Glass houses: In wake of extremist attacks in EU, diplomat faces tough questions from Pakistan

Union wants to become a ‘global solution provider’, says Pierre Mayaudon.

KARACHI:

As a manhunt gets underway in France for a killer who targeted people of North African, Caribbean and Jewish backgrounds, a European Union diplomat faced some tough questions in Pakistan – generally perceived to be a hotbed of extremism.

Pierre Mayaudon, who is the deputy ambassador of the European Union to Pakistan, spoke at the Area Study Centre for Europe at Karachi University on Tuesday. The focus was the EU’s emerging role in security and defence around the world.

He explained that the EU was committed to promoting democracy, fighting terrorism and “helping third [world] countries fight terrorism”.  But then, given some recent attacks, he was asked if the EU had placed an unnecessary focus on fighting terrorism in other countries while extremism inside Europe kept brewing.

For example, in Brussels, on March 12, a mosque’s imam was killed in an apparent arson attack. In Toulouse, neo-Nazis are suspected of killing three children and a teacher at a Jewish school.

This would have been the opportunity for Mayaudon to do some good diplomacy – but he was vague. He just reiterated the EU’s resolve to fight extremism and terrorism.

The president of the ASCE, Moonis Ahmar, took this opportunity to throw a jibe: “Well, we can be sure that the EU will not become something like the [department of] Homeland Security.”

Mayaudon gave no response.

Had Mayaudon seized the opportunity to do some good PR work, which he seemed to have come for, he could have possibly reached an audience outside the room as well. In addition to students, including those at the MPhil, PhD and Master’s levels, his audience consisted of faculty and journalists from TV channels, newspapers and wire agencies such as PTV, SAMAA, Dawn News, The News.

During the presentation, Mayaudon said that the role of the Union had evolved to become a global solutions provider. One of the goals was to “contribute to peace around the world either by military or civilian operations.”

But what factors classified a mission as civilian or military were vague, as Mayaudon himself admitted. Some are the host’s disarmament or nuclear policies, but there were no clear markers. He said that in the past six months, the EU had led six military missions. He gave the example of Libya while referring to one of the successful military missions. However, he was quick to point out that the number of civilian operations were more than military. “There are a total of 13 EU missions working in different countries,” he said. “Ten of them are civilian while three are military.”

Two out of three military missions were in Somalia – one was a marine operation, named Atlanta, against pirates. The second was EUTM, which was a training mission for the Somali forces. At any given time, the EU maintains a standing force of 60,000 personnel deployable within 60 days with air and land support for a year. For civilian missions, the Union has a reserve of 6,000 police officers, 1,000 other law enforcers and 27,000 other personnel.

Most of the civilian missions were in Africa, while one was in Aceh, Indonesia to help out with the rehabilitation after the tsunami. Mayaudon said that the Europeans felt responsible for Africa because of its colonial past.

When another questioner asked whether the European integration had somehow contributed to the acute economic crisis in Greece, the deputy ambassador was quite straightforward. Although he didn’t name any country, he said that some chose not to act on the EU’s suggestions to form a financial management policy but it was their own, individual doing. He didn’t say whether the integration contributed to Greek debt but did point out that the crisis was global and affected other countries as well.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 21^st, 2012.