The Atrocities Prevention Board is facing sharp questions about its effectiveness. A test of genocide prevention

Barack Obama used a powerful word Thursday night he’s rarely uttered during his presidency: genocide.

“When we have the unique capabilities to help avert a massacre, then I believe the United States of America cannot turn a blind eye,” the president said. “We can act, carefully and responsibly, to prevent a potential act of genocide. That’s what we’re doing on that mountain.”


Obama’s decision to use the military to resolve the crisis involving as many as 40,000 Iraqi Yazidis surrounded by Islamic State forces in northern Iraq puts a spotlight on his less direct approach to widespread civilian deaths in Syria and lower-profile responses the U.S. has taken to ethnic strife in Africa.

It also puts new focus on a government body Obama created two years ago: the “Atrocities Prevention Board,” which has the weighty responsibility of prodding the U.S. to fight genocide anywhere in the world.

( Also on POLITICO: Obama authorizes Iraq airstrikes)

But in a moment where the Atrocities Prevention Board would seemingly be most critical, the panel is facing sharp questions about its effectiveness.

Sources familiar with the board’s work said it has explored risks of ethnic violence in Iraq, but could not confirm whether it specifically focused prior to Thursday on the sect Obama has moved to rescue. A highly touted report last year on the “Global Risks of Mass Atrocities” remains classified. And a promised executive order to govern the operation and purview of the board has never been signed.

“Just what is the point of having an ‘Atrocities Prevention Board’ if it takes no action to prevent or stop atrocities?” Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) asked in an impassioned letter to Obama Thursday.

The continuing carnage in Syria has produced a smattering of op-ed pieces and blog posts in recent years raising doubt about the panel’s usefulness given the limited steps the U.S. has taken to the killing of thousands of civilians at the hands of the Assad regime.

( Also on POLITICO: Why Obama acted on Iraq)

Some who closely track the atrocities board say it suffers from a kind of Catch-22: the panel is expected to get involved in the highest-profile cases of ethnic strife, but may only have a significant impact in those which are largely below the radar.

“They’re kind of caught in a bind,” said John Norris, a former State Department official now with the Center for American Progress. “They have a lot of uptempo, interagency meetings, but their value is probably more in areas that get less attention than these ones right on the front pages.”

“Part of the problem is with that ‘atrocity prevention’ in their name, people expect them to do something about the biggest things on the front pages,” he added.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Friday that the panel’s creation signals Obama’s commitment to combating atrocities and genocide, but the spokesman shed little light on what the group did with respect to the Yazidis or other religious violence in Iraq.

( Also on POLITICO: N.Y. Times broadens use of 'torture')

“The establishment of that board I think is a testament to some of the principles that the president discussed last night, which is that the United States does remain a beacon of freedom and protection of basic human rights that certainly applies in the this country but applies that principle to populations including minority populations all around the globe,” Earnest said in response to a question. “That means that the United States squarely with those minority populations that are being targeted because of their religious or ethnic identity. The American people stand with this Yazidis and the Christians in Iraq that are being persecuted by ISIL.”

Another White House spokesman, Ned Price of the National Security Council, cited a policy against discussing details of the board’s work.

“We don’t get into specifics about interagency deliberations,” Price said Thursday night.

“As a general matter, in crisis situations addressed at senior levels of government, the APB feeds input into that process as appropriate. Additionally, a number of APB members regularly take part in those senior-level policy discussions.”

An administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the panel had convened Thursday in connection with the Yazidi crisis, but declined to say whether it had met previously to discuss the rapidly unfolding events in Iraq. “The APB did, in fact, meet today,” the official said Thursday night. “Today’s humanitarian action is certainly in the spirit of the APB.”

Speaking at a POLITICO event last year, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power also suggested that the board may have less impact in high-profile crises than in running low-profile cases up the chain.

“I would view….the president’s creation of that board, as a symptom of his larger commitment, again, to exploring every tool in the toolbox,” said Power, widely credited with creating the board when she worked at the National Security Council prior to heading to the U.N.

“It’s oriented more to ensure that where modest interventions of, and shows of leadership by, the United States and rallying other countries or pushing at the UN for something — that that will never fall through the cracks, I think, with this mechanism in place, because there’s a way to go directly to the president,” Power added.

While some have suggested the panel is less impactful or perhaps even superfluous in crises like those in Iraq and Syria, statements the White House issued when the board was created suggested they would be convened in times of crisis. “The APB will meet at least monthly to oversee the development and implementation of atrocity prevention and response policy, and additionally on an ad hoc basis to deal with urgent situations as they arise,” a White House fact sheet issued in 2012 said.

“We’re making sure that the United States government has the structures, the mechanisms to better prevent and respond to mass atrocities,” Obama declared at the Holocaust Museum in Washington two years ago. “This is not an afterthought. This is not a sideline in our foreign policy… We need to be doing everything we can to prevent and respond to these kinds of atrocities.”

One analyst said the board is having a positive impact, but that it can’t overcome obstacles to a more robust U.S. response in every case.

“I think the Atrocities Prevention Board is really an important tool in a large set of response mechanisms that the administration has, particularly to flag atrocities….but it’s not divorced from lager political system and the other complications that brings,” said Sarah Margon of Human Rights Watch.

Of the public pledges the White House made when announcing the new board, some have been fulfilled, while others have not.

The White House vowed to begin drafting an executive order to govern the operation and purview of the board nearly two years ago, but the directive has never been signed.

Last July, officials completed what the administration billed as the “first-ever National Intelligence Estimate on the Global Risks of Mass Atrocities and Prospects for International Response.” But White House and intelligence officials declined to say Thursday whether the report addressed the prospect for sectarian violence in Iraq.

The intelligence estimate remains classified in its entirety, even though summaries of other such estimates have been made public.

A bit of the estimate may have seeped out in January when senior intelligence community officials gave annual testimony to Congress about worldwide threats.

“The overall risk of mass atrocities worldwide will probably increase in 2014 and beyond,” the threat assessment said. “Trends driving this increase include more social mobilization, violent conflict, including communal violence, and other forms of instability that spill over borders and exacerbate ethnic and religious tensions; diminished or stagnant quality of governance; and widespread impunity for past abuses…. Much of the world will almost certainly turn to the United States for leadership to prevent and respond to mass atrocities.”

One challenge in assessing the panel’s effectiveness is its secrecy, which some see in tension which the board’s mission of trying to take a broad approach to heading off potential genocide.

“The APB has been pretty opaque in its operation. That has been one of the knocks on it,” Norris said. “The bully pulpit is a very useful tool in atrocity prevention… It’s not enough to call attention to these things within the administration. They need to be able to make it a little more public.”

The most forceful Obama response to a humanitarian crisis during his presidency actually came before the atrocities board was created, when he authorized U.S. forces to join in a bombing campaign in Libya with the stated purpose of protecting civilians in Benghazi from being massacred by troops loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi. That operation eventually evolved, in the eyes of many, into an effort to topple Qadhafi.

Some reports have pointed to one success story for the board: the U.S. government’s response last year to escalating sectarian violence in the Central African Republic. International peacekeepers with logistical support from a few dozen American troops have helped keep a lid on violence there, although the situation is far from calm.

The circumstances there also highlight another difficulty for any board focused on genocide prevention: its failures will be evident, while its successes may never be entirely clear.

“They’ve always operated under the assumption that it would be good to have some wins under their belt before it took on a more high-profile role,” said Norris. “That’s the tough thing about atrocity prevention, if you prevent it, nobody really notices. It’s not the kind of thing you’re going to triumphantly take before Congress and the American people.”