Table of Contents

SELF-DETERMINATION ISSUES & WAR ON TERRORISM MIX IN THE PHILIPPINES
By John Gershman

KOSOVO CONFLICT PROFILE
By Fred Abrahams

INDIA'S POLITICS OF BRINKSMANSHIP ON KASHMIR
By Achin Vanaik

OTHER NEW CONFLICT ANALYSIS FROM FPIF

SELF-DETERMINATION ISSUES & WAR ON TERRORISM MIX IN THE PHILIPPINES
By John Gershman

(Editor's Note: By the late 1980s it was becoming increasingly evident that intrastate conflicts, largely induced by ethno-political and religio-political tensions, would be the main security issue of the post-cold war world--supplanting the superpower rivalry of the past four decades. Instead of a global security framework characterized by an ever-changing line-up of superpower surrogates in the developing world, in the 1990s many of these former pawns found themselves tottering without superpower support.

Joining them in the new conditions of post-cold war instability were the transitional states of the former Soviet Union. A rising wave of intrastate conflicts driven by self-determination demands compounded the political and economic stability. Especially hard hit were many countries in Africa, Central Asia, and Central and Eastern Europe. Whether or not to intervene in these intrastate conflicts as part of a new international response of "humanitarian intervention" was a question that increasingly confronted G-7 countries, neighboring nations, and the United Nations. The new interventionism raised related questions about the extent of national sovereignty, the imperatives of international norms, and unconstrained power of the U.S. in a unipolar world.

Today, questions about the value and the right of humanitarian intervention remain, but are now overshadowed by the U.S. war on terrorism. It's a war justified initially on the grounds of self-defense, but now has assumed a momentum and logic of its own, taking the U.S. to the Philippine islands and serving as justification for increased repression of ethnic and religious groups by governments around the world. In this issue of Self-Determination Conflict Watch, we look at recent developments in the Philippines. The news analysis below is excerpted from a longer Global Affairs Commentary, posted in its entirety at: http://www.selfdetermine.org/crisiswatch/0201philippine.html .)

The Bush administration will send more than 100 additional troops to the Philippines in its latest escalation of involvement in the Philippine military's battle with the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) in the southern Philippines. American troops have already started to trickle in. Twenty-five U.S. Special Forces troops arrived earlier this month, and another one hundred will arrive in February to train Philippine troops in antiterrorist operations. The U.S. troops will be based in Zamboanga City located in southwestern Mindanao. Current talks between the Philippines and the U.S. are considering deployment of a full battalion of U.S. soldiers.

The ASG is reportedly demanding 40 million to 50 million pesos ($800,000-$1million) for the release of three hostages--an American missionary couple and a Filipina nurse--who have been held by the ASG since the middle of 2001. More than 7,000 Filipino soldiers have been pursuing the ASG for months, narrowing the search to a small, densely forested area on Basilan island. The military has repeatedly announced and then failed to meet several deadlines for the rescue of these hostages. Military operations against the ASG in and around Basilan have resulted in at least 55,000 people displaced from their communities and have posed major challenges to the newly elected leaders of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), which is composed of Basilan, four other provinces, and one city with a combined population of over 2.5 million people.

Despite several offers by President Bush and other U.S. officials, the Arroyo government has ruled out any possibility of U.S. troop involvement in the rescue of the Abu Sayyaf hostages. However, U.S. soldiers will be allowed to go to the battlefront to "assess" the military operations against the Abu Sayyaf. The U.S. will maintain an extended presence in the region, as the annual joint U.S.-Philippine "Balikatan" military exercises scheduled for the first quarter of this year will be centered in the southern Philippines. In addition to the political significance of the exercises, they are important because participating U.S. troops routinely leave behind equipment and materiel that can then be used by the Philippine military.

Since September 11 the U.S. military has supplied cargo planes, helicopters, and trucks for the operations against the Abu Sayyaf. In a November trip to Washington, President Arroyo was able to translate her strong support for the Bush administration's "war on terrorism" into millions of dollars in economic and military aid and $1 billion in trade benefits.

Before and After September 11

Prior to September 11, the Bush administration had been monitoring the campaign against the Abu Sayyaf, but had not been actively supporting the Philippine government's military efforts. Bilateral military cooperation had been at a low level since the Philippine Senate refused to renew a lease for U.S. military bases in the early 1990s. After September 11, the Bush administration boosted ties with the Philippine military, expanding military assistance and training. The Bush administration has chosen to emphasize military involvement in this conflict and framed it as part of the broader war against al-Qaeda and the "war against terrorism."

Although there is some evidence that the ASG had had connections to the al-Qaeda in its earlier years, there is no evidence that the ASG has had regular contacts with al-Qaeda since the mid-1990s. The ASG is really a 21st century version of the criminal gangs that have long resisted colonial and Philippine government rule in this region. Most of its victims have been Filipinos, not foreigners. The ASG earns resources primarily from kidnapping and other criminal enterprises. Its success is in part due to the fact that it has used its income from ransom and robberies to buy high-powered weapons and that it provides at least some (albeit paltry) economic benefits to a desperately poor part of the Philippines, where the state is effectively absent.

The danger of growing U.S. involvement in the military campaign against the Abu Sayyaf is that it displaces attention from the much broader struggles for effective development and political self-determination on the part of other Moro (Muslim Filipino) political groups, the vast majority of which denounce the Abu Sayyaf as brutal criminals. However, these groups also identify the Philippine military and national Philippine political leaders--the Bush administration's main allies in the "war on terrorism"--as major obstacles to achieving genuine autonomy for Moros in the Philippines. They cite the history of unfulfilled promises in terms of public funds to finance basic infrastructure and social services in the country's poorest region. And they note the ongoing problem of human rights abuses by Philippine military and paramilitary groups against Moros throughout Mindanao. They fear that U.S. support for the campaign against the Abu Sayyaf will strengthen the political forces that have historically been unwilling to countenance a workable autonomy arrangement for Moros. Moreover, there is rising concern that other Moro political groups will be targeted as the newest terrorist threats once the Abu Sayyaf campaign dies down.

Promises and Fears

At this point, the promises of U.S. funds remain just that. The developmental challenge facing the new ARMM administration is massive. The ARMM, with nearly three-quarters of its citizens living under the poverty line, has the greatest proportion of poor people of any region in the Philippines. Maternal and infant health and basic education indicators are the worst in the country. The recurring conflicts, including the war against the Abu Sayyaf, have resulted in large numbers of internally displaced peoples, which totaled over 150,000 across Mindanao as of late November, 2001, according to Philippine government and NGO sources.

Repeating the pattern of U.S. aid packages to the Philippines during the Marcos dictatorship, U.S. military assistance continues to outpace support for anti-poverty programs. The Bush administration has earmarked $70.2 million in military aid to the Philippines this year, a more than three-fold increase over the $22.1 million in 2001. This mushrooming support for a military that has a pattern of human rights violations that covers more than three decades is a serious problem. The conditions that have enabled both broad-based insurgencies and criminal gangs like the Abu Sayyaf in and around Mindanao must be addressed through the construction of accountable and effective governmental institutions together with more effective and equitable patterns of economic development--not through military campaigns.

(John Gershman <john@irc-online.org> is a senior analyst at the Interhemispheric Resource Center and Asia/Pacific editor for Foreign Policy in Focus.)

For related FPIF analysis see:

Moros Conflict Profile
By John Gershman

Two World of Abu Sayyaf
By Sean Yom

KOSOVO CONFLICT PROFILE
By Fred Abrahams

(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new FPIF Conflict Profile, posted in its entirety at: http://www.selfdetermine.org/conflicts/kosovo.html .)

Until 1990 Kosovo was an autonomous region in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, with a predominantly ethnic Albanian population. It was the poorest region of the former Yugoslavia.

Amid a wave of Serbian nationalism led by former President Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav government revoked Kosovo's autonomy. From 1990 to 1999, while wars waged in Slovenia, Croatia, and then Bosnia, there was a constant Serbian police presence in Kosovo, resulting in serious human rights violations against the ethnic Albanian population. Kosovar Albanians were kicked out of state jobs and submitted to ongoing harassment and physical abuse by the police. Albanians responded by declaring Kosovo's independence in 1990 and establishing their own parallel structures. They engaged in peaceful resistance against the repression.

This began to change in 1996, when a small group of armed Kosovar Albanians, frustrated by the ineffectiveness of peaceful politics, began to attack police outposts in the province. By late 1997, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) had publicly declared its existence, as well as its intention to fight for an independent Kosovo.

As the KLA's attacks continued, the Serbian police response intensified, often claiming civilian victims in its anti-insurgency sweeps. The indiscriminate and disproportionate state response fed the ranks of the growing guerrilla movement. Throughout 1998, when the fighting reached the level of an armed conflict according to international law, the KLA also committed war crimes by expelling, abducting, and killing civilians, both Serbs and Albanians.

Diplomatic efforts in 1998 were unsuccessful in stopping both the KLA's attacks and Milosevic's over-aggressive crackdown. The U.S. and European governments failed to formulate a common stance to address increasing violence. Sanctions and deadlines imposed on Milosevic were often postponed, conditions abandoned, and sanctions poorly enforced or withdrawn as abusive violence by Serbian and Yugoslav forces persisted.

By early 1999, international pressure had built for a military response. After a failed international conference to reach a political settlement, NATO began a 78-day air campaign over Kosovo and the rest of Yugoslavia with the aim of expelling Serbian and Yugoslav forces from the province. Milosevic took advantage of the assault to expel more than 850,000 ethnic Albanians from Kosovo in a coordinated campaign. An estimated 10,000 Albanians were killed. Serbian and Yugoslav forces committed serious war crimes, including rape, forced expulsions, and extrajudicial executions.

NATO also violated international humanitarian laws during the bombing by failing to minimize adequately civilian casualties. Approximately 500 civilians in Yugoslavia died as a result of NATO bombs.

Slobodan Milosevic surrendered in early June 1999, and 50,000 NATO troops entered Kosovo. UN Resolution 1244, passed on June 10, stipulated that the province would remain a part of Yugoslavia but would be administered by the United Nations.

Two and half years since the end of the conflict, many serious problems remain. Although almost all Kosovar Albanian refugees returned home and many have been housed, an estimated 200,000 non-ethnic Albanians, mostly Serbs and Roma, have been expelled from the province. An estimated 1,000 Serbs have gone missing since June 1999 and are feared dead as a result of ethnically motivated violence. NATO and the UN did not do enough to stop the violence or the exodus in the beginning of the peacekeeping mission, undermining the credibility of the international military force in Kosovo. Furthermore, a weak judicial system has failed to establish a system of accountability.

Elections for a Kosovo parliament, as stipulated by Resolution 1244, were held in early November 2001 as a step toward handing Kosovo's administration back to the local population. As of early January 2002, negotiations on forming a Kosovo government were ongoing. Kosovo's status as a part of Yugoslavia or an independent state remains unresolved.

Proposed Solutions and Evaluation of Prospects

Kosovo has normalized somewhat since the war, but serious barriers remain before it could be considered a stable domain. Most importantly, the status of Kosovo must be resolved to guarantee long-term stability. In the meantime, ongoing international aid and direct involvement are required.

Despite rapid reconstruction and small-business development, Kosovo's economy is structurally weak. UNMIK should do more to curtail crime and corruption, including corruption within UNMIK, and work to promote sustainable economic development.

Central to this is strengthening the judicial system, which will help attract investors. Professionalizing the legal environment with an effective police presence and unbiased courts will also revive Kosovars' confidence in the fledgling postwar system. This includes arresting those responsible for war crimes committed in 1998 and 1999. The international community should maintain pressure on the Serbian and Yugoslav governments to arrest people in their jurisdictions who are indicted by the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

The issue of Kosovo's minorities is crucial. Ethnic Albanians must demonstrate that they can coexist with Serbs and other groups. The newly elected Kosovo parliament should work closely with UNMIK to facilitate the return of the Serb and Roma population. The international community should make it clear that an independent Kosovo state will never be accepted until certain democratic standards are attained.

At the same time, UNMIK's efforts should be geared toward a gradual transfer of power to the local community. Transparency of UNMIK operations, training of local civil servants, and the further development of democratic institutions will all help promote stability.

Central to all of these issues is the question of Kosovo's status: will it become an independent state or remain a part of Yugoslavia? If the latter, then under what arrangement? Leaving this issue unresolved undercuts efforts to revive the economy and to establish functioning political structures. It is also fodder for radical Albanian groups that resort to violence to advance their objectives in the region. Until this issue is resolved in a regional setting, the United Nations, NATO, and Western government must remain actively involved. Withdrawing peacekeeping forces would probably cause a resumption of hostilities.

(Fred Abrahams <fred.abrahams@verizon.net> was the senior researcher at Human Rights Watch responsible for Kosovo, Albania, and Macedonia. He is currently writing a book on Albania's political and social transition, 1990-2000.)

INDIA'S POLITICS OF BRINKSMANSHIP ON KASHMIR
By Achin Vanaik

(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new FPIF Outside the U.S. Commentary, posted in its entirety at: http://www.selfdetermine.org/crisiswatch/0201kashmir.html .)

Since the December 13 attack on the Indian Parliament, the Indian government has not been engaged in the politics of actually preparing to go to war but rather in the politics of brinksmanship.

The military risks (the uncertainty of military gains given a definite and strong Pakistan military response) and the political risks (alienating international opinion, especially the U.S. preoccupied with stabilizing the post-Taliban situations in Afghanistan and Pakistan) are too great for India actually to go to war. Of course, the high-risk strategy of brinksmanship carries the danger of matters getting out of hand and may lead to an actual war. This has not happened yet, and increasingly looks even less likely, which comes as a relief. Since the nuclear weapons tests of 1998, there is always the potential for any military conflict between the two countries to escalate to the nuclear level.

The current crisis may simply be a prologue to future ones. The Indian government, and a very large section of elite opinion backing it, feels that the recent round of brinksmanship politics has actually paid substantial dividends, domestically and externally. Moreover, a growing section (albeit still a minority) of the Indian elite has become progressively more belligerent and believes that Indian security cannot be achieved through any strategy of coexistence with Pakistan but only through the dissolution of the Pakistani state.

The rise of such views is, of course, intimately connected to the growing spread of the ideology of Hindu nationalism and chauvinism espoused by the Bharatiya Janata Party (and its cohort organizations in Indian civil society), The BJP, which leads the current coalition government, has long been determined to transform the Indian polity and society into a more authoritarian and anti-secular direction. This government has used the developments since September 11 and December 13 to curb civil liberties, harass its domestic opponents, further communalize the Indian education system, spread anti-Muslim and anti-Pakistan sentiments, and promote a more belligerent and aggressive elite nationalism in keeping with its general political ideology. What's more, it has diverted attention away from its political failure in Kashmir. The Kashmiri population has been alienated not only by the brutalities inflicted by Pakistan-supported terrorist groups but also by the terrorist repression carried out by the Indian armed forces in the region.

Kashmir will continue to bedevil India-Pakistan relations. The new American presence in South and Central Asia, and the emergence of Kashmir as a possible nuclear flashpoint, mean that Kashmir has now become internationalized, or more accurately, Americanized. The U.S. has not yet established its range of strategic options concerning Kashmir or how these would fit into its wider geostrategic ambitions. But it will eventually get around to this. And it is these perceived self-interests that will guide U.S. behavior, not the concerns of the Indian and Pakistani governments--and certainly not the deep desire for justice and peace that the long-suffering people of Kashmir on both sides of the border may have.

(Achin Vanaik <pamela@del3.vsnl.net.in> is an independent journalist and fellow at the Centre for Contemporary Studies, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. Author of numerous books on Indian politics and India's nuclear policy, his most recent book, co-authored with Praful Bidwai is New Nukes: India, Pakistan and Global Nuclear Disarmament (Interlink 1999).)

OTHER NEW CONFLICT ANALYSIS FROM FPIF

Somalia as Military Target
By Stephen Zunes
Before the U.S. attacks this impoverished country, it is important to recognize how Somalia became a possible haven for the followers of Osama bin Laden and what might result if America goes to war.

Fighting Terrorism, Undermining Democracy in Pakistan
By Najum Mushtaq
If Musharraf actively pursues his stated aim of turning Pakistan into a modern, progressive, and tolerant society, he will find the military itself standing in the way.

To subscribe to this listserv, send an email to majordomo@fpif.org, with the message "subscribe selfdeterminationlist" in the body of the email.

To unsubscribe to this listserv, send an email to majordomo@fpif.org, with the message "unsubscribe selfdeterminationlist" in the body of the email.

Alternatively, if you're having problems implementing these commands, email <web@fpif.org>, and the webmaster will manually subscribe or unsubscribe you, according to your instructions. If you are emailing the webmaster, she will use the email address from which you send your request, unless otherwise directed.