'No Voice'--well of course not, fool, you have tape over your mouth.

I’ve always been a cynic about Russia. I often chalk up stories about the Russian opposition and discontent with the Putin era to Western media painting a picture of what they hope exists rather than what really is. I’ll admit, up until a couple days ago, I was poo-pooing the current protests on parliamentary elections.

But something has changed. Up until very recently, any protest of this nature would have been stamped out before it could’ve gathered momentum. The police wagons would’ve outnumbered the protestors by day’s end, and the names of arrested dissenters like Aleksei Navalny and Ilya Yashin would’ve been hushed. But now, much to my surprise, there are at least 20,000 people braving the cold in Moscow–and they’re not scared, as the video below shows:

RFERL Russia Protests

So what’s changed? Perhaps, after four years of Medvedev the mannequin spouting liberal values, people started listening. It was all a masquerade; Medvedev talked about democracy, while Putin and his lackeys ran around and did the opposite, muffling any voice of dissent, from Yuri Luzhkov to now Aleksei Navalny, while stealing more and more from the state and creating an ever-more inept system of subordinate ministries competing for their favor at the expense of ordinary Russians. But maybe, just maybe, while Medvedev dangled democratic ideas before the noses of the perpetually disappointed Russians, people liked the sound of some of the ideas they heard.

Russians are too well-educated, and for the first time, too wealthy to treat them like absolute fools (though the bulk of Russians suffer in poverty). Yet that’s precisely what Putin did with the sham of having Medvedev assume the Presidency and play his part while Putin the strongman cavorted only to return and ‘save the day’ after a global recession. But the Kremlin doesn’t have the money it had when Putin left the Presidency. The budget continued to swell every year, but an economy that’s overly dependent on oil prices failed to find any alternative sources of revenue before prices started falling.

It’s easy to treat people like idiots when you can stuff money down their throat. But when you run out of things to stuff down, they’re bound to clear their throats and say something.

While you were sleeping last week, the Kenyan military stormed into southern Somalia, replying to a spate of kidnappings on their shores, which have terrorized the local population and dented the all-vital flow of tourist dollars. It’s looking more and more like the Kenyan military isn’t acting alone; while the campaign against Shabab arose at their initiative, the accompanying drone strikes on southern Shabab enclaves don’t exactly look like the work of Nairobi.

The presumed American support marks an intensification of American involvement in African security affairs. The Obama administration’s greater involvement in Africa, if it continues as is, moreover, should be welcomed for three reasons–saving lives is the right thing to do, it is helping secure ungovernable regions that would otherwise be hotbeds for terrorism (if they aren’t already, like Somalia), and lastly, it comes at the expense of little blood and treasure.

Shababies in a Heavily-Armed Clown Car.

The light support of security in Somalia (where, by the way, Oxfam continues to estimate that 750,000 are in imminent danger of starving to death) is one of several recent examples of cost-effective security operations on the African continent. In mid-October, Obama sent about 100 special forces troops into Uganda to aid efforts to combat the Lord’s Resistance Army, a brutal group that has been terrorizing Uganda, Sudan, Congo, and the Central African Republic for years. And all this comes on top of aiding the Libyan toppling of Muammar Qadaffi.

This is exactly what the US military should be doing now that Obama is pulling troops out of the Iraqi boondoggle and scaling down operations in Afghanistan. For all the advances in Africa, many parts of the region struggle with security, such as South Sudan, where hundreds recently died in cattle raid massacres.

Furthermore, these kinds of operations are necessary to avoid the large spaces, devoid of institutions, which terrorist groups relish. Somalia is a fine example–after the US abandoned attempts to maintain security there following the Black Hawk Down fiasco, the country became a breeding ground for extremism and violence. Abandoning the area then was a mistake that the US is paying for today.

What Kids in Sierra Leone inherited from the Cold War.

Inexpensive (in terms of people and money) operations to save lives in Africa are not unprecedented. In 2000, the British Army stopped a massacre in Sierra Leone which put that country on the road to peace. French interventions, both in 2011 and prior, have prevented massacres in the Ivory Coast. Doubtless UN peacekeepers and US forces have helped maintain a fragile peace in Liberia, where massacres were the norm between 1989-2003.

This kind of peacekeeping, of course, requires careful treading. Officials, both in the military and state department, must use extreme caution not to meddle in the domestic political affairs of these countries excessively; another risk is propping up strongmen in the name of stability, as the US did for so many years in Zaire with Mobutu Sese Seko.

These risks, however, do not mean the US or other militaries should stand idly by and abnegate a moral duty out of fear of meddling or wasting money. Unfortunately, there’s no way to truly measure how many lives these operations save and how wisely the military is thus spending its money. But calculable numbers from places like Rwanda, Burundi, and Sudan all too tangibly remind us of the cost of inaction.

In the meantime, here’s some J-Live in the spirit of Occupy Wall Street:

FREE YULIA!

It’s easy to hold the moral high ground in times of economic surfeit; it’s a little more difficult in times of dearth. That seems to be the situation with David Cameron, Prime Minister of the UK, in his relations with Russia. With the UK, US, and Europe tightening their belts amidst a molasses-slow recovery, Cameron visited Russian President Dmitry Medvedev this week, the first time a British Premier has visited Moscow since ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko’s death from polonium-210 poisoning in 2006.

Before Things Got Ugly for Litvinenko.

Heading into the meeting, human rights groups hoped Cameron would push Medvedev on the extradition of Andrei Lugovoi, the man implicated in the poisoning, which allegedly transpired in a London restaurant. Cameron, however, skirted the issue in the hope of improving relations with the oil rich Russians, offering only,

“This [the Litvinenko case] is not being parked. The two governments don’t agree. We are not downplaying it in any way. We have our own position. But I don’t think that means we should freeze the entire relationship – we need to build a relationship in our mutual interest. Both of us want to see progress. We are not parking the issue, just realising there is an arrangement that hasn’t changed.”

The gremlin-looking Lugovoi, after supposedly poisoning Litvinenko in November 2006, returned to Moscow to mull a political career. British police would charge Lugovoi with Litvinenko’s murder six months later in May 2007 and request his extradition, only to be denied the request.

Lugovoi promptly ran for Parliament and was elected in September 2007 as a member of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (perhaps the least aptly named political party in Russia–their leader, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, has opined that Russia should deport all Asians, that Russia should conquer every country in between its southern border and the Indian Ocean, and perhaps most tastefully, that all Condoleezza Rice needs to loosen up is to be raped by a company of Russian soldiers). After being elected to the Duma, Lugovoi became immune to prosecution under Russian law, which doesn’t seem to be the best deterrent of corruption.

Lugovoi, Looking the Part.

For Cameron to buckle in this instance is a shameful sacrifice of principle. Lugovoi didn’t commit a petty crime in London or even a petty murder–he assassinated a political threat using unpredictably dangerous radioactive material. Letting him off scot-free, and the people he works for, not only undermines the UK’s long celebrated principles of justice and freedom, but it undermines the UKs heralded status as a haven for asylum-seekers. Not to mention it makes Cameron look like a bloody hypocrite only weeks after condemning the country’s ‘moral collapse’ that led to rioting.

A Cameron aide noted that, “this is very much a long term game.” Indeed it is. In the long term, Cameron is encouraging the rambunctiousness of the Russian security services and undermining democracy and human rights. In the long term, Cameron is undermining the rule of law in his own country. Only weeks ago, Cameron promised swift and harsh retribution against looters and rioters. Now, only months after BP looked sordidly misguided trying to slip into bed with murky Rosneft, Cameron is letting an assassin and his shadowy bosses off the hook. And for what?

Tell it, Wu…

That's Us.

That’s right, ya’ll. Polar Bear Colony just turned two years of age. Thanks to all the readers, intentional and accidental. Whether you googled ‘Bokeem Woodbine’ or ‘Saparmurat Niyazov and civil society’, you somehow found your way here.

Expect a year of screeching, shouting ‘NO!’ and general temper tantrums. Ain’t that what being two is all about?

Ukrainian for "Civil Society."

Who wouldn’t want Vitali Klitschko on their side in a fight?

We can all agree that few people are eager to look like Samuel Peter, the Nigerian Nightmare, does in the above picture from his October 2008 fight against WBC heavyweight champ Vitali Klitschko. So maybe Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich might consider easing off Yulia Tymoshenko.

For those who don’t know, Tymoshenko, the former Prime Minister of Ukraine and one of the most instrumental figures in the 2004 Orange Revolution (which prevented Yanukovich from winning a rigged election against Viktor Yuschenko and installed a facially-withered Yuschenko as the rightful President) is on trial. The charges are that Tymoshenko, while Prime Minister in January 2009, broke the law by signing off on a gas deal with Russia’s Gazprom without clearing the deal with Parliament. The deal doubled the price of gas but put an end to a dispute that caused Gazprom to cut off gas supplies to Ukraine for two weeks and rattle the continent, making places like Bulgaria, Greece, and Slovakia a little chillier.

The trial shows just how shaky the concept of rule of law is in Ukraine as Yanukovich blatantly abuses the justice system for his own political gain–it furthermore highlights just how far Ukraine has retrograded since the enthralling democratic changes of the Orange Revolution. The charge is dicey at best and concocted at a seemingly random time. But just as things looked bleak in Ukraine for Tymoshenko and the supporters of the Orange Revolution, democracy seems to be reawakening in Ukraine, with a little help from two unlikely places: a boxer and a judo champion.

Riding a Wave of Popular Resentment.

In the last week, WBC heavyweight champ Vitali Klitschko came out and announced that he would delay his title defense in September in solidarity with Tymoshenko. Klitschko also happens to be head of a political party, the Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform (because when you’re the heavyweight champ, no one really is going to tell you, “no, you really can’t go into politics.”

But in a strange turn of events, judo champ and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has come out in support of Tymoshenko and asserted that the Gazprom deal was in ‘strict accordance’ with the law. In the past, Putin displayed nothing but derision towards Tymoshenko. It would be an understatement to say he reviles her. Furthermore, Yanukovich was widely considered to Putin’s stooge in 2004, and many figured the Kremlin was awfully pleased when he was elected President in 2010.

So why is Putin jumping to Tymoshenko’s defense? There’s three reasons. The first, voiced by Boris Nemtsov, former Deputy PM and Presidential hopeful during the Yeltsin-era turned opposition figure during Putin era is,

“Putin reasonably believes that if they’re going to put her in jail as a result of this agreement, then sooner or later someone will put him in jail for the same thing,”

Oh, this is awkward.

Nemtsov’s suggestion is that Putin is acting out of fear of being held to scrutiny by the law, which is pretty unlikely given his record of total impunity and disregard for the rule of law, so I’ll give more weight to the other reasons. The second reason is that, while Yanukovich has been depicted as pro-Russian, he hasn’t been as pliable as Putin hoped. For all the sound and fury that comes out of Tymoshenko’s mouth, it was she that signed a gas deal favorable to Russian interests, and if she returns to power, maybe she can be pushed around again.

The third reason is that perhaps Russia doesn’t really want Ukraine’s footing to ever be too solid, lest Ukraine be able to wean themselves away from dependence on their Eastern neighbor. So Putin and Russia are always going to back the underdog in Kiev to keep a little intrigue in the political scene.

What’s hopeful is that democracy and resistance to autocracy seem to be re-emerging in Ukraine again, with Tymoshenko again serving as the firebrand. It seemed it was all but dead when Yanukovich was elected President over Tymoshenko, with Yuschenko long ago having departed after burning all his bridges and the Orange Coalition fractured. As more and more Ukrainians (and ethnic Russians) criticize Yanukovich, and the crowds start to swell in the streets of Kiev, it seems that Ukrainians are still thirsty for rule of law. After all, most people who voted for Yanukovich, according to the Kyiv Post, did so holding their noses; ethnic Russians and Ukrainians in the recession-battered rust belt Donbas region, who voted for Yanukovich en masse, only did so because they abhorred Tymoshenko and what they perceived as cronyism. By jailing her, he’s made her a sympathetic figure to even those who once found her repulsive.

Maybe Klitschko and democrats in Ukraine will finally learn the special technique of Shadowboxing:

While you may think MIFF stands for moderately insipid flapping flagella, molasses-loving inane Flemish farmers, or manicured Indian frumpy frock-wearers, it actually stands for Middle Income Failed or Fragile States. The list, which is an amalgam of three separate lists, contains 17 countries.

As the article points out, of the 1 billion or so people living on less than $1 per day, the MIFFs account for about 180 million of them, which is more than the 10% of impoverished folk who live in poor but stable countries. The article also points out that in 2005, MIFFs only accounted for 15 million people living on less than $1 per day–meaning that middle income countries have seen increases in dire poverty, but more that many unstable, poor countries have become richer without becoming more stable or equitable.

This is hugely important for the international development and aid worlds. To begin with, it helps refute the claim the economic activity and development is more important than governance and eradicating corruption, an idea that has been bounced around by folks like Ha-Joon Chang and Paul Collier. While confirming the obvious (that war begets misery), it also supports the widely discussed but poorly understood maxim that resource wealth begets misery. I decided to reformat the list of MIFFs with violent conflict and resource wealth considerations:

All the countries on this list with neither violent conflict nor natural resource wealth have well under 1 million people, with the exception of Djibouti, who is just slightly under 1 million. So it’s safe to say that all the major countries of this list have either endured some sort of civil war or have some resource wealth (Intriguing side note to be explored in a future post: all the countries on this list that have neither violent conflict nor resource wealth, excepting Djibouti, are islands).

So what is a donor to do in these countries? How can these 180 million people be helped? Clearly, it is difficult to get aid to people in war-torn countries (and Paul Collier speculates that aid can actually exacerbate conflict). In the resource-rich countries, wealth has coincided with a proliferation of graft, with nations like Yemen serving as the not-so-good-model here of a poor country that found resource wealth and saw its already crumbling institutions get ever worse. More on this soon!

Portrait of a War Criminal's Booty.

(An intriguing side-note is that Hadzic slipped up, reportedly, because he had run out of money after years on the run and was attempting to sell Amedeo Modigliani’s Portrait of a Man. It is now looking like the painting may have been a fake. Strangely, the painting emerged out of the abyss in 2007 in Belgrade and was reported to be owned by an unnamed Serbian collector, only to be resold later on by Christie’s. There’s still a lot of details to be worked out regarding the painting, but the lesson holds–selling art is indeed a hazardous business, and it is easy to lose a whole lot in the process!)

The arrest comes only two months after the arrest of Ratko Mladic, another Serbian war criminal, and about three years after the arrest of Radovan Karadzic, thus tying most of the ignominious military leaders from the genocides of the 90s into a little bow for the Hague. The arrest is seen as closing what Serbian President Boris Tadic called a ‘most difficult chapter’ in reckoning with both the past and with other European countries. The motives for capturing Hadzic, Karadzic, and Mladic may have been to hasten the arrival of EU accession talks, or they may have been motives of justice, or somewhere in between. To me, motives don’t much matter, as long as one is doing what is right and just.

Boris to the EU: "We Got All Three!"

As RFE/RL reported yesterday, “Serbians can finally begin to think seriously about setting down the road to integration into the European Union.” The New York Times echoed the sentiment, mentioning that,

Prosecutors had complained for years that Serbia was either blocking the movement of war crimes cases or handing over suspects in fits and starts, depending on who was in power.

Their criticism has delayed Serbia’s attempts to join the European Union, which had made cooperation with the tribunal a condition for membership talks. Although most of the 27 countries in the union had softened their stance in recent years, the Dutch government, which hosts the tribunal, was a holdout.

Within hours of the arrest, European Union leaders issued a statement praising the Serbian government. A decision on whether to open membership talks is scheduled for October.

The arrests are a vital step moving forward, but Serbia still has a long way to go before they’ve proved themselves beyond the acrimony of the 1990s. What’s more important are how Serbia approaches relations with the neighboring countries like Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Croatia. These countries that spent decades butchering each other as part of an integrated Yugoslavia need to learn how to play nice, and, perhaps more importantly, deepen their economic ties to make future violence a far less attractive option.

As the RFE/RL article points out, Serbia still does not recognize the sovereignty of Kosovo, and abnegators include the relatively liberal President Tadic (to be fair, he likely would not have been elected President espousing a view respectful of Kosovar sovereignty.) Massacres have occurred as recently in 1999 in Kosovo, and a stalemate between Pristina and Belgrade only perpetuates the threat of further violence.

Good Food and Weather; Can't You Just Get Along?

While the Kosovo dispute festers (and has not much improved since Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence), Serbia continues to have fractious, far-from-amicable relations with its westerly neighbor, Bosnia and Herzegovina. While Bosnia accounts for 11% of Serbia’s exports, relations have worsened in recent years as the two young nations step on each other’s toes and exchange harsh words, although Serbia has expressed some optimism about their relations.

What is most important is deepening economic ties. Greater trade and more preferential terms between Bosnia, Kosovo, and Serbia would increase economic benefits of peace and thereby reduce the threat of violence. While President Tadic appears to be rather liberal, as a former psychologist and dramatist, he may have shown a flare of opportunism in him in his efforts to appeal to the EU. Opportunism, however, when turned domestically, can have dangerous implications and can lead to appeals for violence and ethnic divisions when times are tough–Slobodan Milosevic, for example, was one of the craftiest opportunists in memory in the Balkans, and it didn’t take long before his appeals turned violent. Great integration, however, makes violence a losing proposition, as violence would be more likely to be accompanied by reduced trade, less opportunities for employment, and fewer dinars coming in.

Moreover, improved relations from economic deals with contentious neighbors would make backsliding less likely. As it is now, Serbia can play nice until they accede to the EU, and then go back to disparaging their neighbors, returning to the precarious edge of violence. EU leaders should take note before giving Boris Tadic too many backslaps for catching criminals that were all too conspicuous to begin with. It wouldn’t hurt to give Serbia better guidelines for getting along with their neighbors and tell them to follow instructions: