Archives for August 2018

A Final Showdown Looms in Syria. The UN Warns it Could be a “Bloodbath”

The Syrian war may be entering its final phase. Rebel fighters from various factions are now concentrated in Idlib, in northern Syria.  Idlib is the place to which civilians and members of armed groups were permitted to escape as part of evacuation deals from places like Aleppo and Eastern Ghouta as they fell to government forces.

Millions of displaced Syrians and some armed groups are now concentrated there. Now, there is every indication that Syrian forces, backed by Russia, are preparing for attack.

My guest today is trying to warn the world how disasterous such a battle would be for civilians caught in the crossfire.  Jan Egeland is a senior advisor to the UN Special Envoy for Syria and heads the UN’s humanitarian task force for Syria. As such, it is his job to negotiate access to besieged populations for relief workers and facilitate humanitarian relief in war zones. A battle over Idlib would be a bloodbath, he says, that could jeopardize the lives of 3 million people.

In our conversation, Jan Egeland describes the significance of Idlib to the trajectory of the war, and the geopolitics underpinning a potential decision by the Syrians to lay siege to it. We also discuss what NGOs in Idlib are doing to prepare for a potential attack.

Jan Egeland is a longtime humanitarian professional. He is current the head of the Norwegian Refugee Council and served as the top UN humanitarian relief official from 2003 to 2006. This meant he reported directly to Kofi Annan so we kick off with a brief conversation about the late Secretary General’s legacy before discussing Syria at length.

Jan Egeland’s previous appearance on the podcast

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This is How Nuclear War Breaks Out With North Korea

On March 21, 2020 North Korea shoots down a South Korean civilian airliner, mistaking it for a US bomber. This sets off a series of events that leads to the launching 13 nuclear armed ballistic missiles towards the United States. Several of these missiles miss their target. But not all. One bomb levels Manhattan, another hits Northern Virginia and a third lands near Mar a Lago, in Florida. 1.4 million Americans are killed.

The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States by Jeffrey Lewis explains how this tragedy transpired.

The book, of course, is fiction — Jeffrey Lewis calls it a “speculative novel.”   But it is all too believable.

Jeffrey Lewis is a nuclear security expert who has spent decades studying the North Korean nuclear program. He is the director of the Center for Non Proliferation Studies at the Monterrey Institute and is a pioneer in open source intelligence gathering and geospatial analysis. (He and his team famously identified the location of North Korean missile test sites using tools available to ordinary citizens.) He is also the host of the excellent Arms Control Wonk podcast.

But now, he has taken his hand at fiction .

His book, which takes the perspective of a government report explaining the series of mistakes and miscalculations that lead to this nuclear attack, is one of the most vital international relations books of many years.  I suspect it will be standard on international relations syllabi.  The scenario he lays out is entirely plausible and the politics that enable this tragedy are very real.

We discuss the plot at length, including the miscommunications, misperceptions and just plain mistakes that lead to the events of March 22, 2020.

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How Dr. Vanessa Kerry Helps Strengthen Health Systems Around the World

Dr. Vanessa Kerry is the Co-founder and CEO of Seed Global Health. This is an international NGO that works in five sub-Saharan countries to bolster the education of medical professionals.

This is a vital endeavor, as Dr. Kerry explains, because it goes to the core of strengthening the capacity of developing world countries to improve their health care systems.

We kick off discussing the newest ebola outbreak in the DRC  and the challenge outbreaks pose to weak health systems. This is a particularly alarming outbreak for the fact that it is occurring a region of the DRC that is very much a hot conflict zone.  We then have a broader conversation about the challenge of strengthening health systems in poorer countries and discuss the specific work of Seed Global Health to that end.

Dr. Kerry came to national attention in 2004, when she introduced her father, John Kerry, at the Democratic National Convention, and she describes how her interest in global health issues was sparked by a trip to Vietnam many years ago, with her father.

If you are a global health and development nerd — and I know many of you are —  I think you will very much appreciate this episode.

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Photo credit: Former students trained by @SeedGlobalHealth teach new students #HelpingBabiesBreathe techniques in Tanzania, where newborn mortality remains high. Credit: Seed Global Health / Facebook

The Bombing of the UN Headquarters in Iraq, 15 Years On

On August 19th, 2003 the United Nations headquarters in Iraq at the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, was hit with a truck bomb. At least 22 people lost their lives in this attack, including the UN’s top official in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello.

In subsequent years, August 19th has been commemorated at the United Nations as World Humanitarian Day, in which the sacrifices of humanitarian workers are honored.

This year marks the 15th anniversary of the attacks on the UN headquarters in Iraq, which ushered an era in which the United Nations, and humanitarian workers more broadly, are more frequently the targets of terrorist violence.

On the line with me to discuss the 2003 bombing and its legacy today is Ambassador Elizabeth Cousens. She knew many of the victims of this attack, having worked with the UN in the Middle East. She is a former top official at the US Mission to the United Nations and is now the Deputy CEO of the United Nations Foundation.

We kick off discussing her experiences the day of the bombing and then have a broader conversation about how this terrible event forever changed how the UN operates around the world.

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Twenty Years Ago Today Two United States Embassies Were Bombed. A Survivor Tells His Story

On August 7th, 1998 my guest today John Lange was the acting United States Ambassador to Tanzania when a truck bomb exploded outside the embassy in Dar es Salaam. He did not know it at the time, but this bombing was part of a coordinated attack on US embassies in the region. Minutes early in Nairobi, Kenya the US embassy was bombed as well.

Al Qaeda was responsible for these attacks that killed over 200 people.

To commemorate the 20th anniversary of these attacks, I invited Ambassador Lange on the show to share his experiences from that day and also reflect on how those attacks changed US diplomacy.

Today, Ambassador Lange is a senior fellow for global health diplomacy at the United Nations Foundation. He is a contributor, along with 40 other survivors to a commemorative issue of The Foreign Service Journal

The US embassy bombings were a pivotal moment for US diplomacy and world history. These attacks were a a pre-cursor to the September 11th attacks that drew the United States into conflict in Afghanistan that is ongoing to this day.

I want to thank Ambassador Lange for being so candid about his experiences and his reflections on the meaning of these attacks 20 years later.

Download this episode to listen later. You can subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify