WASHINGTON – Through Skype on Friday, Afghan presidential candidate Ashraf Ghani celebrated the trust Afghan people displayed in the democratic process during the first round of voting in April.

Polls show, however, that fewer than one in five Afghans felt confident in the integrity of their country’s elections.

“What I’d like to do – like you – is to congratulate the people of Afghanistan for proving that democracy can be seen as the system that allows us to solve our problems through democratic give-and-take,” Ghani said at an event sponsored by the Atlantic Council, a nonpartisan think tank on global affairs based in Washington.

“Because of this trust in the democratic process … extremist forms of the left and the right are being isolated,” Ghani, a former finance minister under President Hamid Karzai, continued.

His remarks are in stark contrast with Gallup polls released in April. Only 18 percent of Afghans expressed confidence in their country’s democratic process, a precipitous drop from 2009, when Gallup results reported 34 percent of Afghan voters felt confident that their elections weren’t marred by fraud or corruption.

Ghani is pitted in a June 14 run-off election for the presidential seat with Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister. The results of that race will be announced June 22, and the winner will be inaugurated 30 days after that, according to Afghan election law.

In the first round of voting, Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission said that Abdullah received 45 percent of the vote, handily defeating his opponents – including Ghani, who it said came in a clear second, winning 32 percent of the vote. Abdullah failed to reach the 51 percent margin required under Afghan law to win an election outright, setting the stage for the second-round runoff. Only the top two vote getters from round one are eligible in the June 14 election.

Ghani indicated Friday that significant reports of fraud mean the first-round deficit between he and Abdullah is misleading, that it’s possible he’s not too far behind at all. The electoral commission, he said, had fired between 3,000 and 5,000 employees for alleged violations.

In an interview with NPR last week, Abdullah said that electoral officials failed to do enough to stop fraud and to examine complaints of ballot stuffing.

“The only thing that prevents any possibility of any crisis is to make sure that the process works – the process is transparent and fair,” he said. “The outcome? It’s important. But the process is more important than the outcome.”

Though both men have said they will accept a transparent outcome of the election, concern surrounding the election has sparked Taliban violence. Attacks from Taliban insurgents were fewer than expected during the first round of elections. But that was during the spring, before the Taliban fighting season.

Reuters reported Monday that the number of weekly Taliban attacks rose by around 10 percent to more than 350 incidents – including suicide attacks, gun-battles and roadside bombs – in the final week of May, citing a Western security firm.

The violence and impending election received increased attention last week in the U.S., when President Barack Obama announced that the U.S. would leave just under 10,000 troops in Afghanistan after this year. And, he said, the U.S. would pull out nearly all of the remaining troops by the end of 2016.

Crucially, troop levels depend on the signing of the Bilateral Security Agreement, which would provide a framework for Afghan security and training. The deal was negotiated with Karzai, but he refused to sign it, leaving the deal to be finalized by his successor. Both Abdullah and Ghani have pledged to sign the BSA.

On Friday, Ghani praised Karzai for allowing the country’s first democratic transition of power to be possible. It’s the first time in 5,000 years of Afghanistan’s history a leader has willingly ceded power.

Martin Cooper, right, invented the first mobile phone while working for Motorola in the 1970s. Last month, he said that continued innovation will revolutionize healthcare, education and global poverty.

WASHINGTON — Fifty billion devices will be connected to either a network or the Internet by the year 2020, according to projections from Cisco Systems, a corporation that designs, makes and sells computer-networking devices.

That comes to about seven devices per person. Many of these devices will share information with each other via tiny sensors that collect data like sound, light and motion. This concept is known as the Internet of Things.

In a post last year for Quartz, a digital news outlet, technology reporter Christopher Mims noted that the sensors used by connected devices turn out to be very much like human senses. “Once our possessions can both sense and respond, and are directed for the most part by computers, the world becomes something like a living creature,” he wrote.

The interconnected living creature Mims describes could make life easier for countless people, but it comes with some drawbacks. The Internet of Things will contain bits of information about its user’s life that could be used to paint a pretty clear picture of his or her day-to-day experience, a picture that could be used by companies to target advertisements or by hackers bent on stealing information.

Worse, it’s possible that a person who wants to show off his or her skills could hack into your smart toaster, causing it to start a fire when it knows an owner is not home.

These innovations raise “considerable questions about how our framework for privacy protection applies in a big data ecosystem,” wrote the authors of a White House report released May 1.

Officials say that it’s critical for inventors to install security provisions into products during design phase.

“It is up to the companies that take part in this ecosystem to embrace their role as stewards of the consumer data they collect and use,” said Edith Ramirez, chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission, at a workshop on the Internet of Things last November.

And experts agree. Frank Painter, a health care technology consultant for Technology Solutions Management, a computer consulting company, said, “Good designers can build good, safe secure designs in the first place, pretty simply, so if they did that it would preclude somebody from doing something bad.”

Among the most immediate threats to consumer safety from network connected devices are hospitals and healthcare clinics. The sheer number of products on the market calls into question the ability of government agencies to regulate them.

“There are so many different kinds of inventions and devices doing so many different things, the FDA really can’t legislate down to the line and code of security for every situation,” Painter said.

Ramirez, however, said that the agency she chairs will do what it can. “The FTC is particularly vigilant when it comes to safeguarding sensitive consumer data, such as health information,” Ramirez said. “I highlight the importance the FTC places on health information because of the numerous devices gathering this data.”

Outside of health care, the number of Internet or network devices continues to expand at a breathtaking rate. Every day 30,000 new apps are added to the market, said Deepti Rohatgi, a policy advisor at Lookout, a mobile security firm in San Francisco.

The way that Google rolled out its trial edition of Glass could serve as a model for companies that make connected devices.

Glass’ trial run gave developers a chance to test the product before it really hit the market, allowing them to point out potential vulnerabilities. Rohatgi said that Lookout employees were one group that reported a problem to Google.

“That’s a great example of how they were willing to share their technology with a group of hackers to say, ‘Help us find what the problems are before they’re released to the public,’” Rohatgi said.

And whether cooperation takes place between designers and hackers, Ramirez said that the FTC is paying close attention.

“Any device connected to the Internet is potentially vulnerable to hijack and companies need to build security into their products, no exceptions,” she said. “Companies that don’t pay attention to their security practice may find that the FTC will.”

“We are at the dawn of the Internet of Things. And like all dawns, the first light of the new day both illuminates and casts shadows.”

WASHINGTON – Chris Carroll won’t forget the first time he saw a person hack into an insulin pump and cause it to deliver a lethal dose of insulin.

Although the pump wasn’t connected to a person, Carroll, a 34-year-old from Austin, Texas, got the point from the demonstration – the danger was real.

And it hit home for him. Carroll is a Type 1 diabetic and wears a pump– a device worn by some diabetics that delivers insulin directly into their bodies.

More and more medical devices and hospital equipment are connected to either the Internet or a network, making them lucrative targets for cybercriminals or hackers trying to either harm the users or make a point about their cyber abilities. Experts also are worried about the potentially deadly consequences of unsecured systems being violated accidentally: As people become more dependent on medical devices that share information, there’s an increased chance that their codes could be scrambled, causing malfunctions.

“The health care industry is not technically prepared to combat against cyber criminals’ basic cyber intrusion tactics,” an April report from the cyber division of the FBI stated. It also said the industry “is not as resilient to cyber intrusions compared to the financial and retail sectors, therefore the possibility of increased cyber intrusions is likely.”

The technology magazine Wired reported in April that an information security official from Essentia Health found that drug infusion pumps – which deliver antibiotics and chemotherapy directly into patients – defibrillators, X-rays and even temperature settings on medical refrigerators that store drugs and blood can be manipulated by cyber intruders. The security official, Scott Erven, had access to a chain of health care facilities in the Midwest over a two-year span for the study, Wired reported. Erven could not be reached for comment.

Further, as hospitals move patient records to network databases, the financial incentive for hackers is huge. The FBI report noted that even partial electronic health records are selling for $50 each on the black market, compared with $1 for social security cards and credit card numbers. Electronic health records contain comprehensive patient information and allow all the patient’s health care providers to share that information. These records are attractive targets to hackers because they can be used to sell drug prescriptions.

Michael Carome, director of health research at Public Citizen, a consumer rights advocacy group in Washington, said that though the risk of private medical information leaks is hard to quantify, “It is a concern and it should be on the radar screen of public health officials and those who are responsible for security.” With the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, especially, which encourages physicians to adopt electronic health recordkeeping for their patients, greater security provisions are needed, Carome said.

The April FBI report cited research from the SANS Institute, a private company that specializes in Internet security training. SANS concluded that some systems and devices were compromised for extended periods of time, and that companies, when notified of the vulnerabilities, did not repair them. “The time to act is yesterday,” the report said.

Carroll is familiar with manufacturers’ indifference to security concerns. After he saw the insulin pump hacking demonstration, he contacted his own pump provider.

“Both of the people I talked to had no idea this was possible, and had no answer regarding plans to fix the issue. They tried the whole ‘well, even if it’s possible, no one would do it,’” he said.

So far Carroll’s pump manufacturers have been right. The Food and Drug Administration’s website states the agency is not aware of any patient injuries or deaths related to hacking intrusions.

Still, at least some users believe the risks are real. As early as 2007, former Vice President Dick Cheney had the wireless function on his heart defibrillator disabled, fearing it made him more vulnerable to a terrorist attack. Most people don’t face the same level of personal risk as a vice president. “I hold no delusions of grandeur that I’m important enough for people to go after, but I do know that some people try these types of things just for the hell of it,” Carroll said.

Typically problems with medical devices are identified by or reported to the FDA. But the exponential rate of device innovation calls into question the FDA’s capacity to monitor medical devices.

“There are so many different kinds of inventions and devices doing so many different things, the FDA really can’t legislate down to the line and code of security for every situation,” said Frank Painter, a health care technology consultant for Technology Solutions Management.

Painter said that the FDA’s general standards are sufficient, but the responsibility for ensuring device security lies with the device manufacturers. “Good designers can build good, safe secure designs in the first place, pretty simply, so if they did that it would preclude somebody from doing something bad.”

In an email, the FDA referred to an online statement noting that it allows devices to be marketed “when the probable benefits to patients outweigh the probable risks.”

But, like Painter, the FDA maintains that ultimately “manufacturers are responsible for remaining vigilant about identifying risks and hazards associated with their medical devices, including risks related to cybersecurity, and are responsible for putting appropriate mitigations in place to address patient safety.”

Wanda Moebius of AdvaMed, a medical device trade association, said in an emailed statement that the “medical technology industry recognizes that all digitally controlled medical devices, like all digital systems, are vulnerable to cybersecurity threats, and we take seriously the potential consequences to patients.”

Medical technology companies are taking steps to reduce the already low risks of malicious hacking by building device security into the development process, testing potential vulnerabilities and assessing risks, Moebius said.

Painter said consumers have put pressure on vendors to think about security issues before they begin designing products.

But security breaches are less of a risk to medical device users right now than inadvertent device interference, he said.

“I think the thing we really have to worry about the most,” Painter said, “is an unsecure system being able to be violated by accident.”

WASHINGTON — Fifty thousand words, three video documentaries, six pages of graphs and maps, and scores of devastating pictures published Monday on VICE.com provide vivid scenes of the deadly problems facing the world’s newest country.

Robert Young Pelton traveled to South Sudan this year to find rebel leader and former South Sudan Vice President Riek Machar, who is hiding in the deep bush of South Sudan. The story of how he did it gives readers an unprecedented ground-level view of the carnage.

Accompanied by war photographer and documentary filmmaker Tim Freccia, Pelton had to pay more than $15,000 to be flown into South Sudan’s rebel-held territory, an area even the most daring reporters and pilots are avoiding. Their story shows not only country’s violent spiral toward  failed statehood, but also gives readers nuanced background information in an attempt to explain why South Sudan is where it is today:

Do not believe almost anything you read or hear about Africa, especially concerning the continent’s cultural sensitivity, ethnic peculiarities, or borders. The source of this information usually has an agenda, is an outright bigot or moron, or has some misguided notion of how African salvation might eventually occur at some wholly imagined point in the future. Forget everything and just be honest: Greater Africa  is a country, or is at least treated as one by most of the world, no matter how politically incorrect it may be to plainly state such a thing. It’s a market and a marketing hook; it’s a carefully analyzed genre of the fashion, music, and travel industries; and above all else, it is and always has been a singular obsession of the West. It’s the place somebody is always trying to save.

Pelton believes that understanding background information is crucial. And that populist videos like Kony 2012 that go viral don’t give viewers an accurate picture.

Pelton said in an email interview that information without context is meaningless. But by providing context in his stories, smart, informed people are able to then form smart and informed opinions.

“Awareness of war, death or even cancer hasn’t done much. It’s only the marketing aspect of fundraising which is only the gateway to action,” Pelton said. “I like to focus on action and let that develop awareness and support.  Passive social media allows us to stare through the wrong end of the binocular. Be informed, take action, rally people to your cause.”

Machot Lat Thiep, a former child soldier and Lost Boy who escaped genocide in South Sudan once before, also accompanied Pelton and Freccia. Machot works at a Costco in Seattle, where he lives with his family. In many ways, though, he’s never really left South Sudan. He went back because he wants to save his country, but even a former child soldier wasn’t prepared for the deadly realities facing his people.

“Machot wants to run for governor of Unity State,” Pelton said of Machot’s role in his story. “Failing that he wants to show his fellow South Sudanese that violence is not the only way. He has seen South Sudan in many modes. This was one of the more violent.”

Pelton’s story and Freccia’s photos make up the entire latest issue of VICE, a first for the magazine.

“While the magazine has published innumerable issues devoted to single topics and themes—from art to humor to war crimes in Syria—this is the first time all of its 130 pages have been filled by just two contributors,” said Cappi Williamson, Vice’s communications manager, in a press release last week.

Williamson wrote that the story idea originated with Pelton, “who in early January pitched VICE a long-form story about traveling to South Sudan with Machot Lat Thiep, 32, a former Lost Boy and current manager of a Seattle Costco. Machot had returned to his homeland a year earlier to help put together a new constitution. It had been a jubilant and triumphant trip for the former child solider.”

This time around, jubilance wasn’t a part of the story. Check out the full text here.

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers questioned Thursday the effectiveness of the $56 million the Army National Guard will spend on sports marketing contracts this year in deals with clients like NASCAR and IndyCar.

As the defense budget faces cuts, senators asked the National Guard to prove that money spent on sports sponsorship agreements is enticing recruits. If not, the senators said, money may be pulled from the Guard’s recruitment budget.

“The Army National Guard spends 37 percent of its marketing and advertising budget on sports sponsorships,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. “According to one National Guard recruiting official, however, not a single National Guard soldier was recruited from the NASCAR sponsorship program in 2012, and the program generated fewer than 8,000 leads in 2013.”

Befuddled over what he said was a lack of an evaluation system for how the National Guard spends recruitment dollars, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said that the sports sponsorships deserve a “caution flag.” “To me this is gobbeldy-gook, what we need to be looking at is pretty basic in terms of measurement of effectiveness,” Johnson said.

Maj. Gen. Judd Lyons, acting director of the National Guard, said it is difficult to translate dollars spent on marketing into a number of recruits enlisted.

He added the notice the National Guard gets from branding strategies with groups like NASCAR and IndyCar are tough to quantify. “Trying to tie that awareness directly down to an individual affirmative decision to join the National Guard is elusive,” Lyons told the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee.

“Our NASCAR sponsorship is a marketing program… Its effectiveness is measured in terms of exposure with our target audience – the 18-34 age demographic,” said Jeremy Webster, a National Guard spokesman.

The deal “allows the National Guard to leverage a 77 million fan base and the sport’s most popular driver [Dale Earnhardt Jr.] to reach that demographic,” he said.

But because the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard have all dropped contracts with NASCAR because of its high costs, senators remained skeptical.

David Higdon, the managing director of NASCAR’s integrated marketing communications team, said many firms contract with NASCAR is because it works for business. “Our fans are among the most brand-loyal in all of sports.”

The National Guard doesn’t contract directly with NASCAR, but has joined in a sponsorship partnership with Hendrick Motorsports, a NASCAR team for which Dale Earnhardt Jr. drives.

The National Guard is plastered across and on top of Earnhardt’s Chevrolet SS car. When he won the Daytona 500 this year, his number 88 car brought the Guard’s logo to the attention of millions. Repucom, a sports marketing research firm, estimated that the win alone brought in advertising that would cost millions of dollars.

A study conducted for the National Guard by the independent firm Alan Newman Research found that NASCAR fans in the age group the Guard targets are twice as likely as non-fans to consider the military as a career option.

“Ninety percent of Army National Guard soldiers who enlisted or re-enlisted from 2007-2013 said they have been exposed to the Guard through recruiting or retention materials that incorporated NASCAR,” the report noted.

National Guard recruiting drew unwanted attention on Capitol Hill in February. A subcommittee hearing revealed potentially widespread abuse of the National Guard’s Recruiting Assistance Program, which paid members, civilians and retirees to recruit friends and family — but lacked safeguards.

If the National Guard is not able to show that sports sponsorships are necessary, McCaskill said, “Then we will try to take steps to remove that money from their budget.”

Villagers from the Indian state of Gujarat listen to a local candidate before going to the polls. Photo courtesy of Dr. Bharat Barai.

WASHINGTON – As India’s colossal election – more than 800 million voters casting ballots for more than a month – enters its final phase, its international reach is clear.

Through social media, cell phones, trips to India to help in campaigns and even election tourism packages, Indian expatriates and adventurous, civic-minded travelers are contributing to the cacophony that is the world’s largest election to date.

More than 814 million people are eligible to vote this spring, more than the entire population of Europe. Registered voters have cast or will cast ballots at more than 900,000 polling stations in one of nine phases between April 7 and May 12. Results are expected by May 16.

The sheer scale of this year’s election has attracted a lot of attention from the rest of the world – from civic boosters to those looking to profit from the attention.

Election Tourism India 2014, an initiative launched under India’s Tourism Development Board, combines both motives. The group offers packages such as the “Democratic Triangle” or the “Political Rajasthan Royals,” where guests can familiarize themselves with India’s national parties and candidates and get a taste of the country’s electoral process.

Tours cost between $1,200 and $1,600 for everything but the plane ticket, and intersperse the campaign stops with trips to India’s most famous landmarks such as the Taj Mahal. Groups from the U.S. and Europe have booked trips with Election Tourism India, a spokesman said in an email, and countries from just about every continent are showing interest.

India’s roughly 1.3 billion people make it the world’s largest democracy. In a visit as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton underscored the country’s importance. “We understand that much of the history of the 21st century will be written in Asia, and that much of the future of Asia will be shaped by decisions” made in India, she said.

Some Americans wishing to get more directly involved with the election process in India have bucked the tourist route, opting instead for a more direct role campaigning for a candidate. Many are nonresident Indians who live in the U.S. but maintain duel-citizenship. More than 3 million Americans identify as having Indian ancestry.

Emblematic of expat Indian interest in the election is Bharat Barai. a doctor of oncology and former chairman of the Medical Licensing Board of Indiana. Barai returned this month from a two-week trip to India.

Barai’s dual-citizenship status makes him ineligible to cast a vote in India’s election. But that doesn’t mean he can’t be involved in the process.

Joined by men from Houston, Los Angeles, Chicago and Boston, Barai flew to Gujarat, a state in Northwest India that is home to Narendra Modi, who experts say is likely to be India’s next prime minister. Modi is now chief minister of Gujarat, which is the equivalent of a governor, and a leader in the Bharatiya Janata Party, one of India’s two largest political parties.

He’s the reason Barai traveled to India, and why he plans to go back again.

Barai and the others paid for their trip themselves, calling it “a service to the country and a service to our conscience.” In Gujarat, they traveled with local candidates to more than 15 villages, urging crowds as large as 200 to vote, and, specifically, to vote for Narendra Modi, Barai said.

Barai added that he knows of more than 700 people across North America who have called friends and relatives in India, encouraging them to vote for Modi and his party.

“To be honest,” Barai said, “I haven’t found any [non-resident Indian] who is against Narendra Modi, and I’m active in lots of social circles in Northwest Indiana and Chicago.”

One of the factors that motivated Barai to get involved was a sense that Indian elites across the globe have publicly voiced their resentment of Modi, he said. “If they are against Modi, then I’m going to stick out my neck saying, ‘Here is a clean, decent, honest man who needs to be elected on his own merits – and this false propaganda against him needs to stop,’” Barai said.

But famous Indian-born writers such as Salman Rushdie have written open letters condemning Modi for his role, or lack of role, in Hindu-Muslim violence in Gujarat in 2002.

Modi was one year into his tenure as chief minister when approximately 1,200 people—mostly Muslims—were killed in riots. Multiple reports said that the police did nothing to stop the violence, and some accused Modi of allowing or even encouraging it. Indian courts, however, have cleared Modi of any wrongdoing. Nevertheless, the U.S. has not lifted a ban on Modi’s travel visa that it put in place in 2005.

Some Americans are concerned that Modi’s baggage could exacerbate religious tension and friction between India and Pakistan.

“Those concerns are widespread in the American Muslim community, and particularly with those of South Asian descent,” said Ibrahim Hooper, communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization.

But like Barai, not everyone sees it that way. Prashant Patel, president of Gujarati Samaj in Washington, a nonprofit that sponsors cultural events from the state of Gujarat, said that most club members support Modi.

“They seem to be very proud of his achievements in Gujarat,” he said. “As you know he’s been elected three times [since the 2002 riots] with 70 percent of the vote in Gujarat, so you can look at the question that way.”

Modi’s opponent is Rahul Gandhi of the Indian National Congress Party, but even that party thinks it will lose this round of the election, said Teresita Schaffer, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a left-leaning think tank. The question is how badly, she said.

“The most dangerous outcome would be this rickety coalition,” Schaffer said, which would mean neither party received enough votes to run the country on its own. This kind of government, she said, could be another “prototypical weak government that hasn’t been able to deal with issues like peace with Pakistan.”

Published in conjunction with 

“I don’t think Vladimir Putin has a concern about what are defense budget is going to look like two or three or four years from now. I think he is more concerned about how we are going to use it today,” Rep. Larsen said. (John Kuhn/MEDILL)

WASHINGTON – In the midst of complex and wide-ranging threats from around the world, Congress needs to work with the Pentagon to get more out of the defense money it already spends, said members of the House Armed Services Committee Monday.

 But Democratic Rep. Rick Larsen argued for setting limits on spending, while Republican Rep. Mac Thornberry said the defense budget should be increased.

“I don’t think it’s correct to assume that a bigger budget is a better budget,” Larsen said at a defense policy briefing at the Brookings Institution. “There’s been a lot of waste, fraud and abuse in the Defense Department during the 2000s when it seemed there was no limit in what the Defense Department got.”

Thornberry, although agreeing that money already budgeted to the military could be better spent, said the 0.number of threats facing the U.S. is greater “than perhaps ever before” so Congress needs to increase the defense budget to keep pace with Russia and China as they up their defense spending.

“There is a value in and of itself to numbers of ships and airplanes, and ammunition” that the U.S. maintains, Thornberry said. “My point is the world’s watching. The world has some doubts about us.”

Increasing the defense budget, he added, will send a clearer message that “we are going to do whatever it takes to defend ourselves, our interests and our allies.

Thornberry, from Texas, supported House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2015, which called for in increase in defense spending by $43 billion in 2016 and by about $483 billion over 10 years. Neither Larsen, from Washington state, nor any House Democrats supported the Ryan budget.

“I don’t think Vladimir Putin has a concern about what are defense budget is going to look like two or three or four years from now. I think he is more concerned about how we are going to use it today,” Larsen said.

“In order to make the investments that we need for the future it might make sense for us to not make investments in things that we have in the past,” Larsen added.

Both men agreed that it’s important to emphasize the bipartisan support of standing by U.S. treaty agreements. President Obama underscored the same point last week, vowing that the U.S. security treaty with Japan extends to the Senkaku islands, which China also claim.

Todd Harrison, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a defense strategy think tank, said that as far as the defense budget goes, what matters is how you spend money, and not how much money you have.

“The real question for the U.S. right now is: ‘Are we spending it wisely? Are we spending it on the right things?’ And I think we got a long way to go right there,” Harrison said.

He said spending could be cut by reforming military compensation, closing some bases and reducing the size of the civilian Department of Defense workforce.

“Until we tackle a lot of those big issues – things that are politically difficult for Congress to do – we are not going to be addressing the real problem,” he said.

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Aqil Shah, a lecturer at Princeton University and author of “The Army and Democracy: Military Politics in Pakistan,” spoke at a Q and A sponsored by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. (John Kuhn/MEDILL)

WASHINGTON — Although it has been six years since Pakistan’s government was run by its military, U.S. defense officials continue to deal directly with Pakistan’s military, potentially weakening the civilian government led by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, experts said.

In the past, the U.S. favored dealing directly with the Pakistani military instead of the civilian government because it could get things done, said Reza Jan, an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute. The question going forward is whether the U.S. can effectively work with Pakistan’s military through its civilian government, he added.

For much of the last decade, the U.S. dealt only with the Pakistani military. Pervez Musharraf seized power through a military coup in 1999, and from 2001 to 2008 served as president. He was charged with treason earlier this year for undermining Pakistan’s constitution in 2007, when he fired top judges in order to slow an opposition movement.

Now as Pakistan’s civilian government becomes more powerful, lines of authority between it and the traditionally powerful military are changing. And that creates tension, said Jan.

“The two sides are doing that dance, trying to figure out where the line has moved to,” Jan said. “But I don’t think it’s the case where the military pulls the strings from the shadows and the government is just there for show.”

However, Christine Fair, assistant professor at Georgetown and author of “Fighting to the End,” a book on the Pakistani army’s strategic culture, said that she has not seen any evidence that the military has ceded real control to the civilian government. “The Pakistan military doesn’t have to run the country to have its preferred policy operationalized,” she said, which is why the U.S. military still works directly with it.

Fair said that though Musharraf’s trial will act as a deterrent for an army chief considering a future coup, it’s a personal indictment of Musharraf rather than an indictment of the army. Pakistan’s “military controls all of the policy levers that generally influence the United States,” Fair said. “There is a space where American’s can engage civilian counterparts but those spaces have to be far away from anything that the Pakistani military cares about,” she added.

Aqil Shah, a lecturer at Princeton University and author of “The Army and Democracy: Military Politics in Pakistan,” said he is not convinced that Pakistan’s military fully recognizes the authority of the country’s civilian government. “Pakistan’s military has traditionally dominated the state, which has an impact on how they perceive their own legitimate role,” he said.

Since inception, Pakistan has been engaged in nearly constant conflict, making military strength crucial. The threat of war with India is a big reason why Pakistan’s military must be powerful, said Shah. Both countries have nuclear weapons, so the threat has given generals incentive to increase their political influence, Shah said.

Shah said he doesn’t see Pakistan’s military fully accepting its lesser role under civilian government unless “Indian and Pakistani hostilities are resolved.” He added that military personnel would need to unlearn much of what it has been taught in order to accept the government as legitimate.

“It’s possible a re-socialization of the army happens,” Shah said, but not likely. He said that when he’s asked Pakistani generals if they could name one other professional military in the world that acts as Pakistan’s does, they respond with, “Could you name one country that was Pakistan?”

The military is good at manipulating public opinion, the media and even judges, which leave it with a sort of veto power over proposed policy changes it doesn’t like, Shah said. He added that the military especially controls the country’s national security narrative.

But Jan said that the pervasive Pakistani media is part of the reason civilian control is growing. “The media actively goes after stories dealing with the military and insurgents,” he said. And a hyperactive media and social media – combined with a new reverence for the judiciary – has kept the memory of military control fresh in citizens’ minds, allowing the current government a chance to “flex its muscle,” Jan said.

“There continues to be military to military contact between the U.S. and Pakistan,” Jan said, “But the U.S. is trying to keep it quieter now.” He said the Pakistani military wants to go after the Pakistani Taliban, which aligns with U.S. interests.

Sharif’s government is involved in peace talks with the Pakistani Taliban, although last week the Taliban announced the end of a six-week ceasefire.

“The Muslim Brotherhood is more of a tribe, more of an identity belonging than an ideology.” (John Kuhn/MEDILL)

WASHINGTON — Nine months after former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi was removed from office by a military coup, members of his Muslim Brotherhood party need to develop a unified message if they want to stage a comeback to power, experts said Tuesday.

But it won’t be easy.

A large number of Brotherhood leaders are imprisoned in Egypt, where the group was declared a terrorist organization last December, and the group encompasses myriad beliefs, making a unified and coherent ideology difficult to define.

“The Muslim Brotherhood is more of a tribe, more of an identity belonging than an ideology,” said Hassan Mneimneh, an expert on extremism in the Arab world with the German Marshall Fund.

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928 as an Islamist social and political movement. It has since spread throughout the Middle East and North Africa, though it’s largest base is in Egypt . Until 2012, when Morsi was elected Egyptian president, it functioned primarily as an opposition party, which the experts said explains in part the problems the group faces today.

As an opposition, Mneimneh said, the Brotherhood didn’t need to develop an effective social, political or economic theory. But Morsi, as head of state, did not have that luxury.

The Brotherhood’s fall from power in Egypt was jarring in part because of a failure by both citizens and party leaders to realize the party’s lack of experience as a ruling party and what that would mean to its governing capacity, experts said.

“This idea that the Brotherhood was somehow going to sweep the whole region and now they’re rolled back or whatever, I think would have been a very exaggerated idea to begin with,” said Michele Dunne, a Middle East senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Now, despite the chaos in Egypt, the group has a chance for revision and development, the panelists said.

For the Brotherhood, “this is the time to try to evolve framework into something more concrete,” Mneimneh said.

(John Kuhn/MEDILL)

WASHINGTON — Members of a key House subcommittee questioned whether the Commerce Department’s announcement that it will relinquish oversight of the Internet domain name system next year leaves important Internet architecture open to manipulation.

Under a 1990s contract with the Commerce Department, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a nonprofit group based in California, is responsible for connecting domains that we see as, for instance, Twitter.com with the IP for the company. The U.S. developed the architecture for the network and has had responsibility for its oversight.

In March the Department of Commerce announced its plans to cede its control of ICANN, on condition the nonprofit create an oversight mechanism and gain the trust of the global Internet community.

“The Obama administration should bear the burden of proof for why it wants to make this significant public policy change and whether it is in the best interest of U.S. citizens and Internet users around the globe,” said House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va.

Daniel Castro, senior analyst for the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, charged that even now – before the change from Department of Commerce control takes effect – it would be extremely difficult for the U.S. to change the announced policy without significant backlash.

However, he and others worry that ICANN could become beholden to the domain name registry industry, which pays ICANN for managing the top-level domain systems.

“We should be very mindful of creating a global organization with little accountability that can effectively tax the Internet,” Castro said, referring to revenues brought in from the domain name system.

Lawmakers alleged that the timing was a reaction to international pressure on the U.S. to relinquish its oversight role in Internet oversight after recent revelations that the National Security Agency had been collecting metadata on foreign leaders.

Lawrence Strickling of the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration repeatedly defended the proposed end to U.S. oversight of ICANN, noting that since 1998 the goal has been to eventually privatize the function.

The Commerce Department does not exercise any control over policymaking at ICANN, Strickling said. And the U.S. role is largely symbolic. “It’s a global multi-stakeholder community that makes Internet policy today.”

Further, Strickling said that the transition proposal ICANN must submit to the U.S. before the takeover has to address four specific principles: It must support and boost the multi-stakeholder model; uphold the security, stability and resiliency of the Internet domain name system; meet the needs of global customers; and maintain the Internet’s openness.

Strickling added that the Commerce Department made clear it will not accept a deal that replaces the agency’s oversight role “with a government-led or intergovernmental solution,” attempting to assuage fears that an authoritarian regime could one day tighten Internet control while claiming adherence to International standards.

Still, some experts feel there should be more than just internal ICANN oversight.

Paul Rosenzweig, a visiting fellow at the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, said that times come when people waive or change internal checks and balances, when the checks are allowed to mutate in some way.

“The right answer to that problem is some other form of external checking function that is able to restrict and restrain that mutation when it goes off in adverse ways,” Rosenzweig said, suggesting the creation of an inspector general or external judiciary.

ICANN’s chief executive officer, Fadi Chehade, said it would be virtually impossible for a malevolent group to gain control over ICANN because of its long list of global stakeholders. Citing ICANN supporters such as the Internet Association, Human Rights Watch and the Center for Democracy and Technology, he also said that any change to ICANN’s bylaws are posted publicly, and that it welcomes feedback from everyone.

Chehade likened the situation to that of teaching his two sons to ride bicycles. “I think we’ve been watching lCANN for 15 years, and the training wheels have been largely off, and we’re fine. It doesn’t mean we should walk away … but this is the time to let go, and to show the world how to trust us.”