BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

10/04/2008

Belarus: Political draft

NATO should respond forcefully to Belarus over indications of a new trend to use the military draft for political ends, Jeremy Druker comments for ISN Security Watch.

Commentary by Jeremy Druker in Prague for ISN Security Watch

Amid the fanfare of an agreement over US missile defense plans and the rejected membership aspirations of Georgia and Ukraine, those attending last week's NATO summit in Bucharest could be forgiven for not noticing the absence of Belarus - the so-called last dictatorship in Europe and not even a member-state.

A member of the Partnership for Peace (PfP) program since 1995, Belarus had been invited to attend a meeting in Bucharest of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, which oversees cooperation with partner states outside NATO. But huffing and puffing, the Foreign Ministry said NATO's decision to place restrictions on the level of Belarusian participants at the working lunch had prompted a reaction to send no one - "for reasons of principle."

The statement seemed to indicate a new ban, designed to keep officials such as President Alyaksandr Lukashenko out of the event. Yet NATO has had a policy in place for some time not to invite the Belarus president or prime minister to summits, likely connected to the highly disputed presidential elections of 2006 and subsequent crackdown on the opposition. The Belarus ambassador to NATO (the country has had a permanent representative office at NATO since 1998) therefore got the invite, but opted out.

That was a pity because his presence might have sparked a wider debate on the current NATO strategy of engagement, a discussion needed after the latest assault on the media and democracy activists.

At the end of March, the KGB raided the offices of independent broadcasters and searched the apartments of over a dozen journalists affiliated with foreign-backed media. Several journalists were also reportedly beaten covering a 25 March demonstration held in Minsk to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the short-lived Belarusian People's Republic. Police beat and imprisoned dozens of opposition activists at the unsanctioned rally.

Unfortunately, much of that was nothing extraordinarily new - and the assault on the media is likely connected to a running spat with the US, a major funder of efforts to strengthen the independent media, both inside and outside the country.

In early March, the US strengthened sanctions on a state oil and petrochemical company that Washington said was controlled by Lukashenko. In response, Belarus recalled its ambassador, the US did the same, and now Minsk is calling on Washington to further slash the number of its embassy staff in Minsk.

What was new and should be of direct concern to NATO has been the regime's willingness to use the military in recent months as an instrument in its crackdown on unruly young people.

The most prominent case concerns Zmicier Zhalieznichenka, an honor student, who happens to also be a political activist and member of the opposition Belarusian Popular Front.

Kicked out of university on trumped-up charges, Zhalieznichenka was drafted into the army, a convenient solution for the authorities: According to the law, university students can avoid mandatory military office as long as they are in school. Zhalieznichenka started a hunger strike in protest only to be confronted by officials from the Defense Ministry threatening to file criminal charges for intentionally harming himself to escape service.

Belarusian Front Leader Vintsuk Vyachorka (whose own son was expelled and called into an army recruiting office) has rightly observed: "The recent events connected with the use of the army as a repressive machine [...] show that unfortunately now the leadership of the Defense Ministry has yielded to the pressure of the state and drifted away from the principle of non-interference of the army into the repressive policies." Quoted on the Charter 97 website, he said NATO should make its own "conclusions."

A response is certainly in order. The question is over the degree of the response. Scrapping all cooperation would be a mistake. While their leaders have often exchanged harsh remarks, soldiers from NATO member states and Belarus have worked relatively well together.

Among the achievements promoted by NATO: the attendance of Belarusian military personnel in courses in NATO countries on pressing topics such as arms control and crisis management; participation in the PfP Planning and Review Process to improve Belarus' capability of assisting in international peace-support operations; and over 75 science fellowships for local scientists, researching topics such as Chernobyl-related risk assessment.

In addition, the PfP Trust Fund project, completed in 2007, led to the destruction of around 700,000 anti-personnel mines in Belarus, in line with the Ottawa Convention, the international agreement that bans antipersonnel landmines.

The "soft power" impact of all the exchanges should not be underestimated. There is nothing like working or studying together to build relationships, and the NATO exchanges have done wonders to win hearts and minds in the partner countries' officer corp. The impact has, in fact, been so positive that the Russian military started deliberately blocking the promotion of its officers who had been involved with NATO, almost as though their allegiances had become suspect.

That exposure to working democracies and the way they run modern militaries is too valuable to waste, and could come in handy if the regime ever crumbles. Until today, the Allies' belief "that a policy of engagement and consultation is preferable to pursuing an approach which seeks to disengage and isolate" has been justifiable.

Yet a signal should be sent that the military's use of the draft for political ends must stop immediately, and that signal should be a downgrading of the relationship to, for example, exchanges only for lower-level officers. The reasons for the change in approach should be stated loudly and clearly, and to NATO's credit, neither the NATO Parliamentary Assembly nor successive secretary-generals have historically shied away from direct criticism of the Belarusian authorities.

While there have been only a handful of cases so far - it's impossible to speak yet of a "policy" of using the army to persecute activists - this growing trend deserves a forceful response now.

Jeremy Druker is executive director, editor-in-chief and one of the founders of Transitions Online.

Source:

http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?ID=18849

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