interviews
Working at the Supranational Level
by Daniel Naujoks
July 31, 2019
This interview with Daniel Naujoks was conducted and condensed by frank news. It is part two of our conversation on The Mobility Mandala.
frank: Today, we often hear about a crisis of cooperation at the international level. It seems that many countries are reluctant to work together and many wonder about the place of the United Nations in today’s world. This is broad – but what influence does the UN have on nations today?
Daniel Naujoks: When we think about the influence of the UN it’s important to recognize that the UN isn't one entity. What we call “the UN” includes many different ways in which states interact with each other, often mitigated or moderated by certain entities of the UN. You have the General Assembly, which, for many people is the quintessential UN. And the Security Council – a highly political body and the only UN organ that has the power to take decisions infringing on states’ sovereignty. On the other hand, there is the UN of the many programs and agencies that have specific mandates and that work with governments and non-state actors to achieve something, like the UN Development Programme, the International Labour Organization, or the UN Environment Programme, to name a few.
When it comes to migration and displacement, we actually had several discussions on these topics at the General Assembly. In 2006, the UN organized the first high level dialogue on international migration and development, for which I was part of the organization team at the UN Population Division. In 2013, we had another high-level dialogue at the UN General Assembly. And after preparing and negotiating for two years, in December 2018, the global community adopted two new compacts. The UN adopted the UN Global Compact for Migration, for safe, orderly and regular migration, and the UN Global Compact on Refugees. These are non-binding agreements but the entire process of drafting these compacts was influential for spurring discussions among countries, between countries and civil society at the international level, and, even more importantly, at the national level.
Often we think of UN issues as matters at the supranational level, happening at the UN General Assembly hall here in New York or in Geneva. And that's true, that is an important venue. But, when we have a UN event or UN treaty, or in this case, a compact, there are also national stakeholders, human rights commissions, NGO networks, ministries at the national level, who have an interest in promoting certain issues. And they have consultations, the press picks up issues. Each country is a little different and it depends on the strength of certain stakeholders and their interests. For example, the U.S. government was largely absent from the process of the UN Global Compact for Migration.
Already in the beginning of the negotiations, the US declared, "We're out." Which, in my opinion, was not a very smart move, because even at that point, it was clear that it would be non-binding.
The risk of somewhat being held accountable would actually be low. And remaining in the discussions would have given the US a way to influence the content. But I think it was more about sending a political message to certain local constituents than an actual policy move in the international sphere.
What is remarkable is that even though the national government withdrew from the process, many U.S. cities said, "Can we be part of that?" New York, Chicago,and other cities really stepped in. Thus, in the end, there was a lot of participation in the U.S., even though the national government declared they don't want to have anything to do with it. So, sometimes, how the UN works is a little more complex than just what the official state department position is on an issue. And there are many venues. There are bilateral consultations, there are regional consultations on human trafficking, on labor migration and so on. There is a Global Forum on Migration and Development, the GFMD, which, since 2007, takes place every year. Governments come, they exchange notes on good policies, and on what can be done, mostly at the working level. At the working level, government officials cooperate and learn from each other. Again, it's non-binding. And the UN provides inputs, they chair sessions, they write background papers, they present case studies.
This is to exemplify that there are systems where policy learning happens in a much more informal setting, than through rigid rules-setting and treaty-making. This is something students in the UN Studies specialization here at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, that I direct, focus on when studying global governance. There are many different ways in which local and national governments, countries’ specific ministries, institutions, and agencies, international organizations, NGOs, and other groups negotiate and collaborate.
And then in the developing world, of course, the UN has a different role, because they are not just advising, they're working with local partners and in actual programs, like funding. And they're advising governments directly on how to do things.
But even there, what people from the outside often don't understand, the UN cannot work without the explicit consent of the host government.
So, when Kenya says that they want to close the refugee camps for Somalia refugees, UNHCR can plead, "Oh, please, refugees have rights and camps are bad." But, unless the Kenyan government gives UNHCR authority to work on certain programs, and provides UNDP consent to implement initiatives on livelihood strategies targeting refugees, these agencies can't do much. This being said, because of certain power asymmetries and donor interests, the so-called technical assistance from UN agencies in the Global South has the potential to influence policy decisions and exemplifies how the work of the UN can have an impact. But the political leverage of many agencies is not as large as is often seen. Which is why there's a lot of bargaining in the background. The things that you don't see that are not official.
Can you give an example?
DN: An example for the fact that the UN has to always ask for permission to work on certain issues is the persistence of the use of refugee camps. For the last 15 to 20 years, we know that refugee camps are not good for refugees. In the very short term, in the immediate aftermath of an atrocity, of a civil war, of a calamity, in the case of a sudden influx, camps may make sense to provide shelter and food and medical services to a large number of people. But, even in the medium term, they're very bad for the human development outcomes of people.
They lend themselves to a range of human rights violations, because people live in close vicinity to each other, people who are very heterogeneous among themselves. Just because they're all refugees, just because they're all from one country, doesn't mean they all get along well.
Camps generally don't provide sufficient economic opportunities for people, et cetera. That's why for some time now, we know that limited humanitarian responses to large refugee and IDP movements are not good for development. Definitely not for those people who are displaced, but mostly equally for surrounding communities. I actually developed a role-play simulation on the reasons for and against refugee camps and participants understand quite clearly the mix of international development and human rights logic with local politics and interests.
Addressing the shortcomings of classic humanitarian approaches, different UN agencies have been very strong in advocating for a more development-based strategy. For example, in the Syrian context, there has been the 3RP, the regional refugee and resilience plan, which is headed by UNDP and UNHCR, with I think, about 270 partners. It’s implemented in Syria’s neighboring countries, Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq, and Egypt. In addition to each country’s national plan there's a regional plan, which focuses not only on the humanitarian side but also development side. UNDP has been leading these efforts to provide livelihood support, skills, training, et cetera. But even there, we see that the implementation is hampered by a lot of challenges. Take Jordan. In the 2013 donor conference in London, Jordan pledged to give work permits to 200,000 Syrian refugees. They were very committed at the highest level of government.
But, a year later, there were almost no permits for refugees, and everyone asked why. We did a project with Better Work Jordan, which is a collaboration between the International Labour Organization and the World Bank. BetterWork Jordan published a report that my students drafted on why Syrian refugees did not get more official work permits. There are many reasons why employers couldn't employ refugees or couldn't expand their production. The refugees could only work in the export-oriented zones, mostly in the garment sector. They couldn't work in other areas. There was a distance they had to travel. Refugees often didn't want these jobs for a variety of reasons. There were many bottlenecks in the bureaucratic procedure to get work permits. In brief, there were many challenges at the supply side, the demand side, as well as on the bureaucratic transaction side.
These issues combined led to a situation in which this great policy that was mediated by the UN and other donors to actually empower refugees to be economic actors, didn't have the impact people had hoped for. While much of what the UN does can have important impacts, this shows that what can be done at the national level depends a lot on national priorities and politics. How politicians are afraid of negative impacts for the local voting populations. And then, of course, it has also to do with the commitment of the international donors to actually put in money to say, "Yes, we will not only give you minor funds to warehouse refugees but we will partner with you to empower them and your populations." Part of the agreement with Jordan that I mentioned was a pact with the EU. The EU said, "If refugees are employed you can export garments and other goods from export-oriented zones to us duty free." The idea was to use trade and the increase in production in the Jordanian garment sector as a way to increase employment opportunities for refugees. A great idea.
But, you probably need to do more to help Jordanian products to be competitive on the EU market. There's also a time lag. Even if you open up the market right away, these products may not satisfy the EU standards for garments. So, there are many things that the partners need to do to support these endeavors and to really make sure that local leaders are not afraid that if they open the labor market, if they open chances for local integration, that in two years, donors will pull out. And then, they will get stuck with the additional population without the support financial community. So, that's where the UN can help a lot. But, without real commitments from large donor countries or any countries to resettle and share the responsibility for refugees, there's only that much the UN can do.
Thank you so much for your time.
Image via Hannah Wallace Bowman (above).
interviews
In Conversation with Colonel Dillon, Operation Inherent Resolve
by Colonel Ryan Dillon
April 2, 2018
This interview with Colonel Ryan Dillon, the official Spokesman of Operation Inherent Resolve, was conducted and condensed by frank news. It took place December 15, 2017. This is part one of an ongoing conversation between frank and Colonel Dillon.
[Colonel Dillon] Hello!
[frank] Hi how are you?
I’m doing well, and yourself?
Good, thank you. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me I really appreciate it.
My pleasure.
Well, I can just jump right in. You guys have had a lot of news in the last week or so.
Yeah. It’s been pretty sporty out here. You know when I first came into this, it was very busy, and things have been, at least in military operations, have slowed down a little bit. At least as far as air strikes in Iraq go. Less in Syria. There’s still plenty of fighting in Syria that is happening right now.
Before we go into what's happening right now, I want to take a step back. Could you explain the mission of Inherent Resolve as it started.
Okay, so we’ll go back. It's pretty well documented, and I don't know if you've been to our site Inherent Resolve, but you know, it was about three years ago when the Islamic State really came onto the scene as an organized army if you will. Meaning that they were largely in small groups that were able to conduct spectacular attacks in cities and on roads, sow fear amongst the citizenry. And then they started to take territory. And it was as they started showing up with vehicles, and armored vehicles, after every place that they were able to take, where there's any kind of military presence, the military then dissolved. Iraqis aren’t very proud of that, but they acknowledge that in many cases they just dissolved and just ran away. And so every place that that had happen, all the weapons — they started to grab them, the vehicles. And so their army if you will, just continued to grow, and grow, and grow.
And it wasn’t really until they were about 20 kilometers north of Baghdad that the Coalition stepped in. Quickly thereafter many nations started to jump on it, and recognize that the Islamic State was very much a global threat. The coalition continued to grow, and grow, and grow until it’s where it is right now. 70 nations. 4 partner organizations. To defeat Daesh. Not all of those nations are military contributing members, but many of them play roles in other facets of the campaign, overall to the United States. That's counter propaganda, working in centers throughout the world, or going after their finances, or formed terrorist networks.
The Iraqi Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi, recently declared that Iraq is now free from ISIS control. Control over territory is one thing, but what about their ideology and intellectual presence? What’s the strategy moving forward?
The Prime Minister did say all areas have been liberated. However, he did make it very clear that we must still pursue ISIS relics and any other terrorist organizations, or any kind of terrorism that exists in Iraq. Any that does is counter to the way that we want to live in a won Iraq. So we must unify and continue our pursuit of any of these elements. We, as a coalition, assess in Iraq and Syria, that there are less than 3,000 fighters that remain in Iraq and Syria. So spread out in small areas in Syria. They still have territory. There’s still territory that we have not cleared, our partners at the SDF, have not cleared.
Back to Iraq, the Iraqi security forces know full well that ISIS still exists, both their ideology, and in small groups, and in cells that are throughout the country. And we know that for a fact because every single day the Iraqi security forces, all elements of it, the federal police, the Iraqi army, the counterterrorism service — they conduct patrols and are continuing to find these small cells. They continue to have engagements, small, but continue to fight ISIS elements. To include fighting and detaining foreign fighters that are trying to move throughout the area, trying to escape and get out of the country. So we know that there are pockets of ISIS.
There's also just you know, tons of explosives, and IEDs, mortars, and other materials that can be used for future attacks. And that's another thing the Iraqi security forces are doing. They’re going out and identifying all these caches, finding these tunnels that are, in some places, very intricate, and finding these hiding places where where they still exist.
Does a reduced number of ISIS fighters change your day to day drastically?
It does. So the way that we have conducted this campaign from the very beginning is through a strategy called By, With, and Through. And that is both in Iraq and in Syria. So in Iraq, By, With and Through means through our Iraqi Security Force partners. They are the ones that are doing the planning and the operations. They're the ones that are really fighting. They're the ones on the front lines.
We have provided support to the Iraqis really through five different ways. One is through intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. Those are our drones and other intelligence collecting means and ways to identify ISIS fighters. Number two is by providing advisors, and our advisors were largely on the ground with the battalion and brigade elements while they were conducting these operations. These operations are when we talk about Mosul, when we talk about Tel Afar, Hawija, Akashat. So these are major combat operations. The fact that there are now very few combat operations that are underway, at the same scale that we have done over the last three years, those advisers are shrinking. Meaning that they are less required. So that's number two.
Number three is training and equipping. We have trained more than 125,000 Iraqi security forces across all facets of their military. That includes, the majority are Iraqi army, 44,000 Iraqi army. I think it’s about 25,000 Iraqi police — that includes local police, the Federal Police, Counterterrorism service, Border Guard Force, and tribal mobilization forces, and the Peshmerga, the Kurdish fighters in Northern Iraq. So training. And then precision strikes, both ground artillery and air strikes.
So the strikes, you know, after all these major combat operations have gone down significantly. In September our totals were about 1,500. Then October was about 700. November down to just under 300.
I believe November 26 there were zero.
Correct. That was the first time in the three years of our campaign that we have not had a strike in either Iraq or Syria. And then it was about three weeks ago, almost a month now, that we announced that there were going be about 400 Marines in Syria that were going to redeploy, back to United States, and they would not be getting replaced. So the number of strikes continue to tailer off quite a bit. We still are very much into the training aspects, a lot of that training has shifted and adjusted accordingly now that the these major combat operations are finished. We're now transitioning to wide area security and the threat is less so of an army, if you will, the conventional type of threat, and more of an insurgent terrorist type threat. So they have adjusted accordingly in training. We will say that it is very much our intent to continue to encourage, and to provide trainers to do conventional type fighting.
If you rewind to 2014 that was really the issue. The problem was you had a lot of these Iraqi security forces that were in static positions and as soon as this conventional threat arrived, they just dissolved. So we see very much a necessity in training them on some of the conventional and combined arms type fighting that we’ve done for the last three years.
What’s your current assessment then on ISIS’s ability to project power from Iraq or Syria?
Very little. Number one, they are on the run. It makes it awfully difficult to manage and direct a global network when you are in pursuit at the rate that we are going after ISIS right now. There's no question that their twin capitals of Mosul and Raqqa were very much hubs for them both. They were, you name it, for many of the variety of different things that ISIS was doing, and they were organized, they were very adaptable. They're savvy. So we very much recognize that, and we don't want to see things like their research develop, their external operations, these branding efforts to conduct attacks in, you know, anywhere outside of Iraq and Syria. As we all know, all of these attacks that we've seen over the course the last three years, many of them emanated from planning in Raqqa and in Mosul. They were planned there. They were resourced there. They were launched from these locations. We don't want them to hold any territory or have any sanctuary. Because the other thing is, and I’ve read some really good articles recently that really dig into it, is their ability to manufacture and build weapons at an industrial level. And you can tell how nefarious — their intent. You’re talking about the type of weapons they’re trying to put together. They’re trying to mix chemicals. Thankfully they have not been very successful at that. But we don't want to give them time and space and resources to be able to get there.
Is there a laid out timeline for U.S. presence?
In Syria there’s still plenty of work to be done. We're training these local Internal Security Forces.
In Iraq, what gives you confidence that the areas that were so difficult to regain over the last three years, as you mentioned, won’t revert once you withdraw?
We've already seen the Iraqi Security Forces, in a couple different instances, show that they are very much capable of fending off attacks. About three months ago, there was an attack in Ramadi. There were about three simultaneous explosions happening at the same time, with several different ISIS fighters. Three years ago, the Iraqi Security Forces would have just said, uh oh, and ran away. In this case they very much stopped the attacks and nearly ran to the seams. And then, not only did they stop the attack, and kill those that were that were immediately there, but they went and put guys on helicopters, pursued them, and went after them as well. That's just one small indicator to show that they are very much in a better place than they were three years ago. I think the other thing is most people who have lived under Daesh do not want to live that that way again.
Do you consider Iraq a success right now? Should Americans?
It should be positive. You know, we’re talking very much about a military success. But that success does not equal full success. There's more that is required by the civilian efforts. I mean Mosul, east Mosul is great. People that were once displaced are all back here. University is back, it's open. Students are in there full time. It’s west Mosul that was just devastated by the amount of damage that happened from face-to-face fighting. So there are stabilization efforts that are required. In many cases immediately following a lot of these battles. You have to get the security taken care of. Because as we've seen, as we still see Mosul, in Ramadi, in Fallujah, and in Raqqa, the sheer level of explosives that ISIS has implanted and left in each location is mind boggling. I mean in Raqqa, the estimate right now is more than 8000 IEDs and booby traps left behind. Strictly and solely for the case of damaging, and hurting, and killing civilians who are going to come back. If you put these mines and booby traps in ovens, in dresser drawers, in kids toys, that goes beyond military necessity.