The.Economist.2007-02-10 (966424), страница 21
Текст из файла (страница 21)
At least 68people—nine of them children—were killed and 152 others injuredin landmine blasts in 2005 alone. When Miss Tugan is not bullyingthe government to demarcate mined areas, she is pressing forcompensation for the thousands of villagers who lost loved onesand livestock in the armed forces' scorched-earth campaignLawyer and clientagainst the PKK. Recently, she won 14,400 liras ($10,000) for aclient who lost 60 sheep and 14,500 liras for another who lost a son: “For the Turkish authorities”, shenotes, “a human life is worth 60 sheep.”Miss Tugan's brush with the authorities began early.
Her father, a Kurdish-rights activist, was frequentlyarrested, tortured and jailed. Special security forces would ransack the family home in the province ofHakkari. Incensed by such indignities, Miss Tugan resolved to become Hakkari's first woman lawyer, adream she fulfilled in 1996.She instantly became a target for the town's military commanders. Detained numerous times, MissTugan's closest shave came when she was held at the local headquarters of the secret police. Happily, anintrepid prosecutor came to the rescue, vowing to press charges of attempted murder against the generalwho had ordered her arrest. “He saved my life but lost his job,” she recalls.At least for some officials, Miss Tugan is now a treasured asset, one who can help dispel fears amongKurdish women that inoculation campaigns are a Turkish plot to make them barren.
But not everyone ishappy. Miss Tugan continues to be threatened—including, it seems, by her former captor. Determined shemay be, but she is also scared.Copyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.About sponsorshipCharlemagneBerlin MinusFeb 8th 2007From The Economist print editionPeter SchrankThere is no excuse for the failure of NATO and the EU to talk to each otherIN THE post-cold-war model of saving the world, conflicts will be suppressed, and countries rebuilt, byalliances of alliances.
International bodies will move into a conflict zone and parcel out the problemaccording to their expertise. The United Nations will supply legitimacy; NATO will break the furniture; theEuropean Union will organise a trip to the nearest IKEA and provide development and political support;the Council of Europe will monitor elections; and the World Bank and assorted NGOs will do their thing.So it came as a shock when the secretary-general of NATO, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, addressing anaudience in Berlin recently, characterised relations between two of these institutions as follows: “It isastounding how narrow the bandwidth of co-operation between NATO and the [European] Union hasremained.
There is still a remarkable distance between them.”EU officials were furious. But they can hardly have been surprised. Mr De Hoop Scheffer blew the lid onwhat has been known for some time: that despite protestations on both sides about the blissful harmonyof transatlantic ties, relations between two of the rich world's most important organisations havepractically broken down.This failure is all the more remarkable since the institutions, with their overlapping membership, are insome ways growing closer together. NATO is moving into EU territory; the EU into NATO's. The suits areseeking to build up a common security policy. The fatigues acknowledge that in modern conflicts,battlefield victory alone is not enough (see Iraq, passim).Obviously, as the two grew closer, there had to be a division of labour to prevent duplication and topersuade America and its closest allies that the EU's defence policy was not aimed at undermining, butrather complementing, NATO.
The arrangement was worked out in 2003. Called “Berlin Plus”, it laid downhow and when European countries could call on NATO's assets for EU purposes.This deal has not stood the test of time. The two most important arenas in which the EU and NATO worktogether jointly are Kosovo and Afghanistan. In Kosovo, according to proposals from the chief UNmediator, Martti Ahtisaari, EU policemen are about to take over from UN peacekeepers, while some16,000 NATO troops remain. Yet no one knows how EU and NATO forces will divide their security roles andtime is running out.In Afghanistan, NATO commanders despair that troops clear an area of the Taliban, and then nothinghappens: no schools are built or roads constructed, and the Taliban simply regroup.
Afghan ministers saythere is no co-ordination of aid from the EU. Everyone nervously awaits the Taliban's spring offensive.Back in Brussels, home to both NATO and the EU, the Berlin Plus arrangements have been overwhelmedby a different force: EU expansion. In 2004 (ie, after the EU-NATO deal), the EU admitted Malta andCyprus as members. Neither is a member of NATO, and Turkey, a NATO founding member, does notrecognise the government of Cyprus, with which it disputes the divided island. Turkey will not let NATOexchange sensitive information with the EU (lest it go to non-NATO countries). Cyprus (population750,000) will not let the rest of the EU engage in most discussions with NATO (population: 850m).Hard though it is to believe, the upshot is that when EU and NATO officials meet, they may not talk aboutAfghanistan and Kosovo, their most significant operations.
They can mill around the bar, but formaldiscussions are out. Two of the West's most important institutions, and two of the world's most dangerouscountries, have been taken hostage by single-issue bloody-mindedness over a conflict that has lastedthree decades.EU officials say that, in reality, things are not as bad as they look. The EU and NATO worked perfectly welltogether in Bosnia. Commanders and officials on the ground sort out problems informally. There is aparticular problem with Turkey and Cyprus, they concede, but not a general one with the EU and NATO.And they say that, unless NATO's secretary-general has some solution to this specific quandary, he shouldshut up.The last point may perhaps be justified, but the rest is not.
The Bosnia operation worked well, but most ofthe important decisions were taken before Cyprus joined the EU. It is true that NATO commanders talk toEU officials in the field. But people on the spot cannot compensate fully for differences at the top becausethey do not have full freedom of action. Their mandates are handed down from on high and constrainwhat they can do. The truth is that the impasse in Brussels has almost certainly made the Afghanoperation less effective than it might have been—and the fear is that the same may occur in Kosovo.A truce between alliesIt is also true that if you waved a magic wand and solved the Turkey-Cyprus dispute, you would go someway towards easing relations between NATO and the EU.
But a clash of world-views would remain. France,in particular, sees NATO as an American vehicle, and hopes to build up the EU into a defence force thatcan treat with America on equal terms (forget the discrepancy in military spending for a moment). Tosome, the two organisations are engaged in a hidden Darwinian struggle, a zero-sum game in which whatis good for NATO is bad for the EU. Seen in this light, the current arrangements between NATO and the EUlook more like a truce than a permanent settlement.Europeans and Americans profess to believe that when they act together, good things happen.
Yet theycannot make the EU and NATO work properly even though 80% of EU members belong to NATO—and viceversa. What then are the chances that in future conflicts, in which a wider range of internationalorganisations could be involved, even broader alliances of alliances will be any more successful?Copyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.About sponsorshipParliamentary reformWhat the Lords are forFeb 8th 2007From The Economist print editionPAA new plan to shake up an ancient assembly, and plenty of disagreement about itGet article backgroundWHEN pondering what a representative democracy should look like, one option the authors of America'sFederalist Papers never entertained was to give eminent crime-writers a say in shaping the nation's laws.Yet that is what Britain's constitution currently allows: Ruth Rendell, creator of Chief Inspector Wexford,and P.D.
James, who dreamt up Commander Adam Dalgliesh, are both members of the House of Lords.The place is not short of such quirks. Since there is no formal way of calling speakers, the chamberdecides collectively who should take precedence, by hollering. And whereas in most bicameral systems theupper house has fewer members than the lower, the Lords outnumber the Commons by 746 members to639.
Many seldom show up.Yet for all that, the House of Lords is currently working better than it has for a long time. On February 5thit inflicted another defeat on the government, over a bill to hold managers responsible for deaths at work.The Home Office wanted an exemption for those who die in police custody or in prison; the Lords said no.Since a newish Labour government reformed the house in 1999, removing most of the (mainlyConservative) tweed-clad hereditary peers and leaving the appointed life peers in command, the assortedbusinessmen, scientists, party hacks and lawyers in the Lords have defeated the government more than350 times. They do a better job of scrutinising laws than MPs, debate more interesting subjects (oninheritance tax last week, on Chinese investment in Africa this week) and often produce better reports.Yet even though the reforms seem to have made the Lords bolder, the system looks anachronistic anduntidy. It has also landed the government in trouble for trying to give peerages to people who lent Labourmoney.
Which is why Jack Straw, the leader of the House of Commons, published on February 7th aproposal to change the composition of the Lords again. The last time Labour tried to reform the place, fouryears ago, the attempt failed for lack of a blueprint and a voting system designed to produce a clear basisfor change.Mr Straw is keen for the reform to stick this time and has come up with a new way of expressingpreference for different options that should lead to agreement—in the Commons, at least—on reform.Elections to the Lords, were they agreed, would probably happen at the same time as elections to theEuropean Parliament, and like them be based on proportional representation. The peers would be prunedto 540.Most in the Commons support an upper chamber that is at least partially elected.
![](https://s.studizba.com/z.php?f=/templates/si/i/noavatar.png&w=100&h=100&t=1"){kind=avatar}
