I've been looking for blogs about OSCE -- but of course, mindful that there are likely to be blogs about OSCE *countries* or *issues*. It doesn't seem that OSCE itself has blogs yet although it has a Twitter account and videos, such as this ten-minute special from Nazarbayev addressing the OSCE ministerial, which only had 9 ratings and 1,154 views.
I'm going to look and see what some "keepers" should be for my links to blogs that regularly cover OSCE.
Euronest is a good blog to watch from the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliamentary Assembly although you have to keep clicking on past dates to see topics as they don't hyperlink topics (but please, don't put in a tag cloud). It seems to have more reiteration of official press releases such as this item on OSCE-EU relations than any analysis, i.e. it turns out that it is "vital" that these two bodies cooperate to solve conflicts -- but I would like to hear more about their complementarity.
The UN is basically getting forced out of Georgia by Russia, despite the best efforts of seasoned diplomats like Amb. Johan Verbeke of Belgium who was the UN special representative to Georgia, and who was also a great asset at the UN here in New York for a number of years. He gives a careful diplomatic answer to the question of the UN observer mission in Georgia, pointing out that the UN still has other forms its presence takes (UNDP, etc.) and says:
"In diplomacy, you can never force structures -- they have to naturally follow diplomatic developments. It may very well be possible that the UN will increase somewhat its presence in Abkhazia as time goes on, but we should not pre-fix such objectives."
Well, you can never force structures if Russia doesn't want them -- there was a time (hard to remember now!) when Russia *asked* for a UN mission in Georgia, but that was in the Yeltsin era when dissident Vyacheslav Bakhmin was representing Russia at the UN. In fact, Russia's force-out of the structure of the UN observer mission in Georgia is part of a worrying trend of countries second-guessing UN presences they had once agreed to, and demanding they leave -- as happened with MONUC in DRC before renewal, and is now beginning to happen with MINURCAT in Chad.
FREE Rad!cals looks promising, such as this item on the "Myth of the Lone Wolf in Terrorism" or this four-part series on what is called ummah-oriented Muslim activist identity.
Here's a a Kyrgyz blogger which tells me something I hadn't heard, among the increasing list of bad things in Kyrgyzstan -- the Kyrgyz authorities recalling the OSCE Academy's license. I guess the OSCE Academy is a structure that "did not naturally follow diplomatic developments" which perhaps were not timely enough to prevent this -- stay tuned.
A blog to revisit for a June 2009 piece on the tensions as the EU and OSCE tried to monitor the situation in Georgia where the Russia's technical (but political) point that the missions "no longer have a mandate" when the territories they were observing "became sovereign states." See how structures can begin to unnaturally follow diplomatic developments?
In case you were wondering who the Obama Administration's ambassador to OSCE is going to be, the appointee is Ian Kelly, "a senior Foreign Service officer and former acting deputy assistant secretary of State for Europe and Eurasian Affairs, a long-time Russia hand, with a PhD from Columbia University". I haven't come across him before. The confirmation process in the Senate is predicted as "relatively painless". The Obama appointments have been painfully slow (USAID took forever) -- a year into the Administration and we don't quite yet have an OSCE ambassador, it wasn't a priority. We still don't have an ambassador to strategically-vital and gas-rich Turkmenistan, next to Afghanistan, but that's a strange problem that the Obama people inherited from Bush.
Delving back into the rich OSCE past, you can find this blog that helps you trace the increasingly belligerent posture of Russia to the OSCE, where here it is said Russia "effectively held a gun to the OSCE’s head [in 2004], when it threatened to withold it’s budget contributions unless it’s proposals were taken seriously." The proposal? Getting rid of that pesky practice of ODIHR to make statements about elections soon after the polls close, instead of sending their reports to Vienna for political vetting to see what should be said later. Of course, ODIHR monitors elections *before* they occur, sometimes long before, and can usually make an accurate call on what's likely to happen given the lack of free media, presence of opposition parties in the electoral commissions, etc.
A preview of the exciting seminars awaited under Kazakhstan's chair -- gender equality, always a safe topic especially for the stans where the status of women after the Soviet era isn't as bad as some countries in Asia and the Middle East, so they can look progressive by contrast. Pro tip: children is another safe subject, but not particularly on the OSCE's menu as the UN does this topic better.
This blog lets us know about the UN's secret prisons report which will include some OSCE countries but it's not clear whether the report just reiterates the little known from other meager sources, such as on Turkmenistan's secret imprisonment of the participants in the alleged 2002 plot against past dictator Niyaozv.
Somehow despite daily reading of this page I missed this excellent piece about the, er "conflicts of interest" involved in Kazakhstan essentially buying itself freedom from sharp criticism among think tanks in Washington. I will revisit this topic.