The Un-indicted "Elephant" in the Iraq Report

Posted December 8th, 2006 by Micah H. Naftalin

In Wednesday's exceptional Baker-Hamilton report on Iraq, http://www.usip.org/isg/iraq_study_group_report/report/1206/index.html, like lesser government policy studies, Russia is the un-indicted "elephant." Although the report does not discuss them, there are two matters -- both related to Russia -- that are, in my judgment, indispensable ingredients for success in Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and elsewhere where terrorists reign.

In approximately 100 pages, "The Iraq Study Group Report" sets forth an unprecedented and unanimous, bi-partisan, set of 79 inter-dependant recommendations. It notes that its detailed military, political and economic recommendations cannot succeed without also building an "international [diplomatic] consensus in Iraq and the region." Without all the detailed implementing recommendations that characterize the Iraq-specific bulk of the report, it also sets out similar goals for the urgent and parallel need to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The first missing recommendation is for the regional and international community to involve Russia actively in demanding reform of the central institution most lacking in the Arab Middle East: rule of law. In each of the conflicts, the states in the region perpetrate or tolerate a corrupt justice system and its corollary: antisemitic, xenophobic and/or religious hate crimes and propaganda. Because of Russia's membership in the Quartet, and its political, economic and/or military alliances with, e.g., Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas, President Putin must be held accountable for failing to use his influence on behalf of the international community to which the Iraq report appeals. To be constructive, however, he must be encouraged to overcome in Russia the same rule of law disabilities: totalitarian rule, corruption and the impunity of racist violence.

Second, the report is silent with respect to harnessing the strategic power of the public voice to promote the international consensus it seeks. As we learned by the successful and mobilized global public campaigns against the Soviet Union's human rights violations, including its intimidating murder, torture, imprisonment and harassment of dissidents and Jewish refuseniks, the voice of international consensus must include the public, the non-governmental organizations, as well as governments and diplomacy. This was and is the genius of the Helsinki Process.

UCSJ, the Moscow Helsinki Group and allied human rights NGOs in the former Soviet Union are reinvigorating that model of success in part by launching the NGO blog: "CoalitionAgainstHate.org." Bipartisanship is important but not sufficient. Whether the adversaries are the warring factions in Iraq, its neighbors, or Russia, it's time to take into account the strategic value and power of the NGO public contribution to diplomacy, on behalf of human rights, religious freedom, democracy and peace.