Journal of International Peace Operations
Volume 7, Number 6 – May-June 2012

From the Editor's Desk

A Bi-Monthly Review of ISOA’s Activities: March-April 2012

Spring is always a busy time, but add the early onset of warm weather, and things certainly heated up. The U.S. Presidential election picked up steam as the Republican primary finally shook out the leading candidate, and Congress presented several bills pertinent to ISOA members. The first iteration of efforts to implement some of the Commission on Wartime Contracting recommendations was released, followed shortly thereafter by twin bills in the House and Senate on labor trafficking. Talks about the drawdown in Afghanistan kept up their usual volume, while Iraq took some of the spotlight as it continued to take control over governmental functions on a large scale. The issuance of visas is still a problem, and companies and NGOs from all over the world  continue to see slow progress. Conflict erupted in hotspots in Syria, Mali and Sudan. Amid discussions of sequestration in the U.S. Department of Defense budget starting in 2013, international calls for intervention to quell these conflicts fell on mostly deaf ears, except for continued attention from the United Nations.

Journal of International Peace Operations
Volume 7, Number 5 – March-April 2012

From the Editor's Desk

A Bi-Monthly Review of ISOA’s Activities: November-December 2011

A fresh start to a new year presents opportunities and challenges in every industry, organization and business. Despite all planning for 2012, new roadblocks and new windows will present themselves via tumultuous international interactions or government policy shifts or simply the movement of public opinion. Efforts in the United States to mitigate spending, shrink government and pivot defense priorities have already set a tone for the year’s activities—while the presidential election heats up and promises to throw a wrench in the legislative process. In Afghanistan and Iraq, international forces are drawing down leaving the domestic governments with heightened responsibility for standard government activity. Hotspots in North Africa and the Middle East do not look to be cooling any time soon, and South Sudan is approaching a tenuous period as a fledgling autonomous state. New donors are knocking on doors across the world with aid and development funding that traditional donors have never seen before. We are only 2 months in to 2012, and the fun is just beginning.

Journal of International Peace Operations
Volume 7, Number 4 – January-February 2012

From the Editor's Desk

A Bi-Monthly Review of ISOA’s Activities: November-December 2011

Looking back on 2011, there was rarely a dull moment. Leaders around the world were either toppled or forced to faced some of the most difficult challenges in modern history—rampant budgetary and financial issues, regional instability and revolution, political unrest and partisan stalemate and debilitating natural disaster. Among these significant challenges, however, there was positive news and reason for hope. The sparks of democracy ignited among the most deeply rooted of dictatorships, communities across the world banded together to rebuild and war came to an end. We may be entering a 2012 just as unpredictable as 2011, but we confront the uncertainty of tomorrow armed with the knowledge gained from yesterday.

SPOTLIGHT: Reflection & Planning

Every year, ISOA takes the time after our biggest event, the Annual Summit, to reflect on a year of programming and plan for the next. November and December of 2011 have been a whirlwind of reflection, analysis, discussion and brainstorming as ISOA plans for an even bigger and better year in 2012.

Journal of International Peace Operations
Volume 7, Number 2 – September-October, 2011

USIP: Neither a think tank or an NGO

The United States Institute of Peace is not a think tank, an NGO nor a federal agency but it has a remarkable and valuable niche in international policy. It is unlikely that those who fund USIP, American taxpayers, even know what it is or what it does. So what is the United States Institute of Peace? The simplest answer is that USIP is a conflict management organization. But, in reality, that isn’t a simple answer at all. There is truly nothing simple about USIP and the subject its experts address every day: conflict.

Conflict has been a cornerstone of international relations for decades, while peace persists as the most elusive goal. Both have defined how we think of entire periods in history, and continue to define the relationships between and among governments, communities and people.

When the United States Institute of Peace was chartered in 1984, conflict was widely understood as a simple zero-sum game between well-defined sides. The ever-present East versus West nuclear showdown was applied as the theoretic model and real motivator for stakeholders in the largest of stand-offs and the smallest of outbreaks of violence. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11 terrorist attacks, the only thing that any theorists, think-tanks and practitioners in the field of international relations can agree on is that we are in the post-Cold War, post-9/11 period – whatever that means.

Journal of International Peace Operations
Volume 7, Number 2 – September-October, 2011

US Army transport drops supplies

THE United Nations officially declared the food crisis in the Horn of Africa a famine on July 20, 2011. With more than twelve million people in the region suffering from the combined effects of drought, famine, disease, displacement, and political instability, the demand for aid in Somalia and neighboring countries is monumental, drawing in more than a billion dollars in aid and dozens of humanitarian NGOs and IGOs.

Subsequently, the challenge became logistics: how do you get the necessary aid and supplies from donor countries into the Horn of Africa, despite rampant piracy along Somalia’s coast, a lack of airports large enough to support large cargo planes, and threats of further violence and terrorism in-country? Who coordinates distribution on the ground when tons of food and other goods overwhelm local infrastructure and aid theft is already becoming a problem?

Journal of International Peace Operations
Volume 7, Number 2 – September-October, 2011

Hot Summer in the City
A Bi-Monthly Review of ISOA’s Activities: July & August 2011

The ISOA Shield

With emotions running high, and temperatures higher, D.C. has been a veritable hotbed of disagreement and controversy. With the Arab Spring hurtling in to Summer, politicians remained split over the decision to intervene in Libya and butted heads over the debt ceiling, creating turmoil in international financial markets. The budget arguments in every nation around the world echoed those from the spring and now austerity is the word of the hour as big-spending governments combat unsustainable spending. In Afghanistan the drawdown looms and new faces took over key U.S. positions.  As this Journal goes to print, Libyan rebels have overtaken Tripoli, and the Commission on Wartime Contracting Report is rolling off the presses. The fall has officially begun.

Journal of International Peace Operations
Volume 7, Number 1 – July-August, 2011

Welcome to From the Editor’s Desk, a new section in the Journal of International Peace Operations. Our readers frequently request more information about ISOA and the association’s activities, which started us thinking: Why not let them know? Each new issue of the JIPO will include a one-page review of what ISOA has been working on since the last issue of the Journal was printed. Find out more information about our past events, staff appearances and advocacy efforts—it’s all here! And, as usual, we invite our reader’s to find out more about the association on our brand new, updated website at www.stability-operations.org, and on social media—just search “StabilityOps” on Facebook, Twitter and Flickr!

Journal of International Peace Operations
Volume 7, Number 1 – July-August, 2011

ON 1 May 2011, United States President Barack Obama announced on live television from the White House, to his nation and the world, that a U.S. military operation successfully resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden. This operation was surprisingly not carried out in Afghanistan, but on neighboring Pakistan’s soil. In that instant, the spotlight shifted eastward across the map from the longstanding engagements in Southwest Asia, to Pakistan’s equally unstable and unpredictable land. While the tension along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border was old news to the international community, the revelation that U.S. public enemy #1 was residing deep in Pakistan, within a short drive of its capital, raised new questions about U.S. foreign policy in the region. Pakistan, an increasingly key player in the future stability of one of the most unstable regions in the world, was now under the microscope.

Just days before this issue went to print, the Fund for Peace released its annual Failed States Index*, with Pakistan placing in the top 20 failed states. Ranking at number 12, Pakistan is categorized in the second most unstable category in the Index, with neighbor Afghanistan not far behind at number 7. The Index’s eye-opening data alongside recent developments from the Abottabad mission are telling. Pakistan’s precarious position—especially its strategic supply lines to Afghanistan—has spurred contentious debate highlighting the exceedingly difficult challenges across the Middle East and South Asia—not only for the U.S. but for all stakeholders.