Avuncular American

Follow The Water: "Drying Up Palestine"

"Downhill, Downstream"

That's what they taught you in the Boy Scouts, if ever you were lost in the wilderness.  Downhill led (hopefully) to a stream, downstream led (hopefully) to settlement and salvation.

The Arab Cultural Center in Brussels has been showing a series of films lately.  Palestinian (Israeli-Arab) filmaker Rima Essa and Peter Snowdon of the UK have made a 30-minute documentary "Drying Up Palestine," which shows that in the West Bank, "downhill, downstream" has an entirely different connotation.  It should be essential viewing for all Middle East Peace Processors, because without water, there cannot be life, let alone a two state solution.

"Downhill" in the West Bank is usually the direction that Israeli settlers look.  They - along with Israeli Army outposts - occupy the high ground, and increasingly, the preponderance of the territory's water resources.  Essa and Snowdon start out with a scene filmed through their car's windshield, driving through a welcome West Bank rain.  But they point out that even the raindrops do not belong to the Palestinians: the runoff is collected for Israeli use.

Another scene has settlers complaining about the nasty smells from untreated sewage wafting up the valley from the Palestinian village down below.  Whose sewage?  We're not told, but elsewhere we're shown raw sewage seeping from an Israeli prison (for Palestinians?), polluting villagers' rare water supplies.  Throughout the film, the pattern is clear: what had been Palestinian water resources are inexorably expropriated by Israel for use in settlements, or to augment water supplies for Israel proper, or - ultimate injustice - sold back to Palestinians.

There are numerous organizations - Palestinian, Israeli, international - that are focusing on this crucial aspect of life in this contested corner of the world.  For those who can't watch the Essa/Snowdon film, I recommend this excellent animation from the University of Newcastle's SUSMAQ (Sustainable Management of the West Bank and Gaza Aquifers Project).  Midway through this computerized 3-D animation is a map with the recognizable outline of the pre-1967 West Bank boundary.  Look at the dots that appear to the west (i.e., Israeli side) of that boundary.  They are wells, drilled deep into the aquifer under Palestinian territory.  And they ring the West Bank and Gaza.

"Like a Long Straw, Draining Your Milkshake"

Think of those Israeli water wells when you see the Oscar-winning performance by Daniel Day-Lewis in "There Will Be Blood."  Day-Lewis, in the role of the rapacious oil man, has long coveted a parcel of land belonging to an ornery holdout.  Finally, when approached years later by the holdout's representative in dire need of money, Day-Lewis crushes the man's hope by explaining that the parcel is now worthless: Day-Lewis, controlling all the surrounding land, has "drained"  the oil using his own wells.  He conjures up an image of a milkshake with two straws, where his is the longest... but still capable of siphoning off his neighbor's supply.

But it's not just the Israeli wells around the Palestinian territory; Israeli wells inside the West Bank - deeper, more sophisticated than shallow, traditional Palestinian wells - have simply dried up those Palestinian sources.  Arab farmers now have to purchase their water - at high prices - from Israeli suppliers.  And are relegated to jury-rigged water trucks supplying expensive water to their cisterns, now that their own traditional wells are dry.

Maps are important to understanding the situation on the ground, and B"Tselem, the Israeli organization dedicated to human rights in the occupied territories, produces excellent ones illustrating the kind of daily frustration ("Forbidden Roads") that is the lot of Palestinians under Israeli occupation.  The Gaza Strip has been described as "the world's largest open air prison," but the sad reality shown by Rima Essa's  and Peter Snowdon's film is that large stretches of the West Bank are indistinguishable from the squalor of Palestinian refugee camps set up as "temporary" shelters in the late 1940s.

ARIJ - The Applied Research Institute in Jerusalem - and The House of Water and Environment (HWE, in Ramallah, for which Snowdon and Essa made "Drying Up Palestine") are Palestinian research centers which help "build capacity" through training projects, often in collaboration with international bodies like "Waternet" from the Netherlands and UN agencies.  Finally, in about the only "good news" aspect of the sorry water story, there is "Friends of the Earth Middle East" (FOEME) "a unique organization that brings together Jordanian, Palestinian, and Israeli environmentalists."  FOEME has an estimable project, "Good Water Neighbors," which appears to have good PR and funding, but whose goals appear impossible in the current stalemate.

Just consider the water news out of Gaza today:

GAZA, Feb 27 (Reuters) - The Palestinian water utility urged Gazans on Wednesday to boil their drinking water and said contamination was a risk because an Israeli-led blockade was choking off chlorine supplies.  The Coastal Municipalities Water Utility, which runs the Gaza water system, said it was struggling to disinfect water due to shortages of chemicals as well as spare parts for pumps and other equipment.  But Israel, which has tightened restrictions on the Hamas-run enclave in what it says is a response to militant rocket fire, said it only received a request for chlorine on Wednesday and was still processing it.  The CMWU said 52 of Gaza's 140 water wells had no chlorine and the others were fast running out. The utility posted a newspaper advert on Wednesday warning the Gaza Strip's 1.5 million residents the situation could prompt an epidemic.

Meanwhile, in the Jordan valley town of Jericho, municipal officials - with the help of $10 million from Norway and the Islamic Development Bank - have (re)connected to the Jordanian power grid, after more than 40 years of Israeli occupation.  But for water - sorry, Jordan certainly has none to spare.

Whatever rump territory can be salvaged out of the patchwork of settlements, military outposts, bypass roads, and security barriers (try to make sense out of the maze that is the West Bank of today) →  it is access to water that will determine the viability of any future Palestinian state.  The record does not bode well for sustainability, which, in the end, will underpin "independence."

(Map source: PASSIA - Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, Jerusalem)

Europe Awaits American Elections... And President Obama?

Brussels' growing array of think tanks, representative offices, as well as lobbyists, public affairs and communications groups - all are focusing with increasing intensity on the American presidential race.  With the Republican race pretty much a foregone conclusion, the current excitement is over the Democratic primaries and Senator Barack Obama's seeming non-stop winning streak.

Serious observers of the American scene schedule events entitled "The Primaries, U.S. Foreign Policy, and the E.U." (co-sponsored by the Friedrich Nauman Stiftung fur die Freiheit and the Transatlantic Institute).  At this and other similar conclaves, Europeans and Americans connected with Brussels' unique collection of international institutions (NATO, EU, etc.) try to frame the debate in the most neutral terms possible.  The "European Theatre" conference, co-sponsored by the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS, of Johns Hopkins University) and the German Marshall Fund of the US, is the first of a series of issue-oriented debates which will culminate in a "Memo to the (Next) President of the United States."

But as even-handed as the speakers at these conclaves try to be, the name Barack Obama keeps cropping up.  As in, "even a President Obama would..." or "in an Obama Administration... ."  For good measure, there are occasional references to John McCain and Hillary Clinton, but it's almost in the realm of tokenism.  The money - if Brussels policy wonks were betting people - would be on Obama.  Some of this is hortatory - many are truly concerned about a continuation of Bush policies under a Clinton or McCain presidency - while much of it is fascination with the promise of a man who, let's be honest, is still much of an unknown - but intriguing - quantity.

Some of the more serious observers warn fellow Europeans not to expect night-and-day changes.  They remind audiences that all three top candidates are more outward-looking and multilateralist than Bush.  But that "even a President Obama" should not be expected to abandon American exceptionalism, and has not ruled out a unilateral approach in certain circumstances (his threat to intervene in Pakistan has not been forgotten).  Several warned against expectations of a "New Dawn" on January 20, 2009.  Indeed, many expect that a new, more multilateralist American president may ask more of Europeans, used to getting off cheaply during the Bush years.  The Bush administration simply didn't expect much of its allies, and went down its own road, using the US national credit card.  With massive American deficits aggravated by Iraq war spending, a new president should stress burden sharing anew. 

NATO - the preeminent institution linking the United States to Europe (though not the only one: the US is a major player in OECD, EBRD, OSCE, and other Europe-based institutions) - has been facing existential threat ever since the real one - the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact - dissolved in the early '90s.  The current crisis is over the first out-of-area NATO operation, Afghanistan.  The next US president will have been in office all of two months when NATO heads of state meet at the Bucharest Summit in April 2009.  Whether it's "Day One" Clinton, Vietnam Vet McCain, or "On-the-job-training" Obama, a new American president will be... new.  Will Canada have pulled out of its Afghanistan commitment after Parliamentary frustration over disproportionate casualties?  Will France have re-entered the NATO military command and launched a stronger "European Pillar" of NATO under President Sarkozy?  The next US president may very well be in a reactive, place-holding mode, until he or she can catch up with fast-moving events among key allies.

Important as these matters are, European-American relations are not restricted to NATO and narrowly-defined defense issues.  A new American administration would do well to engage with Europeans on issues of mutual concern, like energy security.  Though Europe has had to fight the Bush administration's denial of climate change for most of its eight years in power, and has generally been ahead of the US in developing alternative sources of energy production, there is real concern about Europe's dependence on Russian natural gas.  This highly asymmetrical relationship in EU-Russia trade is one where Europe's goal of "security of supply" should mesh with (one hopes) a new American president's similar concerns about American dependence on imported - especially Middle Eastern - crude oil.

Likewise, with the French EU Presidency winding up just as American elections will determine the next US president, Sarkozy's dream of a "Mediterranean Union" may be better defined, if not yet a reality.  Europe has legitimate concerns about growing immigration pressures from riparian states and beyond, coupled with concerns about inroads of radical Islam among immigrant populations already resident in Europe.  A new US president will have a stake in these issues, and may want to modify what many Mediterranean and sub-Saharan African countries see as a Bush tendency to "militarize" US engagement with the continent (i.e., the establishment of AFRICOM, the US military's new Africa Command).  At the same time, the shared US and European need for "security of supply" should mean convergence in attempts to maintain access to African petrochemical resources, under pressure from growing Chinese demand.

Much will be on the plate of the new American president, and he (or she) will find an eager dinner partner in Europe.

Returning The King's Shilling: Brady Kiesling, American Diplomat

It was five years ago today that Brady Kiesling, American diplomat at the US Embassy in Athens, wrote to Secretary of State Colin Powell (the entire text is on Kiesling's website)

Dear Mr. Secretary:

I am writing you to submit my resignation from the Foreign Service of the United States and from my position as Political Counselor in U.S. Embassy Athens...  My faith in my country and its values was the most powerful weapon in my diplomatic  arsenal.  ... until this Administration it had been possible to believe that by upholding the policies of my president I was also upholding the interests of the American people and the world. I  believe it no longer.

The policies we are now asked to advance are incompatible not only with American values but also with American interests. Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America's most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson. We have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective web of international relationships the world has ever known. Our current course will bring instability and danger, not security.

... We are straining beyond its limits an international system we built with such toil and treasure, a web of laws, treaties, organizations, and shared values that sets limits on our foes far more effectively than it ever constrained America's ability to defend its interests.

I am resigning because I have tried and failed to reconcile my conscience with my ability to represent the current U.S. Administration. I have confidence that our democratic process is  ultimately self-correcting, and hope that in a small way I can contribute from outside to shaping policies that better serve the security and prosperity of the American people and the world we share.

Sincerely,

John Brady Kiesling
U.S. Embassy Athens

Anyone who thinks that Kiesling's action was anything less than heroic underestimates the man.  Not one to seek out cushy assignments, Kiesling served in Armenia when it was at war with neighboring Azerbaijan, and later became Deputy U.S. Special Negotiator for Nagorno-Karabakh, the disputed territory that was the cause of the war.  Earlier - according to his resume - he "won the 1994 Rivkin Award (group award) given by the American Foreign Service Association for constructive dissent.  Was member of a group of a dozen State Department officials that pushed for international intervention in Bosnia."  In a March 14, 2003 interview with Bill Moyers on the PBS program "NOW," Kiesling referred to the philosophical underpinning of his position on the Bosnian intervention:  "I am not a pacifist by any means. There are times when violence or at least the credible threat of violence is necessary to prevent people wrapped in the throes of some nationalist obsession from doing something criminal."

But with the Bush administration rush to war increasingly evident throughout 2002 and early 2003, "constructive dissent" had reached its limits.   Kiesling's resignation was the ultimate sacrifice - giving up his "dream job."  He was giving up a career that thousands aspire to, and risking his financial future by jettisoning a stable livelihood.  For Kiesling, he at least had the support of those who - though relatively few in number in the US, were legion throughout the world - saw that Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld were leading the United States into another quagmire.  A Greek editorial said of Kiesling at the time "Thank God there are good Americans."  Kiesling, in the NOW interview, recalls his farewell to diplomacy:

As my final farewell to the embassy I invited all of my colleagues to a beautiful hilltop overlooking the Aegean [to the] ruined temple of the Goddess Nemesis.  Nemesis is the goddess who punishes people for transgressing the divine limits. And this temple was set up largely to commemorate the victory over the Persians who had by definition transgressed the divine limits in their attempt to conquer the Greeks.

I raised a glass of wine and sort of prayed, you know, poured a glass of libation to Nemesis and said, "now, God save the United States. God save us from our own hubris, from our own arrogance, from our sense that we can do things alone and not reckon the costs to our friends and our allies."

Nemesis and hubris - fitting that Kiesling is steeped in the ancient Greek classics.  He foresaw the tragoidia of the Bush crusade in Iraq, but also held out hope that the "self-correction" of the American democratic process will save the US from Mr. Bush's folly.

By the way, read "Taking The King's Shilling" by David T. Jones, a discussion of the continuing unrest over Iraq among American diplomats, in the February 2008 issue of the Foreign Service Journal.

Parallel History, February 24, 2003 - part of a mini-series in "Avuncular American," looking back at five years of milestones along the road to "Mission Accomplished."  To be continued.

PAC = Politically Authorized Corruption... and US Still Sends Corruption Experts Overseas?

"Leadership PACs" - Political Action Committees...

... are the subject of Ken Silverstein's "Beltway Bacchanal: Congress Lives High On The Contributor's Dime" in the March issue of Harper's.  The "Leadership" prefix refers to PACs that belong to individual senators and representatives, as opposed to "issue" PACs like AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.  "Issue" PACs raise money for causes and special interests and distribute contributions to friendly politicians, but "leadership" PACs exist solely to allow politicians to fund their own (and colleagues') campaign expenses.  "Campaign," as Silverstein shows, is very loosely defined:

According to the Center for Responsive Politics (which helpfully provided much of the data for this article), at least eight House members spent more than $10,000 in campaign funds on food, travel, and fund-raising in the eight weeks between Election Day 2006 and New Year's Eve - not exactly a peak campaigning period.

That is, after the election was over.  The amounts involved are stupendous: one back-bench Republican Congressman from Louisiana spent $18,000 per month on food, drinks, catering, and hotels over a three year period.  A slew of high-priced steak houses in Washington depend on high-rolling politicians and their lobbyist friends (some are even owned by lobbyists) for their business (in the last two years, House members spent some $5.4 million "at just ten of Washington's priciest restaurants").  And much of the money stays "in the family," according to Silverstein:

Numerous lawmakers view their political funds as job programs for friends and family members, thus offering yet another means of enhancing their incomes and lifestyles.  The wife and daughter of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay were paid several hundred thousand dollars to serve as his PAC's fund-raising and political consultants.

Okay, you say, what's new?  Precisely - nothing is new.  Congress has passed umpteen "reforms" to reign in on lobbying and largess, but there are handy loopholes: all of the dirty detail in Silverstein's and the CRP's data is on members of the House of Representatives; US Senators are exempt from electronic filing.

American Corruption Is "Clean"(i.e. Legal) - Foreign Corruption Is "Dirty" (Like in the Movies)

So why should you care?  Only if you think that there might be a link between special interests funding campaigns and lavish lifestyles AND those same Congressional beneficiaries repaying the kindness through favorable legislation.  In other countries, the United States labels such activity "corruption."  In the US, it's called K Street (the Washington D.C. artery that houses lobbyists - or, as veteran influence-tracker Jeffrey Birnbaum called them in his book of the same title - The Money Men).

Some of these Money Men have actually been sent abroad to represent American presidents as US Ambassadors (not "goodwill" ambassadors on a UNICEF Christmas card mission, but the kind that represent the US among our most important allies - see ex-diplomat Pat Kushlis' excellent "Outsourcing US Ambassadorships" in her blog, Whirled View).  How ironic, then, that the US spends lots of money through USAID, the World Bank, OECD, and other institutions to fight corruption in developing nations.  Speaking of the World Bank, remember when ex-Bush Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz had the temerity to push "anti-corruption" programs at the World Bank while his girlfriend got massive salary increases outside the usual procedures?

In development consulting circles, there's scads of money thrown at fighting corruption in countries where it's in-your-face (in Nigeria, the first thing that new arrivals see at the airport are posters proclaiming "Corruption Is The Death Of A Nation," an attempt to put travelers on their guard in a country that is often at the top - or is it the bottom? - of places where corruption is endemic).  Just conjure up a picture of your typical film villain, holding out a greasy palm to allow the hero (probably American) to cross that foreign border post to freedom.

Ultimate irony: in 2000, the US Congress passed the "International Anti-Corruption And Good Governance Act."  Stress should be placed on the operative word - "international."  I guess that's a bit like the US condemnation of Iranian interference in Iraq (issued from the Green Zone headquarters of the US occupation forces?).  Or US preaching to the world every year in its Human Rights Reports, where every country, including Sweden (but not the US), is critiqued for its treatment of prisoners...

To paraphrase the great Joseph Welch when he shamed Senator Joseph McCarthy, the world might ask the United States, "Have you no sense of irony?"

Add The World To The List Of Obama Victories

In case you fell asleep while awaiting the results of the Democrats Abroad "Global Presidential Primary" election that closed on 12 February (it does take a while for volunteers who have day jobs to tabulate votes online, in person, by letter and by fax from Democrats in more than 160 countries), here it is from Yahoo/Associated Press:

Barack Obama won the Democrats Abroad global primary in results announced Thursday, giving him 11 straight victories in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.  The Illinois senator won the primary in which Democrats living in other countries voted by Internet, mail and in person, according to results released by the Democrats Abroad, an organization sanctioned by the national party.  Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has not won a nominating contest since Super Tuesday, more than two weeks ago.

The breakdown was Obama 65.6% and Clinton 32.7%.  According to an email from the Democrats Abroad press office, this means:

These results determine the allocation of 4.5 delegate votes at the Democratic National Convention. Senator Obama won 2.5 delegate votes, and Senator Clinton 2 delegate votes.  A further 2.5 votes will be determined at the Democrats Abroad Global Convention in April. In addition, Democrats Abroad holds 4 superdelegate votes. A total of 22 delegates, each with a half vote, will attend the Convention.

Now, don't ask me why a 2-to-1 Obama-Clinton margin results in Him getting only 0.5 more delegates than Her.  The entire US election process has become so super-complicated, what with super-delegates, half-votes, debates involving dozens of candidates starting a year and a half before the election, and costing in excess of $1 billion.  But that will be the subject of a future post.

For now, I'm going to drink to Senator Obama's health, and celebrate his 11th straight victory.

This Is Not - Repeat NOT - The News From Africa

US President George W. Bush is winding up his tour of Africa in Liberia.  His penultimate stop - Ghana - was the scene of a press conference where, without prompting, he answered his own question.  Here's today's Washington Post (be sure to check out the video clip)

"The purpose of this is not to add military bases," Bush said without being asked at the opening of a session with reporters here. "I know there's rumors in Ghana -- 'All Bush is coming to do is try to convince you to put a big military base here.' That's baloney. Or as we say in Texas, that's bull."

"Baloney," for English As A Foreign Language readers, is American for "nonsense."  "Bull" is short for bullsh.. but you've probably learned that one already.  Anyway, if Bush wanted to dispel rumors, he need not have exerted himself: Africa had been prepared for the non-news - all week.

On the eve of the President's departure for Africa, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley told reporters "No AFRICOM Announcement Expected During President's Africa Trip."

Then on Monday, the BBC cited AFRICOM Commander General William Ward as saying that

The US military has decided to keep the base of its new Africa Command in Germany for now, after only one African nation, Liberia, offered to host it.

Despite all the non-news, Ghanaian President John Kufuor appreciated hearing it from his US counterpart.  Again, the Washington Post:

Bush said Wednesday that it [AFRICOM] may have "some kind of office somewhere in Africa" but not a full-fledged base.  Kufuor expressed relief. "I am happy . . . for the president dispelling any notion that the United States of America is intending to build military bases on the continent of Africa," he said.

"Some kind of office," as President Bush said, does not mean a classic military base.  But President Kufuor might temper his relief as long as Bush is in the White House.  CENTCOM, headquartered in Tampa, Florida, did not require an American "base" in the Middle East to launch war on Iraq.  And "some kind of office" - in the case of a headquarters for an American four star general - is not your typical storefront operation.  The minimal "footprint" for such a joint venture, with all branches of the US military represented, along with - atypically in the case of AFRICOM - a particularly strong diplomatic and development cadre, is several hundred people.

The operative question is not "bases" but intent.  Personally, I do not think that the US needs "bases" in Africa to accomplish the stated goals of AFRICOM

U.S. Africa Command will enable DOD to better focus its resources to support and enhance existing U.S. initiatives that help African nations, the African Union, and the regional economic communities succeed. It also provides African nations and regional organizations an integrated DOD coordination point to help address security and related needs.

My concern is strangely congruent with that of President Bush: that AFRICOM has become synonymous with America-in-Africa, so much so that it crowded out the other (civilian) initiatives that he wanted to highlight during his week-long trip.  If Bush has to stage his own Q & A at a press conference, it's because when African leaders hear "Bush" and "AFRICOM" in the same sentence, they think unilateralism, "with us or against us," preemptive strike, GWOT, and all the other initiatives of the last eight years.

A couple of weeks ago, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer addressed a conference on AFRICOM at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy.  Her remarks on timing and perspective are downright uncanny for a Bush Administration official:

From a public diplomacy perspective, it has generated mixed reactions from African elites and questions from American and international stakeholders where it should have sent a message of partnership that  was and is at the heart of our policy. Instead, it provoked fears of  militarization of American policy, fears resulting as much from images of Iraq as from anything actually communicated by AFRICOM.  Perhaps had AFRICOM been launched in 2002, before images of the war in Iraq flooded the airwaves, it would have happened without such a  negative reaction. Probably, in two or three years, this wave of hostility will have passed.

Indeed.  But Iraq is a reality, and so is Bush, until January 20, 2009.

With all the non-news from AFRICOM, we may be - as the Washington Post quoted J. Stephen Morrison, co-director of the Africa Program at CSIS, the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington - "in a quiet phase where they're trying to build up their credibility and their consultations."  Africa's message has been heard.

Day Of Reflection - "America Towns" And Their Impact Abroad

From yesterday's Marine Corps Times:

Curfew On All Personnel In Okinawa
The U.S. military will slap a curfew on all military personnel in Okinawa from 7:30 a.m. Wednesday following a series of recent incidents involving U.S. servicemen, such as an alleged rape of a Japanese junior high school student by a Marine, Japanese Foreign Ministry officials said late Tuesday.
U.S. Forces Japan also will designate Feb. 22 as a “Day of Reflection” for all U.S. military facilities in Japan while setting up a “Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Task Force” as part of its efforts to make sure similar incidents do not happen.

Readers may recall a similar incident in 1995, when US Marines were convicted of raping a 12 year old girl.  At the time, the incident almost caused the removal of the sprawling US camp; the commanding admiral was "retired" for making a very unhelpful comment that further inflamed local feelings.  See my review of Lt. Col. Mark Gillem's recent book, "America Town: Building the Outposts of Empire" for a full discussion of the impact of American bases on local cultures.

Consider this, next time you hear of Bush Administration plans for "enduring bases" or "Status Of Forces Agreements (SOFA)" for American troops in Iraq: if the rape of school girls can cause such a stir in Japan, what could it possibly do in a future Iraq?  SOFAs ensure American due process for military offenders, but do nothing to erase what many "host nations" feel as American encroachment on their sovereignty.  And how can you "negotiate" a SOFA when your armies occupy the other party's country?

Perhaps the United States should have its own "Day of Reflection" on how we want to interact with the world.  I suggest that it be on November 4, 2008, when Americans will get to choose their next president.  I hope it's a choice between "more of the same" and "change."

Hearts & Minds, Housing & Marriage: Making Moderate Muslims

Build Them (Apartments) And They Will Come

The two leading US dailies, the New York Times and the Washington Post, today have compelling and competing views of how to explain and counter the rise of Islamic extremism.  I would suggest beginning with the NYT. The six minute video segment "Marriage Beyond Reach: Generation Faithful: Stalled Lives" by Craig Duff and Michael Slackman says it all:

With the cost of building a life beyond their grasp, many in the Arab Middle East are delaying marriage, losing hope and often turning to religion for solace.

The NYT video report starts with a Cairo wedding, the kind the wealthy can enjoy.  We lived in Egypt (Alexandria, its metropolis on the Mediterranean) in the '80s, and were at a couple of weddings.  Great fun.  In the '90s, we lived in Algeria, before the serious fighting got started.  Along with a few other postings in the Arab world, these glimpses into two countries that gave birth to powerful Islamist movements (the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Islamic Salvation Front or "FIS" in Algeria) provide the background to my view of the pull of Islamic extremism: that it is born out of despair.

As in the NYT video, we knew lots of young Algerians or Egyptians who couldn't get married.  Simply because they couldn't afford housing, or no housing was available.  The young Egyptian in the video is a shop manager, and makes what is considered in Cairo a "decent" income.  But it's not enough to get his own place, which means he lives with his parents - probably squeezed between younger siblings.  He'd like to get married, just like the idle young men lining Algiers' streets.  They even have a name for them, "hittistes," a combination of French and Arabic meaning roughly "holding up a wall."  Unskilled.  Unemployed.  Unmarried.  Under the influence of... radical preachers.

In 2004, I returned to Algiers after an absence of 12 years.  The first thing that struck me was the ubiquitous construction - in a country where, in 1990, not one new building had gone up in Constantine, the third largest city, since the French departure in the early sixties.  In 2004 there were cranes everywhere, and working day and night on building sites - Chinese laborers, in a country with sky high unemployment.  But President Bouteflika had made a strategic decision, after a decade of violence: it was more important to build housing units fast (therefore with imported Chinese labor) than to build them with unskilled Algerian labor.  Such was the urgent need to give young people some hope.  In the NYT video, you'll see Dr. Hamdi Taha, whose charity tries to provide such hope to young Egyptian couples, with furniture and appliances.

In the early '90s in Algeria, just like current day Lebanon (where Hizbullah provided housing grants after the Israeli air war of 2006), it was the Islamist party that was seen as responsive to the basic needs of society.  That's why (like Hamas in the Palestinian parliamentary elections) the Islamist FIS won every freely contested election in Algeria in 1990 and 1991, before it was banned in an Army coup in early 1992.  After more than 100,000 deaths, the Algerian government saw the need to combat the lure of radical Islam with concrete (literally) measures: housing for young couples.

What The Muslim World Does Not Need: American "Ideological Infrastructure"

Contrast the bricks-and-mortar approach outlined above with the latest great idea coming from the banks of the Potomac: more propaganda.  Walter Pincus, in "Taking A Page From The Cold War," tells us that they're at it again:

"I think over time we're going to need to build that kind of infrastructure," [CIA Deputy Director for Intelligence John A.] Kringen told the House [Armed Services Committee] panel, "because many times, it's not going to be what the U.S. government per se says, but the kind of interactions that they have through other people."  [Acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center, in a speech Wednesday at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Michael] Leiter described the "global ideological engagement, referred to by some as the 'war of ideas,' " as "a key center of gravity in the battle against al-Qaeda, its associates and those that take inspiration from the group."

Kringen's "infrastructure" is not housing for young Arabs hoping to get married and raise kids: he's talking about aiding "non-government organizations, including intellectual publications, labor unions and student groups, sometimes providing secret financial support," as paraphrased by Pincus.

Bureaucrats with seemingly unlimited resources at their disposal can and do dream up all kinds of things to "highlight the poverty of extremist thought," as Leiter put it.  But how about this: scrap all the Pentagon's new "Strategic Communication" websites that target the Muslim world, transfer an equivalent amount to "Habitat For Humanity" and similar organizations that actually help people house themselves, and let - to use a good conservative approach - the "market take care of the rest."  Nothing is as simple as that, of course, but I would wager that dollars well spent in housing people would go much farther than yet more ill-conceived programs in the "war of ideas."

Dissing The Diplomats: Consider The Source

Updated 19:00 CET Sunday February 17.  See below*

Yahoo users today had this little item on their "Yahoo News" homepage: "Is US Diplomacy Being Shortchanged?" - originally in Time Magazine on Valentine's Day.  But it's no love letter to the American Foreign Service.  Author Brian Bennett's description of "tweedy diplomats" plying the "genteel diplomatic circuits" of the State Department or in the "separately-funded fiefdom of USAID" betrays his view of Foreign Service Officers.  So does his choice of sources: Manuel Miranda, described as a "former top congressional aide."  Writing of Miranda's departure from Iraq, Bennett says Miranda

blasted the State Department's performance there in a valedictory memo. "The Foreign Service is not competent to do the job that they have undertaken in Iraq," wrote Manuel Miranda, citing "an excuse-making culture," "willfully negligent if not criminal" management, a "built-in attention deficit disorder," and "information hoarding."

"Former top congressional aide" is one way to put it.  Here's another: disgraced former top congressional aide and hit man for Republican causes.  From the Washington Post of February 6, 2004 ("Frist Staffer Quits Over Judiciary Probe"):

The counsel on judicial nominations for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) has resigned in response to a probe of how Republican staff members gained access to Democratic computer files on President Bush's most controversial choices for the federal judiciary. Aides to Frist said the resignation of Manuel Miranda, who has been on leave pending outcome of the inquiry, was accepted last week and takes effect today.Miranda's resignation comes in the midst of an investigation by the Senate sergeant-at-arms, with help from the Secret Service and forensic experts, into whether GOP staffers improperly or perhaps illegally tapped into Democratic strategy memos on a computer server shared by Judiciary Committee members of both parties.

But since loyal Republicans can do no wrong (see: Scooter Libby; Donald Rumsfeld; etc. etc.), there's always useful work to be done.  In Iraq.  This is from Jeffrey Toobin in the December 3, 2007 New Yorker ("Where's Manny?")  The answer ...

... a couple of weeks ago, Miranda sent a group message to his old e-mail list that closed with his current title: “Director, Office of Legislative Statecraft, State Department, U.S. Embassy, Baghdad.” Say what?

“In August of 2005, I got an e-mail saying that the embassy had a need for someone with private-practice and government experience to work with the Iraqi Prime Minister’s legal office in developing its process for legislation,” Miranda said over the telephone the other day. It took a couple of months for the political appointment to come through, and Miranda needed additional time to receive security clearances and training, but he moved to Baghdad in January of last year and since then has been living in a trailer inside the Green Zone and working in Saddam Hussein’s old Republican palace. He is reluctant to say much about his precise duties in Iraq, but it seems that he advises the staff of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on how to prepare legislation for submission to parliament.

Guess Miranda got those "security clearances" (how does that happen, if you're being hunted by the Senate's Sergeant-at-Arms?).  So if you're ever wondering where the Iraqi PM's legal office got its ethical training, now you know.

Next time "Manny" complains about the Foreign Service and its "excuse-making culture," ask him what his excuse was for stealing Democratic staffers' emails.  When he complains about the State Department's "willfully negligent if not criminal" management, check with the Secret Service on its investigation into his questionable activities.  Check your sources, Yahoo and Time Magazine.

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*Update:

You know what they say about like minds.  Over at Whirled View, Pat Kushlis has written on this very subject today, and it is good.  She's done more research than me, and has actually looked at Miranda's 9 page complaint on how State is falling short in Iraq.  But on Miranda's proffered solutions, she hits hard:

The Foreign Service does not have agronomists, electricians, well-drillers, police trainers, or guerrilla fighters on staff. Nor should it. That is not what diplomacy is all about: diplomacy is all about relations between countries and their governments. It is not about running someone else’s government, society, economy, electrical or water systems. This is a form of post-colonial imperialism at its worst - and least effective.

Pat has focused on the major fallacy of the Bush Administration's (especially Condoleeza Rice's) pet notion of "transformational" or "expeditionary" diplomacy: to do this "post-conflict" nation-building stuff, you need conflicts.  Regimes to change.  And failed, broken states to mend.

But diplomats - as Pat says - don't run other people's countries.  The next administration is going to have to do lots of transforming of its own, starting within the US Government and its employees who have had a taste of "running" things in a Green Zone.  The next Secretary of State will have to perform some serious de-programming, and get diplomats back to their core business - maintaining relations with sovereign countries.  Keep the Mirandas back in Washington, where they can ply their dark arts of lobbying Americans.  And keep them away from the foreigners.

Development's Essential Ingredient: Women

Step One: Enlist The Women

The first time we lived in Brussels, some ten years ago, my colleague the US Consul phoned with an urgent request: could I help - that night - handle the arrival of a planeload of evacuees from Sierra Leone.  My bosses at the US Mission to NATO agreed to release me for what would become a week-long enterprise.  One plane was followed by another (charter flights returning to their home in Belgium), full of American-affiliated people.  The American "expats" were few; most of the passengers were kids born in the US, but raised in Africa.  Many of them were accompanied by young adult "relatives," though there were a few cases of people grabbing an "American" kid as a free ticket onto a US Marine helicopter.

During that week (at the time, I had not yet been to West Africa), I had an insight into what many increasingly see as the key to development: the role of women.  In that unused wing of Brussels airport set aside to "process" hundreds of evacuees, the young women stood out as having their act together.  The team assembled by the American embassy had almost nothing in the way of resources.  The most useful tool was the cell phone, still somewhat of a rare commodity.  The women were able to put in a call to a long-lost relative in New York, who contacted someone in Freetown... The next thing you know, the family had arranged for the flight on to the States of the stranded relatives.  Meanwhile, it is sad to say, many of the young men simply waited for one of us to assist them.  They were the last to leave, and all the "hard cases" (including a Nigerian escaped convict from an American prison!) were among that cohort.

Years later, when I organized seminars in West Africa, I saw women at work in professional/government positions.  While I wouldn't dismiss men wholesale, I would say that the presence of a woman in functions where deadlines and deliverables mattered was a definite plus.  In Nigeria, my organization's local "fixer" was one such woman, and her common sense intervention made things happen in a country where the usual answer is simply to throw money ("dash") at problems.

"Women Are Bankable"

So this morning's BBC World Service report on "World Business Review" made riveting listening.  Three development experts - Katherine Marshall of the World Bank, Hans Rosling of Gapminder, and Percy Barnevik of "Hand In Hand" - spent a half hour discussing how vital the role of women is in development.  Barnevik, whose organization has founded micro finance programs in India and elsewhere, was adamant: "women are bankable," whereas men are, well, not always reliable.  He recounted how an Indian regional official begged him to "do something for the men," and the result was - how shall I put it? - well short of the 99.6% payback rate that Hand In Hand records for their women entrepreneurs.

In many situations, micro finance might be susceptible to some of the same pressure that leads to corruption in macro development projects.  Barnevik, who in an earlier career built power plants in developing countries, said that it took 28 signatures (and 28 greasy palms) to proceed with a project in India.  His NGO Hand In Hand, instead of simply handing out micro loans, might therefore loan sewing machines, which are "under the corruption radar."

Katherine Marshall of the World Bank said that the "best return on investment" in terms of development education was schooling for girls, especially secondary school.  Think of that the next time you see a report from Afghanistan or Pakistan, where girls are lucky if they get to spend a few years in primary school before having a burkha thrown over them and being kept at home.  Think also of the importance - simple as it sounds - of having some sort of bathroom facilities in schools, so that girls experiencing menstruation won't have to choose between going to school or staying at home.

Step Three: Send In The (Women) Peace keepers

Another fascinating BBC (this time on TV's BBC World) program shown recently was "All Girl Squad," which chronicles an all-woman Indian contingent of peace keepers, recruited from top candidates in the Indian Army and police forces, sent to Liberia to train police women.

The women have several advantages over the men: they don't rape anyone, and they definitely can relate to the audience of Liberian women recruits.  The documentary shows the Indian women - many of them wives and mothers - during their pre-deployment training in India, then on the ground in Africa.  They aren't Amazons, but their matter of fact demeanor is impressive.  They do have some fun on Holi, the festival of colors, dousing each other with multicolored powder.  Most of the time, they work, then go back to their base and write letters, do the laundry, chat about home.

Not all male peace keepers are rapists, nor are all men incapable of handling micro credit.  But to me it is clear that development - and a whole lot more - won't go very far unless the half of humanity that is female plays its part.  Hillary Clinton was convinced that "It Takes a Village."  That may be so, but I'm convinced that it will take women to move the Third World into the Twenty First century.