Tag Archives: International Republican Institute

Senegal democracy event at CSIS

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I was fortunate to get to stop by the Center for Strategic and International Studies last week while in Washington for other business and hear an interesting Africa Program discussion on Senegal. The link here includes the video:

Senegal’s Democracy: How Did We Get Here and What Should We Expect

Senegal’s civil society held things together to keep the election process from getting derailed and Senegal has a newly elected opposition leader. While challenges persist everyone who cares about democracy in Africa probably needs a morale boost right now and what learning we can find from the way things played out in Senegal so I encourage you to take a little time to watch.

Book bitings: how the National Endowment for Democracy was born in “strategic fuzziness” in 1983 (and why it is neither a “CIA cutout” nor a conventional NGO)

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Kenya Election Day 2007

I very much enjoyed recently reading Democracy Promotion, National Security and Strategy: Foreign Policy in the Reagan Administration by Robert Pee, from 2016 in the Routledge Studies in U.S. Foreign Policy series.

“Robert Pee delivers a carefully crafted, nuanced, and comprehensive study of the rise of democracy promotion as a critical component of US foreign policy under the Reagan administration. The analysis is insightful and sophisticated, offering an excellent understanding of the sources of tensions that animate US democracy promotion’s purpose and practices from its inception to the present days.” Blurb from Dr. Jeff Bridoux from Aberystwyth University, UK.

I highly recommend Pee’s book for anyone involved in or interacting with American democracy assistance. The detailed story of how NED, and NDI, IRI and CIPE as three or the four NED core institutions, “happened” is illuminating and important.

A critical factor that is lost, if not deliberately swept under the rug, in much of the internet commentary that has been generated in contemporary environments, is the fundamental institutional role of Congress in establishing NED.

In the very earliest part of the new Reagan Administration from 1981 the question of democracy assistance was on the table as an aspect of the foreign policy challenges of the late Cold War. Most acutely because of the challenge presented by the Solidarity movement and related happenings in Poland on one hand and the civil war in El Salvador and the revolution in Nicaragua on the other. Within the Administration there were a variety of leading actors and voices reflecting a range of viewpoints. Key questions included consideration of what was beneficial and what was necessary in terms of intellectual and ideological commitments to freedom in the context of the risks of confrontation with the Soviet Union, the stability of the “containment” order and hopes for arms control and other negotiations. Reagan was elected as a critic of President Carter’s new formal policy emphasis on “human rights” as ineffectual in the context of the events such as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the hostage-taking by students at the embassy in Iran. So something new and distinguishable was needed. While CIA director William Casey was one of those voices he was far from the only one.

In the meantime, aspirations for democracy assistance had been percolating in academia and civil society since the 1970s. It is essential to place this in the historical context of the post-Vietnam era, and in Pee’s emphasis the era post-Ramparts magazine expose in 1967 of widespread CIA cultural and intellectual subsidies.

In his famous Westminster address to the British Parliament of June 1982 President Reagan made the public commitment to a policy of democracy promotion. With that threshold crossed, the Administration had to come up with actual policy details and bureaucratic structure and the game was on. Reagan’s speech is well worth a re-read, especially to remind of the difficult Cold War context presented by Reagan’s dual commitment to both Strategic Arms Limitation talks with the Soviets and to Solidarity and Poland’s quest “to be Poland”.

Initially those voices of “conservative” caution and constraint who wished the national security structures of the White House to hold the reins won the initial bureaucratic struggle reflected in the Administration’s proposed “Project Democracy” legislation. But however hard it may be to remember this now, in 1983, Congress was a truly co-equal force on these types of foreign policy decisions and the Administration’s proposed “Project Democracy” approach died for lack of support.

In the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate environment, Reagan faced a “permanent” Democratic Party majority in the House of Representatives and a Senate with a range of important and influential thought and action leaders in both parties, with an ideological range in each that would be unthinkable today. Congressional debates on foreign policy were highly engaged and unpredictable. Seniority and Committee structures had greater weight.

And thus the National Endowment for Democracy happened in “strategic fuzziness” as Pee elucidates. At a specific time and place the sausage was made. The Administration had committed to democracy assistance as a new tool of foreign policy and Congress delivered a separate organization “endowed” with funding from Congressional appropriations but not in form a government agency nor reporting to the National Security Council. IRI and NDI which had been incorporated as nonprofits at the Republican and Democratic National Committees respectively earlier that year became “core institutions” of NED and CIPE was formed at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to join the longstanding international “free labor union” arm of the AFL-CIO which became the other two “core institutions”.

NED was made subject by Congress to the Freedom of Information Act and to audit, but not reporting to the White House. Early gambits to restructure NED to bring it under Administration control were defeated. After forty years NED is a both a fixture of “Washington” and a unique creature born of a specific confluence of global events, policy aspirations and domestic democratic politics in the United States in 1983.

[In reference to my previous posts, this background can explain, in addition to more important things, why Carl Gershman as fledgling NED’s president would have been attracted to having use of Henry Kissinger’s perceived “stature” and “gravitas” inside-the-Beltway” in Washington as a NED board member even if Kissinger was not interested enough in the mission relative to his other priorities to be able to attend the meetings.]

What is Henry Kissinger’s legacy as a board member at the National Endowment for Democracy? (Updated 12-14-23)

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Greetings and Happy Human Rights Day!

Henry Kissinger served on the board of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in the early years of the Endowment during the second Reagan Administration, from 1985 to 1989. Thus during the wind down and end of the Cold War.

For a good scene setter noting Kissinger’s role, see “Missionaries for Democracy: US Aid for Global Pluralism”, in the June 1, 1986 New York Times.

This position for Kissinger had escaped my attention until with the news of his death I looked back at the early 2009 press release from the International Republican Institute (IRI) announcing that Kissinger would receive that year’s IRI “Freedom Award”. (Given that IRI was promoting democracy in Cambodia, Bangladesh and East Timor among other places where Kissinger’s government service record in relation to democracy issues was well known by then to have been, shall we say politely “controversial”, I was a bit taken aback. Obviously Kissinger was a primo draw for a D.C. foreign policy establishment fundraising dinner but I was still surprised at the specific symbolism for IRI.)

I first visited NED in June 2007 as the new IRI Resident Director for East Africa on my way out to Nairobi. I met with Bronwyn Bruton, longtime DC Africa hand, who was managing the East Africa grant portfolio at NED which would fund much of our IRI work in Kenya (assuming approval at a meeting of the NED board which I also attended) along with her boss Dave Peterson who has been NED’s Africa Director dating back to Kissinger’s time on the board in 1988.

It was only in the summer of 2009, after I was back at Northrop Grumman in Mississippi and my dustup with Ambassador Ranneberger over the Kenya IRI/USAID exit poll and election observation had been on the front page of the New York Times that I attended a public Kenya program at NED and got to meet longtime President Carl Gershman and other executives. (I have written about that event previously in regards to Kenya.)

With Kissinger’s death the copyright on material he produced in his NED papers at Yale has passed from Dr. Kissinger to the University. I have spent time this weekend looking at what the Yale Library has digitized on-line of the six boxes. I have reached out to a couple of friends in the academic world who work with the study of democracy assistance to see if they are interested in collaborating with a layman/practitioner to study this.

Some interesting things I have learned so far: Kissinger was not on the initial board of directors when NED was established in 1984 following passage of the enabling legislation in December 1983, but was sent an invitation by Mr. Gershman in December 1984 following discussions that fall. Kissinger accepted in late January explaining that his response had been delayed by his travel schedule.

Most of the material is just copies of NED board correspondence, but there are slips and notes indicating his many scheduling conflicts between Kissinger & Associates business, corporate boards and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

By late 1988 Kissinger had received a letter from NED’s outside general counsel noting that his three straight absences from board meetings would necessitate his removal by policy, but that there would an opportunity at the next meeting to present “extenuating circumstances” to excuse the attendance issue. After some confusion on whether he had automatically been removed, Kissinger submitted his letter of resignation because of his other time commitments in January 1989.

One is left with the impression that Kissinger might have been something of a foreign affairs celebrity/senior statesman board member who did not heavily engage with NED governance.

Perhaps ironically as to Kissinger, the big feather in NED’s cap in late 1988 was deploying a special Congressional appropriation along with other funds to support in Chile the “no (to General Pinochet)” campaign in the plebiscite that Pinochet had called on continued military rule.

NED funded usual Chilean civil society type programs as well as the funding to NDI for the campaign which among other things paid for three American political consultants, including Glen Cowan of Francis, McGinnis & Rees, who pioneered the NDI-funded PVT through the opposition parties and through the local “Committee for Free Elections”. NDI, according to their quotes in clips circulated by Mr. Gershman to his board, added private funding to the US Government funding provided through NED.

It might be that as a private citizen and businessman by 1988 Dr. Kissinger was no longer intensely interested in Chile or General Pinochet; perhaps he sort of informally recused himself from the NED board in the context of Reagan’s second term pivot reflected in Mr. Gershman’s description (“the basic concept was to promote a peaceful and stable democratic transition”). Maybe he now supported democracy in Chile affirmatively to the point he did not feel it necessary to show up? Without being able to ask him, maybe we can learn more going forward.

National Journal piece on NED and NDI Chile work cited favorably to NED board members

[This Chile work was the origin of the NDI-funded PVT programs that I have written about in Kenya’s 2013 and subsequent elections, as well as in the most recent elections in Malawi and DRC. There are some big differences between the late Cold War NED NDI Chile work in 1988 and the application of the tool by USAID in conjunction with their other democracy programing in 21st Century Africa.

Glenn Cowan joined Eric Bjornlund from NDI in forming Democracy International (DI) in 2003 and published an extensive Vote Count Verification User’s Guide for USAID following a wide consultation among implementors in 2010. They gave me a valued copy several years ago. I will hope to write more about this after catching up with old friends at DI and elsewhere.]

For more from NDI, see the 40th Anniversary retrospective at “NDI: BOLSTERING GENUINE ELECTIONS TO SECURE DEMOCRACY – THROUGH CITIZEN AND INTERNATIONAL ELECTION OBSERVATION”.

NED Memo of 9-87 announcing 1988 Board Meetings (January 1988 was Kissinger’s last, followed by January 1989 resignation.)

UPDATE: Continued research shows that Kissinger attended no more than one NED Board meeting after the spring of 1987, but executed a consent on June 28, 1988 approving the NED grants supported by those members who attended the June 5, 1987 meeting, including 6 grants to NDI, among them “Chile: Promoting Free and Fair Elections -$110,172”.

An Early Warning ignored: “it is possible to infer that a well-orchestrated plan was implemented to ensure a predetermined election result”

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Struck me this week that 15 (!) years had gone by since the July and August release of the International Republican Institute Kenya 2007 Election Observation Mission final report and the Exit Poll following my family’s return to the US from my time in Kenya as Chief of Party on each of those USAID programs.

A quick catch up on-line generated a critical document that I had not noted previously. It is a report prepared by IFES for Open Society East Africa for submission to IREC, popularly known as the “Kreigler Commission” which was to investigate the failed election as a result of the February 28, 2008 “Peace Deal” and subsequent processes to implement the basic terms. The Commission reported privately to President Kibaki and then released a public report (see my key document links) that elided actual investigation of the ECK’s tally of the Presidential vote as such.

Lots of worthwhile material but here is key except, in context of US policy – as I was told by a “player” well after the fact – to back the result of the ECK full stop. Aside from the issue of such a policy making the USAID-funded IRI Election Observation Mission Program and the Exit Poll beside the point at best, it clarifies why the State Department should have known better than to have such a policy—and stick with it in being alone in initially congratulating Kibaki until the violence was raging (aside from the fact that Ambassador Ranneberger himself witnessed fraud in the central ECK tally operation with EU Chief Observation Delegate Lambsdorf as I have demonstrated through obtaining his January 2, 2008 cable to Washington through FOIA).

From “The Electoral Process in Kenya: A Review of Past Experience and Recommendations for Reform” IFES Final Report August 2008:

. . . .

Kenya 2007 election Kibaki Tena Kazi iendelee re-election

Early Warning Signs in Electoral Management

With the benefit of hindsight, it is possible to infer that a well-orchestrated plan was
implemented to ensure a predetermined election result:

a. President Kibaki’s decision to abrogate the IPPG agreement of 1997 on the
formula for appointments to the Electoral Commission ensured that all of the
Commissioners were appointed by him alone. The IPPG agreement had capped
the maximum number of Commissioners to 22 and reserved 10 seats to be filled
by persons appointed by the President after recommendations by opposition
parliamentary parties.

b. The allegations of questionable procedure in the appointment of returning
officers by Commissioners.

c. An offer from the International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES) to install a
computer program that would have enabled election officials in the
constituencies to submit results electronically to Nairobi and then on to a giant
screen available to the public, making it virtually impossible to change results,
was rejected.

d. The use of ECK staff in the Verification and Tallying Center was abandoned in
favor of casual staff recruited directly by the Commissioners.

e. The Commission refused to ensure that election officials in areas with large
predictable majorities for any of the candidates came from different areas so as
to reduce the likelihood of ballot stuffing.

Since opinion polls from the 2007 elections consistently indicated a very tight contest, the
neutrality of the ECK was always paramount, particularly in the event of a thin margin and a
too-close-to-call election. The new appointments made by President Kibaki to the ECK early in
2007 elicited protests from the opposition that he was fortifying the ECK with his supporters
despite the need for the electoral body to be perceived as fair and independent, a perception
crucial to political stability in a region where many political systems are unstable. Several actors
appealed to President Kibaki to consult the opposition prior to making appointments to the
Electoral Commission, with no perceptible effect.

These developments exacerbated problems within the ECK. Although the ECK had improved
substantially since 2002 in its ability to manage elections, the commission still clung to many
questionable practices. For example, votes were counted at the polling station without
transportation to a central tallying center, a process prone to abuse and manipulation by the
former regime. The unilateral appointments by the President meant that the ECK was now
perceived as subject to control, direction, and manipulation by the government.

Raila owes me for keeping the vote count verification Exit Poll showing him leading in 2007 from “going away”, but I did not do it for him personally

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Over the years carrying my torch as a witness to what happened on my watch in democracy assistance in Kenya in 2007-08, I have always tried to be mindful of the notion that it has not been my business who Kenyan voters chose, including how they voted in the subsequent 2013, 2017 and 2022 elections in which Raila has continued to be a leading candidate. Rather, my job in 2007-08, and my purpose since, has been to address the facts honestly and support the democratic process so that the choices actually made by Kenyan voters themselves would be honored.

Thus, keeping the 2007 Exit Poll from meeting an untimely demise because it was diplomatically inconvenient was not a matter of “supporting” Raila versus Kibaki as a candidate or politician, but rather doing my job to support the democratic process and “observe” the election with integrity.

There was a little bit more involved in preserving the hope that the Exit Poll would be released and published during the early months of 2008 when I was finishing out my “public service leave” as International Republican Institute Resident Director for East Africa than I have written about over the years.  It is probably time to tell the story.

In summary, after the decision was made in Washington to my surprise and disappointment not to release the Exit Poll showing Raila winning by almost six points, there was still the notion that the original polling forms would be sent to Washington and the original data evaluated and re-entered in digital form to determine whether there were actual doubts or anomalies to justify the announcement that the poll was “invalid”. Initially, this was going to happen when staff from our Nairobi office traveled to Washington in March for IRI’s annual global meeting.  The meeting was intended to be mandatory for me as a Country Director and I was asked on behalf of IRI’s President to prepare a presentation on the process of dealing with the Exit Poll and the release decision.  I explained to my boss, the Africa Director, that this was a terrible idea since I emphatically objected to the decision to say the poll was “invalid” and not release it, but I did not want to get up in front of a bunch of young idealistic IRI employees working around the world and say that, nor surely did “the front office” want me to. I also had a major family conflict for the meeting which had been moved because someone in Washington had forgotten to make hotel reservations.  Since my leave from my job in the States was up June 1 and I had to move back in May anyway, I was comfortable declining and was able to beg off.

The original survey forms, which were in locked storage at the Country Director residence near our office, were going to be delivered to Washington by the other staff members making the trip for the March meeting.  But then those instructions were cancelled and there was no operative plan to re-enter the data or otherwise review the original forms in Washington or elsewhere.  The researchers from the University of California San Diego (UCSD) who were the critical consultants for the USAID-funded poll and had contributed additional funding supplementing that provided by USAID, wanted to do the data work, but IRI Washington did not want to let them without modifying their contract.  IRI would pay  $10,000 as compensation for the additional work, the same sum as the funding Dr. Clark Gibson of UCSD had provided pre-election, but UCSD would have to surrender the right to publish the results after a six month exclusive period for IRI that was provided in the original pre-election contract.  Dr. Gibson, as he told the New York Times declined because he thought “they were trying to shut me up”.

Given the fact that there was no path forward to complete the polling program and answer the questions that had been raised back in Washington without reference to the original data, I had to make a choice as Chief of Party for the polling program between honoring the existing contract with Dr. Gibson of UCSD or breaching it to follow instructions from my IRI superiors.  I elected to honor the program and the contract (and the election process itself as I saw it) and allowed the UCSD graduate student researcher to take possession of the survey forms (I had sent him, along with my wife, to retrieve them from the polling firm and bring them for safekeeping at the residence once things got “hot” when IRI announced from Washington that the poll was “invalid” and would not be released.  (As but one example of what I was concerned about, the possibility of a re-count of the underlying vote in the December 27 election had been eliminated, allegedly, by a fire in the warehouse where the ECK stored the ballot boxes just after the vote.)

Thus UCSD was able to verify the poll and release the results in presentations in Washington at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Johns Hopkins University in July 2008 after the end of the six month embargo. And USAID reported in their Frontline newletter that the exit poll “disclosed that the wrong candidate had been declared the winner”.

The personal drama was that in April when I was working from the residence (my successor was in place running the office by then but had not yet been approved by USAID as Chief of Party so I was still needed for public meetings and reports and such) when I got a call from my Africa Director in Washington that my successor had not been able to find the survey forms in the office.  I explained that they had never been taken to the office, which seemed obviously less secure, so we had taken them to the residence.  That was a satisfactory answer and nothing further was said.  The fact that the forms were in San Diego at that moment was a “didn’t ask, didn’t tell”.

In May I was to turn over the residence to my successor.  The UCSD researcher was bringing the survey forms back from San Diego with him and put the boxes in checked baggage which was tied up in a big delay at Heathrow in London, so he arrived without them as I was getting ready to vacate the residence.  In the context of the tension between myself and the Ambassador and the non-release of the Exit Poll, I threw myself my own going away party with my family and the staff that reported to me, but I did get invited to a farewell dinner by the Serbian Ambassador and his wife who managed our IRI office for both the East Africa programs and Sudan. Starting out with a homemade Serbian aperitif I felt a bit woozy after a sip and excused myself. I woke up a few minutes later on the floor of the restroom with blood on the tile from striking the sink on the way down.

A cab was called to take me to Aga Khan hospital where I recovered for a few days while my wife and kids scrambled to finish getting everything out of the residence for turnover in my absence and I hoped that the boxes of survey forms would arrive in time to be back in the residence for my successor.  After a few anxious days the boxes arrived in the nick of time and I was soon out of the hospital and off with the family for a couple of weeks in Uganda before going back to Mississippi and my job as a lawyer in the defense industry. Testing at the hospital indicated that I did not have malaria, just some similar but completely temporary symptoms of who-knows-what.

At some point, IRI ended up hiring a survey firm in Oklahoma to review the Exit Poll and released it themselves in August 2008 just before the UCSD researchers testified about it to the Kreigler Commission which was conceptually charged with investigating the dispute as to the facts of the vote for president.  Raila wrote about how important the Exit Poll was to him in his autobiography, “The Flame of Freedom”.  He got part of the story wrong, but since he has continued to be a candidate for president over the succeeding elections, it has been in his interest not to be overly fastidious about all the details, just as the important thing for current democracy assistance efforts is keep learning and adapting from the lessons that become available.

If Raila ends up being president this time, I hope he does a great job in the spirit that his most loyal friends and supporters, some of whom are also my friends, have always hoped.  I also hope it is because he gets the most votes in a free and fair election that is not marred by violence or more corruption than we have already seen.

The long view – 15 years ago I was preparing to move my family to Kenya for six months public service leave to work for IRI

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In May 2007 I was getting ready to move and reading up on Kenyan politics and history, and talking to people associated currently or previously with the International Republican Institute who knew something about the practical aspects of living and working in Nairobi, which was not as common a thing for Americans then as now.

At my job as Senior Counsel with the big defense contractor Northrop Grumman I was working to close a “Gulf Opportunity Zone” bond issue for “facilities modernization” at The State (of Mississippi) Shipyard at Pascagoula which was under long term lease to the company with rent tied to bond debt.  We were recovering and improving in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.  I was also Program Counsel for the Amphibious Assault Carrier program, in which we had a series of contracts for a low “ten figure” sum to build a Navy ship that carried a Marine Expeditionary Unit to wherever they might need to go, with a few helicopters, airplanes and landing vehicles, a hospital and such.

The idea of doing non-profit foreign assistance work was influenced by several things, most especially living through the Hurricane Katrina disaster.  A few weeks before the hurricane hit the Mississippi Gulf Coast I had served as an Election Observer for IRI in Kyrgyzstan, and as the youngest and most expendable delegate I had had a grand adventure in Batken in the Ferghana Valley and found the experience of supporting a peaceful election in a troubled region as a counterpoint to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to be inspiring.  Spending some time in an area that was poor and economically regressing also gave me a different perspective on the context of the devastation we soon faced back home from Hurricane Katrina, where in spite of the initial failures we received billions of dollars in assistance.  Even though it was all grossly inefficient, Washington turned on the spigot.  More importantly people from around the country and even around the world came to help “on the ground”, sacrificially, and many of my friends, in particular in my church congregation, did wonders helping those in need while most of my impact involved my work at the shipyard.  All told, I was primed to “do something” intended to be helpful and in particular in the “less rich” world.

It was in this context that I asked for “public service leave” to take the position of Resident Director for East Africa for IRI.  I asked for 18-24 months of unpaid leave, with the expectation that I would have to hope that a spot was available somewhere within the company’s law department after concluding at IRI. I got 6 months of job-protected leave instead, extended at IRI’s request that fall to a full year.

If I had had the background and experience, I might have sought to work in some other area like agriculture.  I had a background in practical party politics which had led to the opportunities to volunteer with IRI.  There was another context for working in democracy assistance specifically though, which was the Iraq war.  I was one of those that had not really been persuaded by the case to invade–it seemed like a “hail mary” so to speak that only made sense in the face of the kind of clear imminent threat that did not seem to be demonstrated.  Likewise, the general “Bush Doctrine” did not seem to me to be consistent with the weight of decisions of war and peace that were required by my Christian values.  By 2005 most Republicans from Washington could admit when they let their hair down overseas that we had made a mistake even if it would be another eleven years before they felt willing to say so publicly in response to Donald Trump’s campaign in the Republican primaries.

At some level, I thought we made the mistake on Iraq because too many of the people who really knew better in Washington in 2002 and 2003–the kind of people who had the experience and regional knowledge that I knew outside of Washington–“went along to go along” rather than exercise their best judgment.

So given my reasons for being in Kenya in the first place, and my own experience watching policy trainwrecks in Washington from the field, I was never going to be the guy to delegate my own responsibilities to do my own job to others, such as the Ambassador, who were not in my chain of command and had different roles to play and different perspectives about the Kenyan election. Nor was I going to willingly personally implicate myself in communicating things that I did not consider to be true when my job as Chief of Party for democracy assistance programs did not countenance “looking and pointing the other way” for extraneous reasons when confronted with election fraud.

I have found some agreement from a range of people in Washington with my observation that “the soft underbelly of American national security is careerism”.  Since I wasn’t in Kenya for IRI because “it was the best job I could get in the Republican Party” or because I wanted to switch careers to try to climb the ladder in U.S. foreign policy in Washington, I did not have the same temptations that others might have had to let myself get steamrolled by the Ambassador or others who did not want to recognize inconvenient facts about the Kenyan election that I had a responsibility to deal with.  Likewise, being an experienced middle aged lawyer used to dealing with government contracts made a great deal of difference, as did being the father of young children whom wanted to be able to explain myself to in years to come.

P.S. In case you have come to this piece fresh without being a previous reader here, the best “witness summary” of my experience and subsequent research is my longread in The Elephant from 2017:  “The Debacle of 2007“, in addition to my Pages with my “War for History” series and my “FOIA Series–Investigating Kenya’s Election“.

Kenya 2007 PEV Make Peace Stop ViolenceA Chaotic Kenya Vote and a Secret US Exit Poll in New York Times

 

 

 

Michael Horton of the Jamestown Foundation joins the advocacy for international recognition of Somaliland

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Micheal Horton, a fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, who publishes occasionally at the Quincy Institute’s Responsible Statecraft, has written a piece entitled “How Somaliland is playing its geostrategic cards better than most” including advocacy for international recognition:

. . . .

 

The pressures that Somaliland faces will only increase in the months and years ahead. The ramifications of the possible dissolution of Ethiopia as a cohesive state will reverberate across the Horn of Africa. Somaliland, like other Horn of Africa nations, will be hard pressed to insulate itself from the fallout from the fragmentation of Africa’s second most populous country. Ethiopia’s civil war is also occurring at a time when developing and developed nations alike face rising energy costs and food inflation, as well as ongoing economic disruptions resulting from responses to COVID-19. Such challenges will test every country in the Horn of Africa and beyond.

 

More than ever, Somaliland deserves and needs international recognition for the great strides it has made to establish a democratic and durable government. The United States has an opportunity to solidify its relationship with a nation that has a proven record of adhering to the values and forms of governance that it supports. However, the window on this opportunity is likely to close. At some point in the near future, circumstances and necessity will force Somalilanders to choose a side. Aid from China may prove more convincing than empty rhetoric from Washington.

Following the paper “The U.S. Should Recognize Somaliland” by Joshua Meservey, the Heritage Foundation’s lead Africa analyst published in October, it is clear that there is real movement on the conservative side of the Washington foreign policy establishment for some U.S. initiative on the recognition issue, in spite of the reduced public engagement with Somaliland during the Trump Administration when the D.C. right had some real direct power in the various bureaucracies as well as the White House and top levels at State and Defense.

Personally, I do not disagree with Meservey’s or Horton’s basic arguments (not to say I agree with every detail of what they write or that they address all issues where I see challenges and risks) now that Somaliland has delivered on the long delayed parliamentary election.  I thought the previous “dual track” approach from the early Obama years made sense then and I was surprised not to see more progress since. (See “U.S.-Somaliland relationship continues to mature as U.S. leads donor delegation on preparation for municipal elections” from 2012.) Given that I poked a bit at now-Secretary Buttigieg’s 2008 advocacy (“Quick thoughts on Mayor Pete’s Somaliland vacation and related op-ed” and “Please note that in mid-2008 Hargeisa, Somaliland was safer and less repressive than Addis or Khartoum” ) I want to take note of both the progress in Somaliland and the risks of letting more years drift by on recognition as other changes take place in the region.

Khat Shop Hargiesa

 

Should there be an international Code of Conduct for Exit Polls and Parallel Vote Tabulations?

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[As the year winds down and things crank up in Kenya’s 2022 presidential campaign and BBI referendum I am going through some of my old unpublished drafts – this is an idea that could matter that the parties involved do not have an incentive to bring forward.]

To me, the answer to the headline question is clearly “yes”.

Very specifically to my experience as in Kenya in 2007 as International Republican Institute Resident East Africa Director, I was able to explain to the USAID Kenya Mission that we at IRI were bound as a party to a published International Code of Conduct in conducting an International Election Observation that required us to maintain independence from the Ambassador.

(Readers may recall that then-Ambassador Ranneberger had pushed for a USAID-funded IRI Election Observation Mission for Kenya’s 2007 election which USAID had decided not to conduct in their ordinary planning process for the election and that IRI did not seek to undertake.)

We on the IRI staff were able to push back on Ambassador Ranneberger’s desire to select Election Observation Mission delegates, although we ended up informally going along with Ranneberger’s choice of Connie Newman and Chester Crocker as lead delegates (Crocker was not available to travel on the dates required).

The rest of the delegates were our choices rather than the Ambassador’s and we resisted Ranneberger’s expressed desire to remove his predecessor Amb. Mark Bellamy from the Observation until Ranneberger “laid down a marker” as he put it.

Likewise, we invited against Ranneberger’s wishes Bellamy’s predecessor as Ambassador to Kenya, Johnnie Carson, who was then the Africa lead at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and later Assistant Secretary of State under Obama (Carson was not cleared to participate–I was privately relieved for two reasons: it got me off the hook on a potential conflict with Ranneberger and while Carson seemed like a real asset for the Observation I thought the optics of having a high ranking Executive Branch employee and particularly one directly in an Intelligence Community job would not be great from an independence standpoint. In hindsight it might have done some real good to have him there.).

Unfortunately, on the now perhaps infamous Exit Poll, I was more or less naked in dealing with USAID and the Ambassador. The polling program was under a separate Cooperative Agreement between the CEPPS (IRI, NDI and IFES) and USAID which had started with the Exit Poll for the 2005 Constitutional Referendum. (The defeat of the proposed “Wako Draft” Constitution gave rise to the Orange Democratic Party which led Kenya’s opposition in the 2007, 2013 and 2017 elections, culminating in the March 2018 “handshake” and the present “Building Bridges Initiative” referendum campaign).

The 2005-07 polling program was scheduled to end with a public opinion survey in September 2007, well ahead of the general election, the date of which was not set until weeks later. USAID amended the Agreement to add the general election Exit Poll at the end. It was only after I initially reported a few days before the election that we were going to have to cancel the Exit Poll due to the objection of Electoral Commission of Kenya Chairman Samuel Kivuitu that I was told by USAID that the Exit Poll as a higher priority for the Ambassador than the Election Observation itself. Kivuitu’s acquiescence was achieved.

On the late afternoon of Election Day as I was dragging my feet on releasing preliminary numbers before the polls closed I was told that “the whole reason” for doing the Exit Poll was for “early intelligence” for the Ambassador and USAID went to our subcontracted polling firm to get the figures. [Remember that I covered all this in complaints to the Inspectors General at USAID and State.]

IRI had no established backstop to protect itself from interference on the Exit Poll because unlike on the Election Observation Mission there was no published Code or Agreement that I could use to push back to preserve our independence.

We had agreed internally at IRI that we should not report any Exit Poll numbers externally including to USAID or the Embassy until the polls closed, and it was quite clear that we had no contractual obligation to make a report during the vote. But given that USAID was willing to go underneath us to the pollster it was out of our hands literally and there were no clear standards beyond that.

The US Government ultimately had rights to our data as a matter of government contracts law and USAID had arguably and ambiguously constrained our ability to release the Exit Poll results to the public in the Amendment to the Cooperative Agreement funding the Exit Poll by providing for “consultation” with the Embassy on “diplomatic or other” considerations. The Cooperative Agreement for the Program was neither classified nor available publicly until I had it released under the Freedom of Information Act years later. The Exit Poll from the 2005 Referendum had been released.

Fortunately we have not seen another disaster quite like Kenya 2007-08, but the questions about transparency and release and reporting of information from election verification and anti-fraud tools are still there. For instance in the most recent elections in the DRC and Malawi, as well as the controversy in Kenya in 2013. This could be addressed by pre-established standards or codes if donors, host governments and democracy assistance organizations or implementers are willing to give up some of their case-by-case flexibility and frankly some of the power of controlling information.

Kenya USAID IRI poll release press conference
Kenya USAID IRI poll release press conference

“Fraud”, “Rigging” and “Falsifying” are the words for Kenya’s 2007 presidential election, as opposed to “disputed“

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Kenya election vote counting Westlands Nairobi

How to describe Kenya’s 2007 presidential vote in concise language more than a dozen years later for comparative purposes?

Here, from the Executive Summary of the USAID-funded International Election Observation Mission report from the International Republican Institute, published and released in July 2008:

Following the transfer of the ballot boxes, it was reported that in some areas constituency-level officials from the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) turned off their cells phones, and many suspected these officials of manipulating the results of the presidential poll. In addition, the ECK in Nairobi refused to allow observers into tallying areas throughout the final process, and the government instituted a media blackout until the sudden announcement of President Kibaki as the winner of the poll, which furthered suspicions of malfeasance.

Although IRI’s observation mission consisted of only short-term observers who were unable to be present through all of the vote- tallying at the constituency level, IRI has reason to believe that electoral fraud took place and condemns that fraud. The rigging and falsifying of official documentation constitutes a betrayal of the majority of the Kenyan people who peacefully and patiently waited in long lines to vote on December 27.

The Institute also condemns the tragic loss of life and property that characterized the post-election period. It has been estimated that the violence claimed more than 1,500 lives, displaced close to 600,000 people and caused millions of dollars in property destruction and lost revenue and wages.1 At the time of printing this report the mediation efforts have led to a tentative power- sharing deal, but it remains to be seen if the government will in fact honor the agreement signed by President Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga on February 28, 2008 (emphasis added).

See “The War for History: Was Kenya’s 2007 election stolen or only “perceived to be” stolen?”:

8. I think it is important to look at the exit poll situation in the context of IRI’s Election Observation Mission Final Report which has now been published as a printed booklet (they FedEx’d me a copy with a cover letter from Lorne in mid-July). The report, which I had the opportunity to provide input on, working with my staff in Nairobi on early drafting and through later editorial input on into April when I was doing follow-up work such as the internal exit poll memo of 4-20 that I sent you, is very explicit that IRI found that “after the polls closed and individual polling stations turned over their results to constituency-level returning centers, the electoral process ceased to be credible”. Likewise, the report states that “To date, there has been no explanation from the ECK as to exactly how or when it determined the final election totals, or how and when that determination was conveyed to President Kibaki to prepare for the inauguration.” The report also notes “. . . the obvious fraud that took place during the tallying of the presidential race . . . ” The Executive Summary states: ” . . . IRI has reason to believe that electoral fraud took place and condemns that fraud. The rigging and falsifying of official documentation constitutes a betrayal of the majority of the Kenyan people who peacefully and patiently waited in long lines to vote on December 27.”

US Senate: more on collaboration by Moi’s former consultants Manafort and Stone with Wikileaks and Russian spy Kilimnik on behalf of Trump

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For context see “Kenya’s Moi hired Paul Manafort and Roger Stone to lobby National Democratic Institute and others in 1992 election“.

Here is how The Los Angeles Times morning newsletter describes yesterday’s US Senate release:

‘A Grave Counterintelligence Threat’

President Trump‘s 2016 campaign eagerly capitalized on Russia’s efforts to meddle in the U.S. election four years ago, according to a Senate Intelligence Committee report from Republicans and Democrats that raises new concerns about connections between Trump’s top aides and Moscow.

As Russian military intelligence officers were releasing hacked Democratic Party emails through WikiLeaks, the report said, the Trump campaign “sought to maximize the impact of those leaks” and “created messaging strategies” around them. The report found that the Trump campaign “publicly undermined” the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia was behind the email hack and “was indifferent to whether it and Wikileaks were furthering a Russian election interference effort.”

The 966-page document describes Paul Manafort, the president’s former campaign chairman who is serving prison time for financial crimes, as “a grave counterintelligence threat” because of his relationship with Konstantin Kilimnik, a business partner in Ukraine who is conclusively described as a “Russian intelligence officer.” Manafort and Kilimnik used encrypted messaging applications and codes to communicate, sometimes telling each other to look at the “tea bag” or the “updated travel schedule” when it was time to check the email account they shared, according to the report, which represents a rare bipartisan consensus on a hotly contested topic.

The report includes new details about Roger Stone communicating with Trump about Wikileaks and concerns about whether anyone encouraged Michael Cohen, the president’s former personal lawyer, to lie about Trump’s pursuit of a luxury skyscraper in Moscow during the campaign.

This fifth and final volume from the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation into Russian election meddling in 2016 arrives soon after Trump’s own intelligence officials have warned that Moscow is revisiting its playbookahead of the 2020 election by trying to undermine Joe Biden.

More at “Senate’s Russia Report Implicates More Than Trump’s Campaign“, Bloomberg Quint, Eli Lake, Aug. 19, 2019.

Old Party Office in Kibera

Solo 7–Kibera