a person with multiple personality disorders, adding perhaps some deeper understanding about American society because I was embedded there for five years and listened and learned a lot.

Asking the question “What’s next” related to what we experience since then, I only know it will get worse, but I don’t know how, meaning “What’s next”. This is not a Doomsday attitude. Rather, it is a personal statement about the gravity of the situation we are finding ourselves in, these days.

Anocracies – And Thoughts on International Efforts Related to Conflict Prevention

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Anocracy or semi-democracy is, according to Wikipedia, a “form of government that is loosely defined as part democracy and part dictatorship, or as a “regime that mixes democratic with autocratic features.” Another definition classifies anocracy as “a regime that permits some means of participation through opposition group behavior but that has incomplete development of mechanisms to redress grievances.” The term “semi-democratic” is reserved for stable regimes that combine democratic and authoritarian elements. Scholars have also distinguished anocracies from autocracies and democracies in their capability to maintain authority, political dynamics, and policy agendas. Similarly, the regimes have democratic institutions that allow for nominal amounts of competition. Such regimes are particularly susceptible to outbreaks of armed conflict and unexpected or adverse changes in leadership.”

In my blog post “Under The Hood” I wrote that I had pre-ordered “How Civil Wars Start And How To Stop Them”, written by Barbara F. Walter (Crown, 2022, Ebook ISBN 9780593137796). After its publication date it got delivered (in my case as an Apple iBook). I am reading it now, and it is as good as it was assessed in that New York Times book recension. As it was said in that recension, Barbara F. Walter spends much of the first half of the book on a profound history of nearly every civil war haunting mankind in the past many decades before beginning to apply the results of academic research of political scientists on civil wars to the situation of the United States of America.

I am through the first half of the book, and inasmuch as I am now keenly reading her account of the more recent developments in the U.S., I am not intending to write on that subject matter. I have an opinion there, and I share the author’s risk assessment, but this public discourse is already ongoing in the U.S.: Look here and here.

I wanted to reflect on a few general observations that stem from the book’s solid comparative approach of recent situations which led to wide-spread violence, and the solid and vast description of the state of affairs of a number of contemporary nation states. After all, no country is exempted from the danger of plunging into wide-spread violence, just pretending “It can’t happen to us” is nothing less than dangerous denial and wishful thinking of the ostrich burying her head in the sand. In this, Barbara F. Walter’s book establishes itself in the same rational and academic realm as the books “Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism” by Anne Applebaum and “Fascism: A Warning” by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

My line of work has frequently put me into situations where we have wondered how one can measure the risk of a country or constituency descending into violent forms of conflict, including civil war. On several occasions I have been part of the international community’s peacekeeping efforts following the outbreak and the aftermath of civil war. Operationally and strategically I was part of such efforts in Kosovo under the United Nations’ mandate through Security Council Resolution 1244. Strategically I was part of such efforts in situations such as in Sudan, South Sudan, Mali, the Central African Republic, Somalia, and several more.

Then there is peacebuilding: How to make sure that a successful peacekeeping engagement finds its continuation through peacebuilding, and leads to a stable peaceful environment that will not relapse into conflict? That’s one of the elements of my current line of work, or why I was operationally working in Bosnia&Hercegovina, or strategically in headquarters of UN and EU on a large number of similar situations in greater Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and the Carribean.

Finally, there is conflict prevention: I often sat in meetings with like-minded peacekeepers and peacebuilders where we dealt with conflict prevention. Meaning to extinguish the fire when it was starting small, or even better: To help keeping things stable long before they reach critical mass of instability, and to find ways helping a country, or a constituency, in efforts to resolve disputes peacefully, and to succeed in that. Here I will not give examples. There were a number of cases in which I participated and where we could help in de-confliction of interests, and peaceful resolving of grievances. Those cases did not lead to bad-news-stories, in the general public they went almost entirely unrecognized, and good-news-stories sometimes can not be told in order to keep the good news continuing.

Those stories also don’t sell. Even in the “normal” world of crime, crime prevention does not attract the same interest by readers as the gruesome murder story does. Prevention is the silent humble sister of the guys and gals in military and police fatigues. Repression, threat, coercion, and the use of force, all too often these stories outrun any peaceful piece of news. This is the achilles-heel of prevention, and exponentially more so since the advent of social-media, whose algorithms prefer stories, fake or true, that create viral attention: Stories that create anger will always knock out the stories of crime that never happened. Even cute-cats-stories outrun every story about a conflict which never happened because we all did the right things.

In all those discussions on how to prevent conflict better, we asked ourselves how to asses and to measure the risk of conflict with hard numbered indicators. I remember reading the book “The Responsibility To Protect” by Gareth Evans. Evans, one of the chief architects of a concept called R2P, which tragically failed, at one point mentions the many efforts of academia to come up with a measurable set of indicators. He stated that for many years there was inconclusive academic research on that. In his book he mentioned that only one hard statistical fact could be boiled down: That conflict is much more likely in a country where there was one -more recently- before.

For years, I accepted that. Barbara F. Walter’s book has profoundly changed this view. May be I did personally not notice, or may be it is more of a late-breaking recognition, but according to Walter political science has made tremendous progress and has developed a sophisticated set of predictors, or risk indicators, based on sound bodies of empirical data in at least three very large and internationally recognized data-sets. In order to keep this a relatively easy read, I won’t go into details. The book is very captivating and it is very comprehensible. I truly enjoy the way how hard science is transformed into popular language by Barbara F. Walter. There is no need to undergo a 101 course in political sciences, so instead of summarizing a detailed book, I recommend reading it yourself.

Walter’s book has drawn my attention to three factors that increase the potential for, and are the reasons for, civil wars. Academic research appears to have managed to put these three factors into a rock-hard framework of statistical measurability: (1) Transitions from one system of governance to another system of governance; (2) Factionalisation in societies; (3) The drastic effects of social media.

(1) Transitions from one system of governance to another system of governance

For me, one important contribution of Barbara F. Walter’s book sits with drawing attention to process, rather than a snapshot of a state of affairs in time. Any form of governance can be categorized, and put on a scale. A true representation of all common criteria for a democracy can put a State into a category of “best in class”. Another State can be a full representation of what we call an autocracy. That State would be on the opposite side of that scale. From the viewpoint of a true defender of democratic values, that would bring this State into the zone of “worst in class”. Of course, “the other side of the aisle” would disagree with that judgement, and there we are in a polarized discussion.

But the true focus of Barbara F. Walter is not on the snapshot where a State finds herself on such a scale. It is about the movement from one end to the other, in both directions, and it is about the speed of that process. A State can find herself on the path towards more autocratic forms of government, or on the path from autocratic governance towards democratic governance. Political science has established evidence for that the “middle zone” between one form of governance and another form of governance is the most dangerous and volatile area, and the faster the transitional process from democracy towards autocracy, or from autocracy to democracy, the more risk for wide-spread violence exists on a statistical level.

And this makes perfect sense. Here is my attempt to visualize it:

It means that the “door swings in both directions”: The risk of violence does not only exist in a situation where a country is slipping towards semi-autocratic or fully-autocratic forms of governance. The same risk exists in a situation where interested parties, supported by the international community for example, engage in promoting and establishing regime change towards democracy. Barbara F. Walter makes it clear that the risk for violence is highest when this process into either direction has placed the constituency in question into the middle zone, when transformational change is most unfinished, with the old being ripped down and the new not yet formed and rooted.

Secondly, science tells us that, again, the risk is quantifiably higher if the process of transformation is either too slow or too fast, for which there can be many reasons. From how I look at things from my own experience, it is scientific evidence for what happens when the international community pushes too fast, is compartmentalised in such efforts, displays not enough comprehensive depth in supporting transformational change, nor patience for a long-term coherent support approach based on vision and strategy. Which I often saw when international mandates and policy discussions were held unter terms such as “democratization”, or “state building”.

(2) Factionalisation in societies

The second aspect in Barbara F. Walter’s book is a comprehensive analysis of previous civil wars and the relation between constituencies moving into the “danger zone” of being an anocracy, and the existence of factions in these societies. Also here, the book is very comprehensive in giving a detailed account for a vast array of previous civil wars. In my reading this book, one aspect stood out: Any change of one system through which a state applies governance to citizens towards another set of governance rules inevitably leads to the demise of old elites and the struggle which is happening when new elites try to form, and old elites fight to participate in societal control, for their benefits. This is the second factor which makes the “danger zone” so volatile, and the book provides detailed analytical results to the question when, how, and why this leads to violence. I want to highlight one sentence:

“Remember, it’s not the desperately poor who start civil wars, but those who once had privilege and feel they are losing status they feel is rightfully theirs”.

Likewise I quote her account on a declassified CIA report from 2012: “Most insurgencies, the report notes, “pass through similar stages of development during their life cycle.” In the pre-insurgency phase, a group begins to identify a set of common grievances and build a collective identity around a gripping narrative—the story or myth that helps them rally supporters and justify their actions. They begin to recruit members, some of whom even travel abroad for training. They begin to stockpile arms and supplies.”

I note that it is the last sentence which connects my current line of work with the larger picture.

Then Barbara F. Walter goes on to analyze the role of social media in contemporary conflicts:

(3) The drastic effects of social media

Social media acts like the proverbial gasoline poured on a fire. By now, many of us have begun to appreciate this very dark side of a technology which also has contributed so much to bringing us close together in a global world. The author’s account on how social media has been, and continues to be, systematically exploited by those who seek control, including by inciting violence, is nothing short of scathing criticism. Again, the book is unbiased by taking a very comprehensive view on situations of recent violence, and contemporary situations in countries all around the globe, within something which appears to be a rising global pattern of instability, emerging and brooding conflict. She refers to solid data that would allow to conclude that there is a clear connection between the exponential rise of volatile situations and war on one hand, and the the abuse of social media for that purpose on the other hand. It is here where the role of social media and its systematic and professional exploitation by reckless individuals and groups is pervasive. Whereas encouraging factionalism on religious, ethnic, racial, or any grounds has been the key defining modus operandi of individuals manipulating populations into fear and hate of the other, and the acceptance that “Dear Leader” may be the lesser evil, contemporary situations are characterised by a systematic manipulation of many, through some, using social media. The book demonstrates this in Myanmar, in countries in Europe including Eastern and Central Europe, and elsewhere, before even beginning to analyse what happened in the U.S. in recent years.

Our societies struggle with the question of how to apply accountability and regulative frameworks to this new phenomenon. Because, new it is: The effects of how social media can be used for manipulation, inciting hatred, and fueling violence, they may be just ten years old. But they are extremely transformative. And again, we see different approaches in relation to how to control social media in China or Russia, say compared to how open societies handle this challenge. But what we also see: Aspiring autocrats virtuously use social media to gain control. After that, these individuals will undertake everything to control the instrument they have used.

Because, they know better than anyone else how it can be used to their advantage, and against them.

This got long again. I leave it without conclusions, simply because there are so many. This is true for a paradigm change on how we consider engaging in conflict prevention in a world filled with old instruments of international order which require overhaul, or may be outdated if we don’t succeed in transforming them into effective tools. This is also true for how we accept our being affected by what we call “social media”. Personally, I feel this question may belong to the most important ones in our lifetime, in all aspects of our lives.

On Weapons, Ammunition and Explosives – An Afghanistan Threat Assessment

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20 August 2021, Christoph Heusgen, former permanent representative of Germany to the United Nations, and former longtime foreign and security policy advisor to Chancellor Angela Merkel, found clear words. In an article on the website of the European Council on Foreign Relations headlined “Germany and Afghanistan: Time to ditch bad governments, not good governance“, he draws a comparison of the engagement in Afghanistan with the situation in Mali, West Africa. He begins with stating “After Afghanistan, countries such as Germany should reconsider their presence in Mali, unless the ruling class commits to good governance and democratic principles.”

In the above article he talks about “good governance”, not only about “democratic principles”. He carefully lists both terms connected with an “and”. They stand separate from each other. And he talks about “the ruling class”. I will come back to “good governance”, conditionality, but also moral responsibilities, towards the end.

At the time of this writing the new Emperor is dressing into governmental clothes: The Taleban are in a process of forming and announcing a new government. When the insurgency had reached Kabul’s outer perimeter, the former Afghan government imploded, literally, after the former President fled the country. In an earlier article on Afghanistan developments I wrote that the difference with this implosion of governance is that we were observing it being on the inside, not on the outside. And in my last piece as of September 02, 2021 I wrote about a country being “armed to the teeth”. This because, amongst many other, the implosion has extraordinary consequences for the amount and type of military and police equipment, weapons, ammunition, and explosives.

Roughly, my questions related to future threats are:

  • Is this gear now subject to new governmental control, and to which extent, and how?
  • What will this gear be used for in Afghanistan by those who claim legitimacy for their governing the country, or just do rule it without any process resembling legitimacy?
  • Will the new Emperor (so to speak) undertake a comprehensive effort to secure large stockpiles of weapons and ammunition before even more will disappear into dubious, criminal, and terrorist channels as for sure is the case already right now? And how will this be done, concretely looking at possible new faultlines of terror and organised crime, by creating new generations of people being subjected to cruelties?
  • Which consequences come from the implosion preceeding the victory? Where are soldiers, police officers, commanding officers of any rank, organisational structures? We hear stories of individuals hiding, of entire units fleeing into neighboring countries together with the equipment they were carrying. We don’t know who will partner up with warlords. We don’t know who will end up on the side of terrorist organisations. And by the way, we do hear about the hostility between IS and the Taleban. We do hear about disappointed Taleban joining the ranks of ISIS-K, who are historically hostile to the Taleban, and who are extremely radical in their religious beliefs. What does this mean for weapons being readily available? Which threats come from extremism and terror in the region, for other parts of the world, including, but not only, Europe?

I am not even pretending this list is complete. Neither I would make a comparison in detail about what happened in other country situations where governance imploded, such as in Libya. Except for the numbers of weapons out of control after Libya’s implosion which were ending up fueling the conflict cycles which haunt us in addition to Libya, thereafter. I talk about Mali and what I witnessed there throughout my travels 2013 and the following years. Today, nine years after the initial crisis in Mail, the fire which we try to extinguish is burning in neighbouring countries, and beyond.

What I say is that we have serious reasons for working on a profound threat assessment. In my conversations, I hear all sorts of opinions. Some would be on the cautious side. Others would say “There won’t be much happening”, or they would say “There is not much that will be a threat for Europe, Afghanistan is too far away”, or, “I am not interested”. The last one being something I heard very often when I listened to people on the streets.

If the catastrophic failure of all collective assessments of intelligence, diplomacy and politics led to the circumstances which we witnessed in July and August, with many voices likening it with an embarrassing “defeat of the West”, what more do we need as a wake-up call that we need to wrap our minds around everything which could be a potential threat for humanity, peace, and security? For the citizens in Afghanistan, in Afghanistan’s neighborhood, in countries closer to the European Union, and the EU itself?

There is no time for complacency any longer.

Just a recap: Until recently, we fought a war against the Taleban, considering them insurgents at least, but we would put them close to terrorism, or we would consider them committing acts of terror. We have, until now, all indications for Taleban forces being responsible for atrocities, for countless crimes against humanity. We have not only withdrawn from a war against the Taleban, with international forces fighting against the Taleban. Rather, the Afghan military and the Afghan Police apparatus has been built, trained, staffed, and equipped. With huge amounts of military and police gear.

This has not been an isolated U.S. endeavor. The U.S. was involved on their own, and being part of NATO. NATO, and NATO member States were in this, together with the United States. The European Union was in it, amongst many other topical areas the EU, and EU Member States, provided large financial contributions to what is known as LOTFA, the Law and Order Trust Fund. Throughout two decades, Afghanistan’s military and policing capacities and capabilities were defined through often mainly international decisions, and when the capacities were stood up, they were dependent on everything, including salaries, equipment, and training. We are talking about an entire Army, and an entire Police setup. From everything I know from public sources, there wasn’t much sustainable development at all if the entire security apparatus depends on salaries being paid through international trust funds, capabilities being generated as donations, with huge dependencies on foreign contractors working on maintenance and supply chains, and constant ongoing training.

Even in a “best case” scenario, I have difficulties imagining anything like a smooth transition of what we call a “chain of command” from one government to the next. It feels almost cynical to name it like that. Rather, I anticipate that sheer power of coercion by the Taleban, may be combined with tribal play which we hardly understand, will compete with resistance, dissolution, and the panic of individuals who fear for their life, and that of their families. There are news about the Taleban not living up to what they publicly claim, that they hunt and execute former police and military officials. What does this mean for weapons control, and for the fate of armed people who are desperate, and need a living at the same time?

Within days in August, the Talban took control. A short while later, the last U.S. airplane being part of the international evacuation and rescue effort, now hailed by the U.S. Secretary of State as the biggest air bridge ever, left Kabul 30 August, 23:59 hours. With that, the U.S. declared the war in Afghanistan being over. Already before, we froze all international aid, by far not only the humanitarian side of it. Who is paying salaries for soldiers and police, right now?

International attention, and attention of the general public, often has a short breath. I can already feel that some may say “Alright, we have lost that war, let us move on.” For twenty years, we were with the Afghan people. Like everyone else in Afghanistan, our military and police colleagues grew friends with us. Fought with us, risked their life for their people, and trusting our promise that we would not leave them alone. Afghan police and military were the ones who took unimaginable casualties (the police even more than the military), and won’t forget the civilian casualties from two decades of war, either. After all, the victims were family, or friends.

Thus, further instability may not only depend on how the Taleban act when delivering on what they claim: That they are different now. It also depends on whether we are able to create new trust amongst those who feel they have lost everything. This means that we can not only think about threats from Afghanistan we may have to contain in the closer and larger neighborhood. We have to seek ways how we can establish a dialogue inside Afghanistan as well. Here, conditionality will be critical.

Apart from any moral assessment of this, which has its legitimacy in its own right: From a pure threat assessment perspective we need to think about a situation where former friends may feel that we have handed them over to former enemies. Where does this lead us to? Our own actions decide about whether this points to future enemies, or scenarios of cooperation. I stop there, the humanist in me wants to, of course, think of even more.

It means that, concretely for the topic at hand – large amounts of weapons, ammunition and explosives – we need to look into long term strategies, waiting for opportunities and avenues allowing the support to containment, control, and demolition inside Afghanistan, and immediate strategies allowing to help in establishing conditions for networks addressing SALW control in Afghanistan’s neighborhood.

Weapons – Ammunition – Explosives – On Afghanistan – Numbers first and what we do not know

/ stefanfeller / 1 Comment

In my previous blog article I wrote about the core of my current line of work: Advising the German Federal Foreign Office on aspects of assistance related to systematic control of what is known as Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW). The categorization “Small Arms and Light Weapons” can be somewhat misleading, because of the attributes “small” and “light”. Like, light weapons being weapons requiring not more than three people carrying them. We don’t talk about toy weapons. We talk about everything including pistols, rifles, submachine guns, machine guns, and sorts of equipment capable of destroying tanks, or gunning aircrafts down, as long as this stuff can be moved around easily.

We talk about some of the most lethal gear which can be used in asymmetric warfare, organized crime, insurgency, violent extremism, and terrorism. If you want to binge, go to Youtube and look up those gun nerds who run channels where they use this type of weaponry on firing ranges for smashing just about everything, because it creates huge numbers of people watching it. Some of those people don’t only smash things, but also explain the weapons and ammunition in a very detailed, very professional way. Veterans of various wars, having found a retirement business model.

Just to set the record straight about the type of stuff I am looking at in the following paragraphs.

Since every assessment in my line of work starts with a threat assessment, I began to wonder about what we know about the amount of SALW which we can expect to be in Afghanistan after the takeover by the Taleban, and also, where this gear is from. I have no intention to go into a comprehensive research, but I would like to use some publicly available figures as an example, and some simple logical conclusions, in order to at least point into the direction of a staggering dimension of weapons we are talking about.

Let me begin, therefore, with a few things which we know, and a few things which we do not know much about, at least publicly.

We do know that the Taleban themselves have lots of weaponry. Perhaps we do not really know, or only have confidential knowledge about the numbers, and the type of weaponry. For making my argument this is less relevant. We do know that they have enough weapons, ammunition, and explosives which allowed them to fight an entire army and a set of police organisations in a warfare where the Afghan military and police were only able to hold their ground, still loosing control over significant swaths of Afghan territory as long as the international military campaign provided superior capacities and capabilities, meaning for example air support, reconnaissance, drone firepower, specialised ground forces, and a whole international supply chain enabling the Afghan defense against this insurgency. Yet, the Taleban had enough military capability to conduct their insurgency, carrying out horrible atrocities along the way. They had and have an own supply chain, and they had and have an own financial and logistical structure for this supply chain. BBC’s report “Afghanistan: How do the Taliban make money?” gives you a sense.

How many weapons do we talk about which never were under Afghan governmental control and not under control of the Taleban, meaning, weapons in the hands of ordinary citizens, criminals, and terrorists such as ISIS-K? For future analysis, also this question will be relevant. From every experience in other zones of conflict and war it is self-evident that weapons circulate for all kinds of self-defense purposes, criminal purposes, and as instruments of terror. The situation of Afghanistan being a core area of the world’s poppy cultivation, opium production and trade, and heroin production and trade adds. There is simply no way to discard the amount of weapons which never were under any form of organisational control, be it the previous government, or the insurgency. In itself, this amounts to significant amounts of weapons which should be under control, because they are a threat.

How many weapons were left behind by hastily leaving international forces? We simply do not know. We do know that the international military had huge amounts, of course, and hopefully took as much of this gear out as possible. There is, however, indication that not everything was taken out. Here is an example for large weapons stockpiles which were simply burned to the ground, in order to make them unusable: Taleban video footage which was gained by the New York Times, indicating how the CIA burned down own facilities in Kabul before leaving. Those weapons in that video footage seem to be destroyed, however, we also know, at least in relation to some type of military gear, that the advancing Taleban took control of it. There is a lot of coverage about Taleban posing in military gear obtained from former military bases of the international coalition.

How many weapons, how much ammunition, how many explosives were in the possession of the Afghan military and security apparatus before the Taleban took over? Here we may, at least, come up with some figures about what the international community donated to the security apparatus. Whether we do have oversight about the Afghan security forces own procurement processes, I don’t know. I’m a pessimist, I doubt we know much. And the knowledge about what type of gear came from international aid, it may be kept as sensitive information, may be also because of some shame we may feel. But here are two links to professional investigative research on this topic, and here they only serve as examples, proper work requires much more: (1) “Staggering costs – staggering numbers”, a Forbes magazine attempt to look into military equipment and weapons left behind in Afghanistan because the equipment was donated to Afghan military and security; (2) “Afghanistan: Black Hawks and Humvees – military kit now with the Taliban”, BBC reporting also attempts to identify how much heavy military equipment now is under Taleban control. For starters, they list 43 MD-530 helicopters, 33 C208/AC208 planes, 33 UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, 23 A-29 light attack air planes, 32 MI-17 helicopters, and 3 C-130 Hercules military cargo planes known as useable in-country as of 30 June 2021. They go on with staggering numbers of vehicles, including 3012 Humvees, and 31 Mobile Strike Force Vehicles. They also list at least 3598 M4 carbines. Like everyone else, BBC scrambles all qualified guesswork attempting to estimate how much of this equipment is in country, and unter Taleban control. Taken together, it is really not difficult to assume that the amount of Small Arms and Light Weapons which were part of the internationally donated equipment over twenty years will be in the milions.

These questions and examples are enough to make my point. We are talking about a country armed to the teeth.

Importantly, the next question relates to how much control there is over these weapons, and by whom. This leads to an attempted threat assessment, and I put that out in my next article.

Weapons – Ammunition – Explosives – A way how to assist in controlling them

/ stefanfeller / 1 Comment

I began my day by reading a guest essay in the New York Times by Josep Borrell Fontelles, the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy. In “Afghanistan Was a Wake-Up Call. Europe Needs to Step Up.” the Union’s Foreign Policy Chief dives into security issues on a strategic level. Because, the situation in Afghanistan and its wider context is confronting us with a gargantuan collection of challenges which we only begin to understand. Of course, security implications require the same attention as the humanitarian suffering already does.

I want to focus on one specific aspect: Weapons, ammunition, explosives.

On Afghanistan I will do that in my next article, but before doing that I want to spend a few sentences on how we support a comprehensive initiative in the field of weapons, ammunition, and explosives, in the Western Balkans. We do this since several years together with France, increasingly with the European Union, and many others. Good news stories often go unnoticed when facing the onslaught of catastrophic news. So, before looking at something strongly appearing to be a big mess, here a positive story first.

My current work revolves around advising the German Federal Foreign Office on German assistance to systematic efforts of governments and societies controlling all aspects of what is known as Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW), their ammunition, and explosives. It is a very holistic approach, and here is a good entry point on global aspects of SALW.

What does our support mean? Here some examples:

  • It means to help partners in improving meeting international and European standards on how to regulate trade and export according to international treaties;
  • It is about how to ensure safe use, storage, and transport of such items both in the military and the civilian realm;
  • It is about prevention of diversion of legally owned weapons, ammunition and explosives into criminal channels;
  • It is about fighting the use of weapons for criminal purposes, about detecting and deterring organised criminals and terrorists trafficking in weapons or using weapons;
  • It is about prevention of crime, about addressing domestic violence, and violence against women, children, and vulnerable groups;
  • It is about strengthening the role of women in policymaking related to how societies and States want to control all legal aspects on SALW, and to fight all illegal aspects.

That’s already a long list, and more often than not the topic only catches the attention of the general public when there is a horrific terror attack, such as the Paris attacks of 2015. Since two weeks, the situation in Afghanistan is drawing increasingly attention to it.

The key principle is assistance to efforts coming from States and societies themselves. In the case of the Western Balkans it concretely means the joint efforts of six jurisdictions (I will refer to Kosovo with reference to UN Security Council Resolution 1244) Albania, Bosnia & Hercegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North-Macedonia and Serbia. With assistance, they have developed a systematic regional roadmap. These jurisdictions have given this roadmap to themselves, their legislators adopted it.

It began as an exercise where the Western Balkans appreciated help, and it developed into an endeavor that now brings partners in the Western Balkans and in the European Union ever closer together. Germany invests a lot of political support, expertise, and a significant financial contribution, into a coordinated support of donors and international implementing organisations who work together under a specific umbrella of coordination. Assistance is implemented by the United Nations Development Programme UNDP, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime UNODC, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe OSCE, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation NATO.

In a very comprehensive and coordinated way this goes beyond, but critically includes, the work of law enforcement and criminal justice within the six juridictions of the Western Balkans, and their cooperation with Interpol, Europol, Frontex, and others. Moreover, we now see partners acting in a joint interest, less and less as neighbors, more and more as being part of something joint. If you are interested in details, you will find an entry point into this whole universe of comprehensive assistance here, any quick web research will give you tons of more resources. And watch out for more news. There is a high-level conference coming up early September, taking stock half-way through the intitiative. I will post public statements here in my blog once I am authorised to do that.

The way how this roadmap has been developed by the governments in the Western Balkans themselves, and the way how donors and partners assist them in it, has found international recognition, including inside the European Union itself, and the United Nations. Recently, the UN explicitly praised the Western Balkans roadmap inititiative as a role model that could be adapted to other situations. And Germany already supports the interest which has been raised in the Carribean, or in West Africa. Both regions make good progress in developing their own tailormade approach.

Making it clear from where I look at select aspects of what can be seen as challenges within the Afghanistan context is meant to indicate two experiences which I support:

The relevance of weapons, ammunition and explosives in a global threat environment at times goes underrated, until a catastrophe is hitting the news again. The threat is constant, and in my experience it is growing;

There are successful models on assisting countries in conflict; countries emerging from conflict; countries being confronted with conflict in their immediate neighborhood; and countries that are well advanced on their long path into building lasting peace. We have alternatives to the failed models of the past. Initiatives like the one I have described above are important examples for something that can be used in many other topical and geographical areas.

They are relevant because of the key principles of assistance, partnership, and coherence of support efforts which I have touched upon above.

The End Is Just The Beginning

/ stefanfeller / Leave a comment

On this blog entry I have been on and off. Processing so many experiences from this summer, personal, and professional, this piece of writing tries to find common issues in very different fields. Sometimes I am happy with progress expressing what wants to come out, sometimes I feel like wanting to throw it into the bin. When it pops up on my blog, a future version will have made me pushing the “Publish” button. The following is what you then will read. Hope you find it interesting.

Essentially, this is a personal reflection on change. Choosing the title “The End Is Just The Beginning”, I planned to continue writing on Afghanistan and the wider context of implications which I see. I wanted to reflect on my perception that the current development for many people appears to feel like a defeat, and an end. To me, the notion of the “end” just being a “beginning” reflects on the only eternal universal truth: Everything changes.

I arrived back in Belgrade at the same time when a long and hot summer heat wave is ending. The weather is changing. Since a few days the first signs of the fall can be sensed. Temperatures significantly down, the blue sky is often replaced with the darkish grey of rain clouds. The long summer days are now followed by shorter periods of daylight. For a while I will be switching to a more stationary routine in my apartment after three months of being a digital nomad. Well, we will see how long I can keep my itchy feet under an apartment table, mitigating the risk of restlessness and focusing on healthy aspects of constant, but somewhat moderated change.

On a larger scale, what kind of change will happen for me next? During the summer I thought about the many different places scattered around the world which form part of what I would call my “home”. Partly, “home” is about places. More importantly, “home” is about meaningful connection to the people in my life who matter to me, and to whom I matter. Everything, places, situations, relationships, everything changes over time. Like everyone else, I experience times where I embrace change, and times when I dread it, when I cling, when I try to control change. I have found during the pandemic that it is possible to nurture important relationships in my life, though they are long-distance. Using videoconferencing, voicemail, calls, texts I could find a way even deriving comfort from virtual contacts with children, loved ones, friends. But there needs to be physical contact, too. So, “home” is also about deciding where to live close to some of those who matter in my life. At the end of the summer, I could see a path forward, and change is coming up, and is being embraced by me.

Then there is a book on my reading list. Tiziano Terzani’s Book “Das Ende ist mein Anfang”, literally in English “The End Is My Beginning” (German description of the book here; English description of the movie based on it here). The book patiently waits for my being ready to read it. The subtitle reads “A Father, A Son, and the Big Journey of Life”. The son, Folco Terzano, interviews his father Tiziano, who is in his last days. The son and the father talk about the meaning of life, and about the father’s experiences as a widely traveled journalist. The book is not ready for me, yet. It patiently waits, there is no hurry, it will tell me when I am supposed to read it. It touches a nerve:

I had many talks with my father over the past months. I see his existential fear, his suffering from his ego feeling locked down in an ageing and frail body. There is a stubborn denial on his side, rejecting any notion that he might not be able to live without help at some unknown point in the future. There is despair about the meaninglessness of days now and in the future, and a strong attachment to memories of the past. Sometimes, he almost exclusively lives in his memories, when things still did have a future perceived as being meaningful. On other occasions, I saw some clarity about the inevitable deterioration, and some peaceful acceptance. Mostly though, I witnessed a heartbreaking fight against upcoming defeat, and a perceived end.

Being his son, by logic I am younger than my father. I feel healthy, which allows my vain thinking ego to tell me that I am significantly younger. My ego tells me that I can do more of the same. That my future includes further extension of external validation. That my career continues with growth of the same kind that was its hallmark for many decades.

Spending time with my father, I saw what happens when we miss a transition into a different kind of growth. A kind of inner growth that does make use of the vast accrued experience of many decades, and transforms it into learning about how I can be be useful to others. I saw, and I see in my own case, how the ego clings to control, discriminates between “me” and everything “non-me”. The Buddhists talk about the duality coming from this discrimination, Buddhism teaches non-duality. To those of us who do not get enlightened early on, working on giving up the duality view reflected in “us and them” is a lifetime assignment.

Some profound changes in my life are based on developments eight years ago. So I was able to be with my father, and at the same time to reflect on my own experiences with denial, control, and the importance of external validation for my inner own esteem. I feel great compassion for my father. And I know that I have plenty of time for learning to stop worrying about the future, any perceived “endings” and wasting time by regretting the past long gone: I have today, which is endless. It means that I accept change, that I embrace change, that I am happy with change. There have been really painful experiences in my life, including somewhat recently, on what happens when I cling, deny change, deny knowledge about how toxic a situation, a relationship, or an environment, may have become for me. The denial always sits with attempting to find external reasons for the toxidity. The acceptance of change only always came when I focused on my own contribution to the toxic situation, relationship, or environment. And always, this required to experience yet another “hitting rock bottom”.

In our individual lives we run through uncounted iterations of postponing to accept that everything composite has a beginning and an end. Through many decades of our lifetime we manage to postpone thinking about the inevitable, piling up more activities and goals giving meaning to the respective phase of life we are in. As if this could go on in eternity. So, instead of understanding also the final phase of an “individual” life as a means to achieve growth, we close our eyes, pile up more external things day after day, year after year, until we simply can not go on any longer.

Then we feel being defeated.

In the world of recovery from trauma and resulting compulsive-addictive pain-sedation, we call this process “reaching rock bottom”. It is an absolutely inevitable final point when one realizes that one has no control any longer. It is the starting point of change. When we realize that we do not have control, and only then, we are able to acknowledge that our circumstances have become unmanageable. It is the ensuing breakdown which sets the stage for the new beginning. When an individual realizes that the own self sits at the root of all misery, and not external circumstances, that is the point from when on positive change is possible. Never this happens one second before. It is what I experienced eight years ago, and I practice since then. I have seen this fundamental principle everywhere, and I am just realising that it is true for the situation we find ourselves collectively in, in Afghanistan and beyond, too.

Because, in a very similar way, I have perceived the phases of our two decades of intervention in Afghanistan. We had reasons for the beginning. We discovered reasons for why to continue. We came up with new meaning when growth wasn’t working any longer. We realized that it can not continue the same way in all eternity. At some point we did not know how to make further meaning of it, so we somehow soldiered on, without a real vision how to transform things into growth, beyond our international interventions. Means of control, and of denial, worked less and less. We blindsided ourselves in relation to the inevitable, and now we feel defeated. Very much the same way an individual “ego” feels defeated, our corporate consciousness feels the same.

How does it feel for Joe Biden having to make a decision ending a seemingly endless war, and not really having a blueprint that would best mitigate the ensuing paradigm changes? I prefer to say “paradigm change”, rather than talking about chaos, since this wrongly indicates we have no way forward. There is suffering in what was, and there is suffering in what is. Now he and his administration have to face the early, and very harsh, judgements which come in through uncounted articles, OpEds, interviews. All legit. But I sympathise a lot with the U.S. President’s decision to pull-out. Obviously, it is a chaotic, messy, dramatic, heart-breaking pull-out. There is all reason to believe that we could have done better, together. As if there only was this guy, Joe Biden, or as if there was only that messed-up negotation between Nr 45 and the Taleban. No, throughout twenty years we all carry our own share of responsibility adding to the mess, we all do good looking onto our own respective side of the street.

But at the end, I wanted to say what I began with: This needs to be understood containing the piled-up energies which explode into paradigm change. The mistakes we piled up for two decades, they did not allow for any less-explosive unfolding. That is why we need to embrace the change. Simply because it is not an end. It is a chance to do things differently, together, and in humility.

We tend to think in beginnings and endings. We think in activities, and blocks of activities. We categorize. We come up with goals, and we put them on timelines. It is a way to reduce complexity, and we attempt to give meaning to what we do. In doing so, we usually look into the future from a perspective of the past, and when we have reached a goal, it becomes part of the past, we move on, to the next goal. Often, it distracts us from seeing what there is right now, and that there is nothing else than the Now.

Zooming out, so to speak, a larger view reveals the process-nature of everything. Things don’t stop when we have done something, when we have achieved something. Or when we are defeated by something. Everything is part of processes, of constant change. Everything moves. Constantly.

Afghanistan – Rear-Mirror-View or Looking Ahead?

/ stefanfeller / 2 Comments

At the time of this writing (August 24, 2021), its been 11 days ago that I published my first thoughts on the catastrophic events unfolding in Afghanistan, and the shockwaves within the International Community beginning to grasp the extent of our collective failure. At that time, the Taleban stood at the gates of Kabul. Two days later, then Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled Kabul and his country, reportedly with a lot of money, according to this report, 169 million USD in cash. Following the implosion of the government, Taleban fighters and Taleban political representatives were in Kabul in no time. Afghanistan fell, may be except a little pocket, the Panjshir Valley, which appears to be under Taleban siege for now. No need to recollect the events that followed that implosion and collective failure of the International Community, and the Afghan Government. They will haunt us for years to come. Today, the G7 are convening a virtual meeting, called in by the current G7 chair, the United Kingdom. Much, if not all, will be about pressing the U.S. President into extending the deadline for the presence of U.S. troops at Kabul International Airport. Germany participates in a frantic multinational evacuation mission for own citizens and Afghan individuals being at imminent threat for life and limb. Two days ago, Al Jazeera estimated the total number of evacuated people being roughly 28.000, “tens of thousands more [are] still waiting“.

The breadth of discussions on all channels in relation to what went wrong is overwhelming in the West. The depth of these discussions varies. Like many of my friends, I am glued to these news. I belong to those who do not appreciate too much those discussions and statements that are varying mixtures of a broad bunch of mostly backward looking reflections, struggling to find simple answers, palatable for the digestion by the wider and less informed general public, addressing an intractable complexity which festered into twenty years of incoherence of international efforts. Strategic incoherence, because of political incoherence. There is no way to implement coherence if there is a lack of it at the top. Politicians trying to giving meaning in hindsight, overlooking the rubbles of an endeavor which lost its inner compass for a million of reasons. Of course many of these statements come with the unfailing appreciation for the services and sacrifices of soldiers, and humanitarian workers. Sometimes I notice that the police officers who were in this seem to be mentioned as well. But the rear-mirror-view needs to be put aside. Because of this sheer complexity, finding meaningful answers may need so much time that their use for the immediate and mid-term future is very limited.

I have begun to filter my input by looking for honesty in statements, hoping for more humility, wanting to see more apologies, and less self-reflection on national reasons why we were all in this. Because, we all are in this. For many reasons, I like this interview by my “boss”, the German Minister for Foreign Affairs, because I am desperate for any sense of humility combined with visionary forward-looking statements, messages that give us a sense of hope that we will find a way forward, beyond rescuing as many as we can, shivering in relation to how those feel who will, almost inevitably, be left behind.

I feel sorry and sad beyond words.

I am upset about the humanitarian crisis on an unimaginable scale. I am bitter and horrified about the incoming news on alleged summary executions in places outside Kabul. Today, the top United Nations human rights official says she has received credible reports of serious violations committed by the Taliban in Afghanistan, including summary executions of civilians and restrictions on women and on protests against their rule. The executions appear to also include former government officials and members of police and military.

I began to write this article to get my personal context connecting me to the cause of the Afghan people out of the way. I wanted to explain briefly that I am not just a “concerned citizen”, but that, and how, I have been involved in everything since 2001, since the very beginning. Writing the above, I realised that my reflex simply was to add even more noise to the Rear-Mirror-View. So I’m not doing this.

In my line of actual work I have begun to analyse those implications coming from the catastrophic events which I can see, or anticipate, right now. The discussions which I had about it since a few days, they relate to the consequences of, again, an implosion of security, law and order, an implosion of governance, and all our experiences we have made with how crime, transnational organized crime, violent extremism and international terrorism thrive under conditions like these. We, or I, have seen this so often. At the same time, these discussions made clear that even this segment (crime&security) is only a small element of all possible implications of something which seems to be a catastrophic event, but by no means is a local event. The situation has uncounted interdependencies to other factors in our globalised world which contribute to further instability, and further failure.

That’s why I argue that we need to find vision, energy, compassion, strength, and humility for an urgent brainstorming which would advise us on what we can do, beyond rescue operations, inside Afghanistan, inside the Region, and in all kinds of regional neigborhoods, including Europe, and the European Union.

Fast, please. And together, please. Let us stop talking about “us” and “them”. This is not about the West. This is about us. All of us.

Initiative zur Unterstützung der Aufnahme afghanischer Ortskräfte

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Hier ein paar Links, wo dieser Aufruf seit heute (14.05.2021) auch veroeffentlicht ist:

http://nachtwei.de/index.php?module=articles&func=display&aid=1694

https://michaeldaxner.com

https://thruttig.wordpress.com

https://www.spiegel.de/ausland/bundeswehr-abzug-aus-afghanistan-bringt-unsere-afghanischen-helfer-in-sicherheit-a-a8256379-63e7-448a-9ae7-3af08e5f4faf

Abzug der Bundeswehr aus Afghanistan: Afghanische Ortskräfte in Sicherheit bringen!

Der Abzug der deutschen Truppen aus Afghanistan hat begonnen und soll voraussichtlich Anfang Juli 2021 beendet sein. Das Bundesverteidigungsministerium hat erklärt, dass es in der Abzugsphase zu einer größeren Gefährdung der Soldatinnen und Soldaten kommen könne. Medien zitierten unter Berufung auf einen vertraulichen Bericht des Auswärtigen Amtes und des Bundesverteidigungsministeriums, dass die Bundesregierung eine weitere erhebliche Verschlechterung der Sicherheitslage nach dem Abzug erwarte. Während die Truppe unter verstärkten Sicherheitsvorkehrungen längst bei den Vorbereitungen zur Rückkehr ist, wachsen die Befürchtungen der afghanischen Ortskräfte, die oft viele Jahre für die Bundeswehr, die deutsche Polizeiausbildungsmission, die staatlichen Zwecke der Entwicklungszusammenarbeit u.a. tätig waren – als Dolmetscherinnen und Dolmetscher, Wachleute und Hilfskräfte. Sie fürchten um ihre Sicherheit und ihr Leben – wie auch um das ihrer Familienangehörigen.

Wir fordern eine unbürokratische und schnelle Aufnahme der Betroffenen in Deutschland parallel zum Abzug!

Die Taliban haben immer wieder deutlich gemacht, dass sie diese Ortskräfte als Kollaborateure des Westens begreifen, die sie als Unterstützer eines militärischen Besatzungsregimes zur Verantwortung ziehen wollen. Über Anschläge auf und  Morde an Ortskräften wird seit Jahren berichtet, u.a. aus britischen, deutschen und US-amerikanischen Quellen. Letztere berichten von etwa 300 getöteten US-Ortskräften. Viele Ortskräfte haben versucht, sich Bedrohungen durch Umzug in andere Regionen Afghanistans zu entziehen, was aber nur selten eine dauerhafte Lösung und das Ende der Gefährdung ist.

Bundesverteidigungsministerin Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer hat Mitte April von einer tiefen Verpflichtung der Bundesrepublik gesprochen, die afghanischen Ortskräfte jetzt nicht schutzlos zurückzulassen. Zu befürchten ist aber: Genau das geschieht. Wer die effektive Aufnahme wirklich will, der kann in den verbleibenden Wochen nur eine unbürokratische Prozedur für all die Ortskräfte und ihre Angehörigen umsetzen, die für deutsche Stellen gearbeitet haben: Öffentliche Bekanntgabe des Aufnahmeprogramms, Registrierung, Vorbereitung der Ausreise, die möglichst geschehen muss, solange die Bundeswehr noch im Lande ist, ggf. Durchführung von Charterflügen.

Der Verweis auf das bisherige Aufnahmeprogramm für afghanische Ortskräfte mit Abgabe einer individuellen Gefährdungsanzeige bei Vorgesetzten, in der nachgewiesen werden muss, dass für Bedrohungen durch die Taliban die Tätigkeit für deutsche Stellen entscheidend ist, ist angesichts der neuen Sicherheitslage nicht mehr zielführend. Das bisherige Verfahren ist viel zu zeitintensiv, insbesondere seit die Kapazitäten des deutschen Kontingentes im Lande mit dem beginnenden Abzug Woche für Woche schwinden.

Seit 2013 wurden nach Zahlen des Verteidigungsministeriums knapp 800 Ortskräfte(plus Familienangehörige) in Deutschland aufgenommen, fast alle jedoch innerhalb eines kurzen Zeitraums, nachdem das Programm diese Chance eröffnet hatte. Zwischen 2014 und 2021 sind dann gerade einmal 15 zusätzliche Aufnahmen hinzugekommen – trotz einer in diesem Zeitraum immer weiter sich verschlechternden Sicherheitslage.

Zügige Aufnahme statt untauglicher Vorschläge

Das Bundesinnenministerium verweist wenige Wochen vor dem Truppenabzug die Ortskräfte auf das alte Prüfungsverfahren mit seinem bürokratischen Aufwand, was in der Kürze der Zeit nicht praktikabel ist. So steht zu befürchten, dass es kein effektives Aufnahmeprogramm, sondern lediglich ein Pseudo-Prüfungsprogramm geben wird.  Der ehemalige Wehrbeauftragte des Bundestages Reinhold Robbe hat schon vor Jahren den Umgang mit den Ortskräften als „beschämend“ und „unwürdig“ bezeichnet(vgl. bundeswehr-journal v. 17.10.2014). Diese Diagnose gilt bis heute. Wer seinen Dienst als Ortskraft vor mehr als zwei Jahren beendet hat, der soll von der Aufnahme in Deutschland ausgeschlossen bleiben.  Im Ernstfall werden sich die Verfolger bei den Taliban wohl kaum an dieser Frist orientieren. Und noch nicht einmal die zuletzt beschäftigten ca. 500 Ortskräfte, die nicht pro forma bereits wegen dieser Ausschlussregelung aus dem Programm  herausfallen, sollten sich darauf verlassen, dass aus der Ankündigung der Bundesverteidigungsministerin und guter Absicht praktische Hilfe wird.

Ein Büro für afghanische Ortskräfte in Kabul und evtl. an einem anderen Ort, so das BMI, soll eingerichtet werden, wo dann(Wann?) das umständliche Prüfungsverfahren zur Aufnahme stattfinden soll  –  als ob man sich nicht in einem Land befände, in dem längst ein Großteil der Regionen nicht mehr von der Regierung kontrolliert wird, Reisen riskant sind und selbst die deutsche Botschaft nur noch eingeschränkt operieren kann.  Zu befürchten ist, dass ein solches Büro für die Taliban ein vorrangiges Anschlagsziel werden könnte, insbesondere wenn sich die Sicherheitslage weiter verschärft.

Waren die Ortskräfte  in den Jahren 2014/15, als der größte Teil derer nach Deutschland kamen, die eine Aufnahmezusage erhalten hatten, eine Gruppe, die unter den Geflüchteten hierzulande oft übersehen wurden, so haben sich in den Jahren danach Solidaritäts- und Unterstützungsstrukturen herausgebildet, nicht zuletzt auch ein Patenschaftsnetzwerk der Bundeswehr. Denn auch dort vertraten viele die Auffassung, dass denen, die die Einsatzrisiken mit deutschen Soldatinnen und Soldaten geteilt hatten und ohne die insbesondere die Verständigung in Afghanistan kaum möglich gewesen wäre, in bedrängter Situation geholfen werden müsse. Und für deren Integration wollte man sich einsetzen.

Anlässlich der Vorstellung eines Buches der Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung im Dezember 2019, in dem die Rolle der afghanischen Ortskräfte dargestellt und gewürdigt wurde, brachte es einer der Mitautoren des Buches und langjähriger Bundestagsabgeordneter auf den Punkt:“(…)die Schlüsselrolle der afghanischen Ortskräfte: Ohne sie wäre der Einsatz unmöglich und von vorneherein aussichtslos gewesen. Mit ihrem Dienst für deutsche Einsatzkräfte meinten viele, ihrem Land am besten dienen zu können. Sie nahmen dafür hohe Belastungen und Risiken in Kauf. Dafür gebührt ihnen von deutscher Politik und Gesellschaft Aufmerksamkeit, Dank, Anerkennung nicht nur verbal(…) sondern auch praktisch. Wo Ortskräfte von sozialen und existenziellen Einsatzfolgen betroffen sind, an Leib und Leben, oft zusammen mit ihren Familien, da steht die Bundesrepublik Deutschland (…) in einer selbstverständlichen Fürsorgepflicht. Das ist ein Gebot der Verlässlichkeit, der Glaubwürdigkeit und auch der politischen Klugheit.“

Ähnlich sehen es auch US-Militärs:  Ex-US-General David Petraeus hat sich zusammen mit der Nichtregierungsorganisation No One Left Behind  Ende April in einem Brief an US-Außenminister Antony Blinken dafür eingesetzt, alle notwendigen Ressourcen aufzubieten, um die afghanischen Ortskräfte aus Afghanistan herauszuholen, bevor die letzten US-Truppen das Land verlassen.

Zwar haben einige andere Truppenstellerstaaten, die z.T. schon vor langer Zeit aus Afghanistan abgezogen sind, ihre Fürsorgepflicht für die Ortskräfte ebenso verstanden und  einigen „ihrer“ Ortskräfte  Aufnahme gewährt.  Demgegenüber waren andere Staaten zögerlich und stehen nun ebenfalls, wie die Bundesrepublik, vor der Situation, von Absichtserklärungen, die nicht eingelöst wurden, zu wirksamen Verfahren zu kommen. Jetzt, wo der vorzeitige und bedingungslose  Abzug der US-Armee wie des deutschen Kontingentes die Risiken dramatisch erhöht hat, wäre ein anständiges und großzügiges Verhalten der Bundesregierung mehr denn je nötig. Wie sollten sonst diejenigen, die Unterstützer*innen in gefährlicher Situation zurücklassen, künftig erwarten können, als verlässliche Partner in allen Bereichen der internationalen zivilen und militärischen Zusammenarbeit angesehen zu werden?

Angesichts der akuten Bedrohung bisheriger Ortskräfte an Leib und Leben und bezugnehmend auf die Wertegebundenheit deutscher Krisenengagements(s. Leitlinien „Krisen verhindern“ der Bundesregierung 2017) erheben wir eindringlich die folgenden Forderungen:

Zügige und unbürokratische Aufnahme afghanischer Ortskräfte und ihrer Familienangehörigen parallel zum laufenden Abzug des deutschen Kontingentes.

Öffentliche Verbreitung von Informationen über ein zu diesem Zweck vereinfachtes Verfahren für (ehemalige) Ortskräfte in Afghanistan.

Verzicht auf Prüfungsprozeduren, die in der Praxis weitgehend unmöglich oder für die Antragsteller*innen unzumutbar sind.

Verzicht auf Ausschlusskriterien, die der Realität nicht gerecht werden, wie die Beschränkung auf Personen, die in den letzten zwei Jahren als Ortskräfte tätig waren.

Erstunterzeichner:innen Stand: 13. Mai 2021, 18.00 Uhr

  • Pfr. Albrecht Bähr, Sprecher der Geschäftsführung der Arbeitsgemeinschaft Diakonie in Rheinland-Pfalz
  • Prof. Dr. Ingeborg Baldauf, Afghanistan-Forscherin an der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
  • Dr. Hans-Peter Bartels, MdB 1998-2015, Wehrbeauftragter 2015-20
  • bee4change e.V., Hamburg
  • Hannah Birkenkötter, Mitglied des Bundesvorstandes der Deutschen Gesellschaft für die Vereinten Nationen
  • Prof. Dr. Thorsten Bonacker, Zentrum für Konfliktforschung, Philipps-Universität Marburg
  • Eberhard Brecht, MdB und Mitglied des Präsidiums der Deutschen Gesellschaft für die Vereinten Nationen
  • Dr. Doris Buddenberg, Leiterin des UNODC-Büros Afghanistan 2004-06
  • Prof. Dr. Michael Daxner, Berater des afghanischen Hochschulministers 2003-2006, Leiter des Afghanistan-Projekts im SFB 700 FU Berlin bis 2018
  • Hans-Jörg Deleré, Neustadt-Pelzerhaken, DIPL.Bau-Ing. Straßenbau, als Sohn eines deutschen Beraters des afgh. Ministeriums für Öffentl. Arbeiten in Kabul aufgewachsen (1951-57) und 2006-09 im Auftrag der GIZ und des AA in Afghanistan tätig
  • Bernhard Drescher, Oberstleutnant a.D., Bundesvorsitzender Bund Deutscher EinsatzVeteranen e.V.
  • Detlef Dzembritzki, MdB i.R., Vorsitzender der Deutschen Gesellschaft für die Vereinten Nationen
  • Stefan Feller, Senior Adviser Auswärtiges Amt zur Kleinwaffenkontrolle, Leiter Polizeiabteilung im Rat der EU 2008-12, Leitender Polizeiberater des Generalsekretärs der Vereinten Nationen 2013-17
  • Botschafter a.D. Dr. Karl Fischer, Stabschef United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan 2001-04
  • Marga Flader, für Afghanistan-Schulen e.V.
  • Freundeskreis Afghanistan e.V., der seit 1982 Selbsthilfeinitiativen im Land fördert
  • Alexander Gunther Friedrich, UN Executive Secretary (rtd)  
  • Thomas Gebauer, Mitglied im Kuratorium der stiftung medico international
  • Rainer L. Glatz, Generalleutnant a.D., Befehlshaber des Einsatzführungskommandos der Bundeswehr 2009-13
  • Kristóf Gosztonyi, Forscher und Berater internat. Organisationen in Afghanistan, z.Zt. Univ. Osnabrück
  • Angelika Graf MdB a.D., Ehrenvorsitzende der SPD-Arbeitsgemeinschaft 60 plus, Vorsitzende des Vereins “Gesicht zeigen – Rosenheimer Bündnis gegen rechts” und Ombudsperson der Hilfsorganisation HELP
  • Antje Grawe, UNAMA 2006, 2008-10 und 2018/19
  • Marcus Grotian, Vorsitzender Patenschaftsnetzwerk Afghanische Ortskräfte
  • Heike Hänsel, MdB und Mitglied des Präsidiums der Deutschen Gesellschaft für die Vereinten Nationen
  • Matthias Heimer, Militärgeneraldekan, Leiter des Evangelischen Kirchenamtes für die Bundeswehr
  • Generalleutnant a.D. Norbert van Heyst, 3. Kommandeur der International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul von 10.02. – 11.08.2003
  • Dr. Haschmat Hossaini, Literatur- und Sprachwissenschaftler (Iranistik), Berlin
  • Prof. Dr. Klaus Hüfner, Präsident a.D., Deutsche UNESCO-Kommission
  • Dr. Margret Johannsen, Senior Research Fellow am Institut für Friedensforschung und Sicherheitspolitik an der Universität Hamburg (IFSH)
  • Jürgen Kanne, 2. Vorsitzender Afghanic e.V.
  • Hans Peter von Kirchbach, General a.D. und ehem. Generalinspekteur der Bundeswehr
  • Dr. Anne Koch, Forschungsgruppe Globale Fragen, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, Berlin
  • Susanne Koelbl, Journalistin „Der Spiegel“, Initiatorin des Poetry Project mit afghanischen Flüchtlingen
  • Tom Koenigs, MdB i.R., UN-Sondergesandter für Afghanistan 2006-07
  • Karin Kortmann, Vize-Präsidentin des Zentralkomitees der Deutschen Katholiken (ZDK)
  • Gerald Knaus, Gründungsvorsitzender European Stability Initiative (ESI), Wien/Berlin
  • Prof. Dr. rer.pol. Dr. h. c. theol. Klaus Leisinger
  • Dr. Kerstin Leitner, Beigeordnete Generaldirektorin, WHO, Genf
  • Dr. Thomas Loy, Oriental Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prag
  • Klaus Ludwig, Bundespolizeibeamter a.D., langjährige Erfahrung am Flughafen Ffm; seit 2016 ehrenamtliches Engagement in der Betreuung afgh. Flüchtlinge
  • Eckhard Maurer, Kriminalhauptkommissar i.R., Garbsen, leitete 10 Jahre lang khyberchild e.V. mit Projekten in Afghanistan
  • Bernd Mesovic, Mitarbeiter von PRO ASYL a.D.
  • Kerstin Müller, MdB 1994-2013, Staatsministerin im Auswärtigen Amt 2002-05
  • Botschafter a.D. Bernd Mützelburg, Leiter Abteilung Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik im Bundeskanzleramt 2002-05, Sonderbeauftragter des Auswärtigen Amtes für Afghanistan und Pakistan 2009-10
  • Winfried Nachtwei, MdB 1994-2009
  • Nanette Nadolski, Marketing- und Kommunikationsberaterin u. Afghanistan-Netzwerk bei matteo e.V., Weichs
  • Prof. Dr. Sönke Neitzel, Universität Potsdam
  • Dr. Hannah Neumann, MdEP
  • Prof. Dr. Christine Nölle-Karimi, Wien, Stellvertretende Direktorin, Institut für Iranistik, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften
  • Karin Nordmeyer, Präsidiumsmitglied der Deutschen Gesellschaft für die Vereinten Nationen
  • Dr. med. Thomas Nowotny, Arzt, Stephanskirchen, Initiator http://www.change.org\nodeportation
  • Johannes Pflug, MdB i.R., stellv. Sprecher für Außenpolitik der SPD-Bundestagsfraktion sowie Vorsitzender der SPD Task Force Afghanistan/Pakistan 2009-13
  • Maximilian Pichl, Wissenschaftl. Mitarbeiter am Fachbereich Rechtswissenschaft Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main
  • Ruprecht Polenz, MdB 1994-2013, Vors. des Auswärtigen Ausschusses 2005-13
  • Nadia Qani, Inhaberin des kultursensiblen Pflegedienstes in Frankfurt/Main und Autorin
  • General a.D. Egon Ramms, Oberbefehlshaber Allied Joint Force Command der NATO in Brunssum 2007-10
  • Generalleutnant a.D. Friedrich Riechmann, erster Befehlshaber des Einsatzführungskommandos der Bundeswehr 2001-04
  • Reinhold Robbe, MdB 1994-2005, Wehrbeauftragter des Deutschen Bundestages 2005-10
  • Thomas Ruttig, Afghanistan-Analyst, UNSMA/UNAMA 2000-03, Stellv. des EU-Sondergesandten für Afghanistan 2003/04
  • Dr. Lutz Rzehak, Privatdozent, Zentralasien-Seminar der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
  • Narwan Sayed, Hamburg
  • Klaus-Hermann Scharf, Vorsitzender Fachbereich Zivile Beschäftigte im Bundesvorstand des Deutschen BundeswehrVerbandes
  • Niklas Schenck, Autor und Filmemacher
  • Prof. Dr. Conrad Schetter, Professor für Friedens- und Konfliktforschung, Universität Bonn, und Direktor des Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC)
  • General a.D. Wolfgang Schneiderhan, 14. Generalinspekteur der Bundeswehr 2002-09
  • Wolfgang Schomburg, ehemaliger Richter am Bundesgerichtshof und den UN-Tribunalen für das frühere Jugoslawien und Ruanda
  • Georg Schramm, Kabarettist (ZDF-Sendung „Neues aus der Anstalt“)
  • Ulrike Schultz, Journalistin, Mitarbeiterin der Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung Islamabad und Kabul 2001-09
  • Dr. Hans-Ulrich Seidt, Deutscher Botschafter in Afghanistan 2006-08
  • Dr. Anja Seiffert, Bundeswehr-Forscherin, Leiterin für die sozialwissenschaftliche Begleitung des Afghanistaneinsatzes seit 2009
  • Kava Spartak, Berlin
  • Dr. Rainald Steck, Deutscher Botschafter in Afghanistan, 2004-06
  • Andrea Thies, European Police Mission in Afghanistan, 2008-15
  • Uwe Trittmann, Studienleiter Evangelische Akademie Villigst / Berlin (Villigster Afghanistan-Tagung)
  • Verband afghanischer Organisation in Deutschland e.V., Berlin
  • Dr. Kira Vinke, Sprecherin des Beirats Zivile Krisenprävention und Friedensförderung der Bundesregierung
  • Dieter Wehe, Inspekteur der Polizei NRW (2002-15) a.D., Vorsitzender der Bund-Länder Arbeitsgruppe Internationale Polizeimissionen (AG IPM) 2002 -20
  • Thomas Wiegold, Journalist, Berlin
  • Dr. Almut Wieland-Karimi, Leiterin des Landesbüros Afghanistan der Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung 2002-05Kathrin Willemsen, Unterstützer:innen-Initiative Oranienburg
  • Ronja von Wurmb-Seibel, Autorin und Filmemacherin
  • Oberstleutnant Andre Wüstner, Bundesvorsitzender des Deutschen BundeswehrVerbandes
  • YAAR e.V., Berlin
  • ZAN e.V., Frankfurt am Main
  • Massieh Zare, Bremen
  • Prof. Dr. Christoph Zöpel, MdB a.D., Staatsminister im Auswärtigen Amt, 1999-2002