Worldwide Security Conference 6 - Report

The WSC, run by the East West Institute is the most interesting annual event I attend. The organisation is flawless, the venue fantastic and the EWI staff are amongst the most interesting and pleasant in Brussels.

Some of the workshops were excellent, some less good. Many of the speakers were good, some excellent and, as every year, one was batshit.

Lessons of Mumbai

The keynote session was around this issue and, remarkably, there were panelists from India and Pakistan present. We were given a run through of how the attack was carried out, its aims and elements within Pakistan intelligence were held responsible for helping train and organise.

Later Pakistan blamed Afghanistan and the Afghans blamed Palistan.

Counter terrorism

We were given a run though of how Pakistan sees the situation, but didn't address the government capitulation in the tribal areas. A lot of speakers, but mainly perspectives on the current situation.

Tactics of Radicalisation: How terrorists recruit

I was looking forward to this session as at least one of the speakers, Stephen Tankel, has written some fascinating stuff. However the speakers were only given 5 minutes. Very disappointing. Sadly the session, like the others focused almost exclusively on Islamist terrorism.

First steps to 'cyber' peace

Oh boy. I'd picked up some gossip from someone very knowledgeable about this session, so I was looking foward to it. My source was talking about how Carnivore has had a series of upgrades and that everything, but everything can be and is monitored. Previously the sheer volume of data was the inhibiting factor in surveillence, but this has now been overcome and everything is being monitored. It was described to me as "We've built a panopticon".

The speakers were good and interesting but there was nothing particuly new or relavatory.

Then  Mr Ramamurthy, Chair of the Cyber Society of India took the floor. I listened in stunned disbelief and mounting anger as he made the following points:

1. We need several seperate internets, a .com for business, a .edu for academics etc.
2. The problem with the internet is that nobody is in charge so it needs to be run by a coalition of NGO's and geovenment
3. Hackers should be licensed
4. People who upload software should be licensed - to stop malware.

I'm sure readers will realise what absolute nonsense this is, it is a real shame that the rest of the panel, the audience and the organisers didn't notice.

The session could have been on how internet users could assist in combatting extremism, instead it treated anyone technical as a potential threat that required totalitarian policies to control them.

The Media and Terrorism

Mad Mel's contribution is discussed here

The next steps for Afghanistan

Jamie Shea chaired this session where he admitted that NATO was completely clueless about Afghanistan, "We need to work out what our strategy is to be, what our aims are, what are we trying to do and how will we know when we've achieved it".

It's a bit bloody late to start asking those questions. When the loved ones of bereaved soldiers ask "What did my son die for?" they deserve a better answer than "I haven't a clue".

NATO is equally clueless about what to do next, "I go to briefings where everything sounds good and I think we're making progress, then I go to another one and everything sounds desperate".

Hekmat Karzai, the President's cousin and head of a think tank in Kabul said that Iraq blew it. Things were on a road to recovery until everyone buggered off to Baghdad and forgot about Afghanistan. He also said that the reliance on air power and bombing was making more and more enemies. A main point was that Afghanis should be making decisions instead of listening to press conferences in Washington.

Nevertheless, a rosyish picture was being painted. A question about corruption (members of one speakers family have been implicated in drug smuggling, for example) was brushed aside and played down.

For the record, in 2005 Transparancy International listed Afghanistan at 117 out of 180 nations. In 2008 it was 172.

As someone said about Kenya, "You can have corruption or you can have development. You can't have both".

Update: Of course you can get a better idea of NATO's thinking by checking out their master narrative and other documents, cracked by Wikileaks, a must read.

Conclusion

Some panels were not what they could have been, the presence of Melanie Philips contributed nothing and some speakers were not given enough time.

However, there was a lot of informed and deep presentations and many interesting people to discuss matters with. A very worthwhile event.