Recently I've been feeling bombarded by a strange and perhaps unholy alliance of George Bush and Condi Rice, Kofi Annan, Jacques Chirac and Lula, Tony Blair, Jeffrey Sachs, Bono and assorted denizens of the op-ed pages. Although each speaker or author has a preferred emphasis and a few code words for his or her target audience, they share a remarkably consistent vocabulary and program. "Freedom" is extolled as humanity's universal goal, and we are reminded of the urgent need to promote human dignity and protect the rights of the vulnerable (especially women). The march of freedom is then -- to one degree or another depending on the political agenda of the speaker or author -- combined with exhortations to make hunger and disease a thing of the past. And all claim that we must seize a unique moment of opportunity to change the globe in the 21st century.

Development -- economic and social as well as political -- is back in the spotlight, and not only in the Middle East. Although the international community is still reverberating from the Iraq invasion and its aftermath and continues to grapple with "what is terrorism" and Iranian nukes, for the moment security issues are not crowding out the rest of the international agenda. Significant discussions have already begun and are scheduled in the coming months on specific UN programs and reforms and G-8 initiatives. And as Paul Wolfowitz indicated when the World Bank's Board approved his nomination last week, the annual meetings of the Bretton Woods institutions this year are going to have a hefty set of issues of their own.

In self defense, I've started to try to make sense of the various viewpoints and proposals -- where they overlap, where they conflict -- and the political positions being taken by major donor and developing countries as well as the broader development community. I've begun plowing through a whole host of background papers, assessments, reports and so forth. I've still got a long ways to go -- just locating the organizations and websites that have relevant documentation, to say nothing of inventorying all of Sachs' productions, is an undertaking in itself. From my initial forays into the piles of e-docs, however, I already have some common reactions and concerns.

These concerns coalesced for me when I came across an article in the CS Monitor on the surprisingly large advances being made in reducing the incidence of female circumcision in Senegal. The specific progress is itself noteworthy and encouraging. But more compelling for me personally, the brief description of how this program has been able to make major headway, dealing with what has been an intractable issue, reminded me of some of the lessons I've learned from experience about what development is.

The "secret" of informed choice -- changing mentalities in Senegal

Tostan is a human rights agency in Senegal that seems to have found a magic formula for eradicating the practice of female circumscion or female genetal mutilation (FGM). Their secret: encouraging people to choose within a context of extensive education and support on human rights, womens' health, and economic development.

Mike Crawley of the CS Monitor describes the scope of the problem and the changes being seen in Senegal:

Excision of all or part of the female sexual organs before puberty has long been considered a prerequisite for marriage among many of the pastoral cultures immediately south of the Sahara and in the Horn of Africa. Despite growing awareness of the health risks, which can affect childbirth, parents continue carrying out the practice because they fear their daughters won't otherwise be able to find a husband.
[...]
Back in 1997, 13 Senegalese villages publicly declared that they would no longer permit female circumcision, or female genital mutilation (FGM) as it's called by critics. In the eight years since, the number has grown to 1,527, representing 30 percent of Senegalese communities where FGM has been practiced. Dozens more villages are preparing to make similar declarations in the coming months.

Campaigners have tried for decades to bring an end to FGM. But their tactics of providing alternative employment to the circumcisers, introducing alternative rites of passage for girls, or demanding legislation to outlaw the practice have all failed to make a dent: an estimated 2 million girls in about 26 African countries are circumcised every year.

Tostan, by contrast, doesn't focus on FGM but rather on the broader place of women and children within the promotion of health and economic development of the community. according to Molly Melching, the Texas-born director of Tostan who has lived in Senegal for more than two decades.

Once Tostan commences its program of health, human rights education, and economic development in a village, it typically takes two to three years before citizens decide that they want to abandon FGM, says Ms. Melching. The public declarations the villages make, amid vibrant celebrations with music, dancing, and speeches from elders and prominent citizens, generally contain other statements about respect for women's rights and children's education.

The declarations are also coming from places where Tostan staff have never set foot. Enthusiastic villagers are taking it upon themselves to talk to neighboring villages, causing the movement to spread even more quickly.
[...]
As more villages publicly announce that they are abandoning the practice, Tostan says others begin realizing it may no longer be a marriage requirement, momentum builds, and the number of villages following suit snowballs.

Change is accelerating, and spreading beyond the original areas of Senegal to other countries in the region, as the pressures of social conformity shift. Gerry Mackie, a professor at Notre Dame, sees the process as eventually reaching a "tipping point," after which change becomes the new norm. He sees an analogy to foot-binding in China, where the practice was virtually eliminated within a generation.

Change doesn't come easily or automatically, however. These changes are not perceived universally as positive, especially at the beginning. They represent real threats to social structures, to idenity, to livelihoods, to the very ability to survive to the extent that girls depends on marriagability in a near-subsistence economy. The changes must confront and overcome very strong fears. A great deal of patient work is required. Even concrete positive experiences don't bring rapid acceptance. Mike Crawley explains that Tostan has become, in some sense, a victim of its own success as its reputation becomes more widespread.

Particularly in northern Senegal where resistance to ending the practice remains strong, some villages have protested and rioted to dissuade the organization from doing any sort of work.

Here in Ker Simbara there was similar - albeit less heated - initial refusal to listen to visiting women from nearby Malicounda Bambara, the village where the first anti-FGM declaration was made, says Imam Demba Diawara. But the public declarations soon made the issue of excision "the talk of the town," he says.

The debate that ensued was a big shift from the previously secretive approach to the practice, says Ramata Sow, who staffs the local clinic and nursery. "No one talked about the health troubles before - it's a difficult subject," she says.

Ker Simbara eventually declared in 1999 that its citizens would no longer practice female circumcision. Ms. Sow's family illustrates the transformation. She circumcised her eldest daughter, but her two youngest, Sadio, 13, and Nabou, 7, and her granddaughter Duma, 2, are not circumcised.

"I will never do it again," she declares. "Things have changed."

The United Nations Childrens' Fund (UNICEF) is looking to Tostan as a model.

"The Tostan approach is working because it's a holistic approach, and it works with communities," says Lalla Toure, UNICEF's regional adviser for women's health. "The starting point is not female genital mutilation; it's about rights, it's about health, it's about development. We think that's the best approach."

Development at the "retail" level -- local ownership

Reading about the Tostan approach brought into focus what was bothering me about so much of what I'd been hearing from the promoters of freedom, human rights, the end of poverty, and global development. The implicit mental model behind so many of these strategies, challenges, initiatives and campaigns is that the world of the developed liberal democracies holds the keys to success. That postive development would result if "we" just got rid of the tyrants, or pushed harder for reforms, or gave more money, or were more "efficient" at planning and coordinating so that the money gets to the "right" people, (etc., etc., etc., as a certain King of Siam would say to his development adviser).

I don't want to suggest that the various "calls to action" are in themselves inappropriate or harmful. I believe strongly that development assistance is essential -- that indeed many countries or societies need an external push or a helping hand to break out of a host of circumstances in which they find themselves locked -- not just due to their history, culture or policies of their own devising but external condtitions beyond their control such as the "givens" of geography or the neighborhood they live in. The high-profile political initiatives are clearly the only way to draw media attention to critical global issues, and they are undoubtedly needed to mobilize attention, resources and action.

But I do think we risk doing considerable mischief, as well as failing to meet the high expectations being set by the politicians, if our mental model stays fixed at the "grand initiatives" level and doesn't start at the bottom with the individuals we are trying to help. We must be able to separate the "wholesale" function -- the critical role that central leadership must play in bringing issues to the fore and, during the brief moment the world is paying attention, mobiliizng political will and resource commitments for the future -- from the "retail" function -- the medium and long-term, patient support of emergent transformative processes that can't be sequenced or planned and that require decentralized, responsive, adaptable, highly flexible forms of assistance.

Focusing where "the rubber meets the road" has led development agencies to perhaps the most important lesson learned over the past decade or so -- the importance of "local ownership" of programs or initiatives to liberalize or create new political, economic and social structures. By "local" I don't t simply mean the head of the local government ministry. "Local" means truly engaging people who are actually going to be active in or affected by the initiatives or policies or projects. Because ultimately that's where meaningful, sustainable change occurs.

The developed liberal democracies can encourage positive change through providing resources -- ideas, know-how, experience, money, and sometimes security -- and cheerleading, the importance of which should not be underestimated. The developed countries and the international community more broadly can signal displeasure by withholding resources, expressingly loud disapproval, or putting assorted pressures on uncooperative regimes.

The development mantra must, however, be "it's their country, their society." That is certainly an important lesson from Tostan in Senegal. Similarly, the current political process in Iraq is reminding us daily that only the Iraqis can, in the final analysis, solve their own problems. We can make their job harder or easier; we can expand or limit the choices they have available. But only they can decide which of a multitude of competing objectives are their top priorities, and how to manage, for good or ill, the inevitable tradeoffs. Top-down, externally imposed development -- whether political, economic or social -- rarely works as well as expected, is only the first step of a long process, and is replete with unintended (often negative, sometimes positive) consequences. The same is often true within countries that attempt to impose top-down change.

Development at the "retail" level -- changing complex systems versus delivering projects

In addition to the need for "local ownership," the Tostan story highlights another important insight about the development process. First and foremost, political, economic and social development are changes of "mentality" -- shifts in attitudes, expectations and incentives that affect behavior. [see ftnt] Some of the most valuable outside interventions don't implement change directly. Their most powerful impact emerges from the ways they encourage a gradual erosion of mental prisons and give individuals a sense that they have more choices and more control over their own lives. To steal a phrase from Amartya Sen, it's "development as freedom."

Mental prisons constrain both imagination and action. They are constructed from a host of fears, anxieties, rigidities, and limits -- from fear of a dictator or of another ethnic group, from social conventions, from simple ignorance of alternatives, or from a sense of powerlessness that a society never rewards initiative or that opportunity is the privilege of a few. Each time we try to encourage positive change, we need to understand the nature of and connection among the constraints on both imagination and action -- and take them into account when we try to help. We also need to see something as seemingly simple as the political, economic and social development of a village as a complex system that is always changing, and our development interventions need to be continually adjusted and adapted to respond to those changes. That basic principle -- "mentality" is the primary means by which ongoing change of complex systems occurs -- is at play whether we're dealing with demands for fair elections, freedom of the press, the status of women, expanding economic activity, reforming the judiciary, AIDS, or access to clean drinking water. And that is the case whether changes in mentality occur at a glacial pace or are accelerated in response to some sort of exogenous shock.

This indirect, gradual, complex, "mentality"-based nature of the development process presents some real dilemmas for furnishing development assistance at the retail level. Clearly, "project design" is a major challenge if what we are dealing with are processes that depend on the interconnected effects of the unpredictable shifting of attitudes and behavior, which may not really be felt until "tipping points" are reached. Management "metrics," predictive models and accountability mechanisms are hard to apply to processes that lack a clear sequential logic or fail to demonstrate, at least at a project level, a close "causality" connection between specific inputs and outputs. Attempts to produce projects that can demonstrate to financial contributors (or members of Congress) "what I got for my money" may actually serve only to waste that money. Insistence on eliminating overlap or competing approaches may be faux efficiencies. Project selection is frequently more an art than a science -- the closest analogy I've found is to venture capital, where success is often as much a matter of betting on the right horse as on choosing the best business plan, and the number of "losers" far exceeds the number of "superperforming winners". Replicability and scalability are also, like VC, often a major challenge.

Yet simply because the transformation of "mentality" is too hard to control, measure or predict, and just because "results" may be only indirect and come years after a project completion report is filed, doesn't mean we can ignore it. Without putting mentality, incentives and behavior at the center of our understanding of development -- whether political, economic or social -- we risk wasting resources or, worse, violating the cardinal principle of development assistance, "first, do no harm."

Back to "wholesale"

The messy reality of the development process makes it difficult to communicate about development to the general public. I don't envy the "wholesalers" who have to imply that we have answers when the only thing we know for sure is that there are no easily duplicated recipes for success.

The "retail" issues are also hard to capture in stirring speeches that call the developed world to the glorious mission of making our inreasingly interconnected and interdependent globe a better place. And in a PowerPoint world, I won't hold George Bush or Kofi Annan to the details. I am encouraged that many recent speeches, even by US officials such as Condi Rice and Karen Hughes, are peppered with the code words that the development community uses when they talk about sustained, multifaceted engagement and complex systems, such as "partnership," "listening," "learning," "long-term," even "generations."

I'll just have to keep my "retail" principles in mind, with the switch on my hubris-detector in the "on" position, as I read the voluminous quantities of fine print.

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Note: I've chosen "mentality" because that is in fact the short-hand term most frequently used by clients with whom I've worked in developing financial and legal systems in a number of countries. It is truly striking how reformers, regardless of country, share the frustration that the true impact of changes they are tryiing to implement today will not be realized until a new generation emerges which isn't trapped in old ways of thinking. As I am using "mentality," it is shorthand intended to capture most of the elements development economists consider when they use the terms "incentives" and "institutions."

In The Elusive Quest for Growth, William Easterly's study of what development economists do and don't know about promoting growth, Easterly focuses on the importance of "incentives" to effective development, with which I wholeheartedly concur. I find, however, that "mentality" is more descriptive than "incentives" when going beyond the "growth conundrum" or the operations of specific economic institutions. When discussing development writ large, including political and social change, "mentality" more easily captures the importance of cultural worldviews and social and political expectations and conventions. The term "institutions" has become another important concept closely related to "incentives" in development economists' lingo, with the focus primarily on the creation or reform of formal political, legal and economic structures. Within the notion of "mentality," I am rather casually including "institutions" in their broader sense, including socially-shared "identity" factors such as religion, ethnicity and gender and informal social structures and conventions. That's not to suggest, however, that most aspects of social structures, attitudes and behavior that I'm including in "mentality" could not be expressed and analyzed in terms of incentives and instituitons. More on Easterly at a later date.

Thomas Ricks in today's Washington Post has a very interesting story about Rumsfeld's latest efforts to shake up the military establishment. His target: Civil Affairs.

The Army is engaged in a bureaucratic brawl with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld over how to organize troops for "nation-building," a growing problem for the military as it settles in for lengthy occupations in Iraq, Afghanistan and possibly other countries.

Rumsfeld wants to shift thousands of civil affairs troops from the Special Operations Command to the regular Army on the theory that the service needs to do better at security and stabilization. This comes as he is pushing other components of the elite Special Operations Command -- such as Navy SEALs and the Army Delta Force -- to focus on aggressive actions against terrorists and other missions.

Officers specializing in civil affairs -- which helps establish local governments in occupied areas, oversees humanitarian assistance and coordinates military activities with aid organizations -- say they oppose the move. They say many officers believe, based in part on their experience in Iraq, that regular combat commanders do not understand their work and do not know how to use them well.

I have been intending to write up a post in reaction to Dana Priest's book The Mission which I recently finished, and also tie in some of the observations made by Major Isiah Wilson in his report on civil-military planning in Iraq. That post, still only half-formed may have to wait indefinitely, with the start of classes soon (the Wilson report is about sixty pages and I don't know when I'll have a chance to sit down with it soon). Until it does materialize, this may serve in lieu of it.

Although Priest talks about the US Army's increasingly frequent service in nation-building, peacekeeping "operations other than war", she doesn't go into great detail about the structure of the military's civil affairs duties — perhaps because that role has often been assumed ad hoc by units deployed to Kosovo and elsewhere. If she mentioned that Civil Affairs was a subcommand of US Special Operations Command, I definitely missed it.

Previously I've thought that one answer to the issue of America's increasingly militarized nation-building mission — a role that, as Nadezhda (and Priest) argues, the military has traditionally been hesitant to embrace as a whole, despite admirable performances by those who serve in these missions — might be to somehow expand the concept of "joint" operations planning to include US civil institutions like State, the Justice Department (why do we train so many foreign soldiers, and so few police?), and so forth. Not having read the full Wilson report yet, I'm still not clear on just how operational war plans are made, but it's my impression that whatever influence these other non-military branches of government have on the campaign occurs more at the strategic (ie., the President and his Cabinet) level than the actual planning of the deployment and order of battle. The result is a situation where, as Wilson describes it (I have gotten this far), the armed forces defines its mission in strictly military terms and assumes that the responsibility for political, economic, and social reconstruction falls to someone else. In other words, Phase IV is somebody else's problem.

Reading this article, now I'm wondering if one good start might not be to go one better on Rumsfeld and actually make Civil Affairs Command its own independent command, with an independent institutional voice at the table alongside the regional CinC, SOCOM, and the others. As Ricks' piece notes, even though Civil Affairs is opposed to being subsumed under the regular army's command,

having civil affairs in Special Operations has never been a great fit, either. "We do not, after all, fit the mold of steely-eyed killers," [an officer] said. "We are supposed to be language and cultural experts."

No matter how much the Bush administration team may dislike it, the nation-building mission is not going away, and we will need a force structure capable of bearing that load. I think the dangers we face in Iraq today show some of the costs of going into "post-modern war" (to borrow Wilson's phrase) without adequate preparation for that Phase IV post-combat mission. Perhaps State under Condi Rice will develop into a strong voice for taking on that role, but I doubt it. Like it or not, given how much State has withered as an instrument of American policy when compared with our military forces, I think there has to be some effort to strengthen the standing of those soldiers devoted to the study of "operations other than war" within the US military if we're to see effects. In this, rather than going too far, I think Rumsfeld may not even be going far enough.

Edit - See also a parallel discussion at Tacitus, a somewhat related proposal on the subject of military reorganization at Belgravia Dispatch, and the Barnett briefing in comments.

This evening I was finally able to set aside the time to finish up Stephen Cohen's recent book The Idea of Pakistan. In this post I aim to summarize his key conclusions and in the process offer a review of the work.

As the title of this post suggests, The Idea of Pakistan is intended primarily as a guide to the political, social, and economic makeup of the country, its major political actors (the military, the Establishment, the Islamists), and the future trends and issues that the Pakistani and American leadership confront when making policy. Each of these topics are capable of sustaining multiple books of their own (and have), but Cohen's ability to provide a comprehensive briefing on each subject makes this a valuable introductory resource for readers new to the country. Since this information is presented categorically rather than chronologically, it can be at times difficult to hold all the factors operating at a particular point in time in your mind when reading on a different section, but Cohen compensates for this fairly well by starting off the book with an account of Pakistan's history from the struggles of Partition and the founding of the state to the coup that installed Pervez Musharraf in 1999, then going deeper in the subsequent chapters.

A well-balanced book (hey, this is the Brookings Institute we're talking about here), Cohen offers what are in my view key assessments on the following subjects (not, it should be noted, an exhaustive list):
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Awkward responses from the US, including at a State Dep't press briefing, re Musharraf's decision to retain his military position along with his presidential duties. From the view of democratic symbolism, certainly not a very positive step, and many are understandably suspicious. The following comment from an Outlook India Online recent thread is not atypical.

Musharraf, like Zia and other khakis who ruled Pakistan; is no better than any other tin pot dictator. He has perfecetd the art of attire according to the occassion. His military dress with all those "tamgas" when talking to Pkaistani public, and hand crafted suits -when abroad, makes for a topic in itself. This man can never be trusted.

Our friends at The Acorn put the matter a bit more elegantly in commenting on Dan Darling's recent Winds of Change.NET report on a conference he attended on Al Qaeda .

Dan does not cover Musharraf’s dealings with Pakistan’s jihadi outfits in detail — if he did, he would have found out that the jihadi groups are just one of the variables Musharraf controls to stay in power. In this context, Musharraf is not actually trying to distinguish between good and bad jihadis (for that distinction is invalid) but manoeuvering to do the barest minimum to keep that other variable (United States) from knocking him down. Pakistan’s military establishment has effective control over all al-Qaeda related jihadi groups as well as on their spiritual leaders, patrons and mentors.

The Waziristan operation was a wild-goose chase — the tribesmen did support al-Qaeda and bin Laden, but only slightly more passionately than millions of their compatriots. The most dangerous jihadi leaders, those who can shed the most light on al-Qaeda and its global operations, remain in Pakistan, free to go about their business as long as they keep their head down.

Osama bin Laden is Musharraf’s golden egg laying gander (to invoke the avian reference again), and the General knows all about that fable. As for those jihadi groups, they cannot even hope to subvert the Pakistani state. Musharraf is far more secure and is in far greater control of the situation that he would like the United States to believe.

And then there's the Pakistani domestic opposition to Musarraf. The circus of Benazir Bhutto's husband's release, rearrest and re-release over the past two days has underlined how tricky the "reconciliation process" may be. The rearrest followed Musharraf's announcement about going back on his promise to relinquish his military leadership post on December 31, which flies in the face of the position Bhutto's group has vigorously supported.

Zardari's re-arrest appeared to dim hopes of reconciliation between former Prime Minister Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party and Musharraf, a key ally of Washington in the war on terror.

However, some analysts said it might have been orchestrated by figures in the military government worried about losing influence should the reconciliation process move forward, rather than by Musharraf himself.

"It's to do with local ambitions and local politics," said newspaper editor and political commentator Najam Sethi. "I don't think Musharraf had a hand in that."

Bhutto herself appears to have taken a rather low-key and non-confrontational approach to the goings-on regarding her husband and re-emphasized the need for dialogue with Musharraf to achieve sustainable reconciliation.

Islamist opposition leaders, on the other hand, have called for nation-wide protests on January 1. From the FT and Reuters:

“Musharraf has become a security risk for the country,” said Qazi Hussain Ahmed, leader of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal ( MMA), the coalition of Islamic parties, speaking before a crowd of about 5,000 supporters who braved heavy rain to attend a protest gathering in Rawalpindi, a suburb of Islamabad. “The military dictatorship is the root of all our evils.”

Mr Ahmed announced a nationwide “black day” on January 1, when a series of protest meetings would be held in different cities. MMA officials said the coalition then planned to hold more frequent protests. Opinion was divided over how big a threat yesterday's announcement was to Gen Musharraf[...]

A focus on Musharraf's presidential role, however, while certainly merited, fails to look at the other side of Musharraf's equation. Syed Saleem Shahzad, bureau chief for AsiaTimesOnline, looks at what's going on within the Pakistani army. His report suggests why Musharraf believes he must retain titular as well as de facto control of the "only organized institution" in Pakistan -- and it's not just to ensure his personal safety from further assassination attempts. Shahzad may share The Acorn's view that Musharraf has more control over things than is conventional wisdom, but it's a control that remains vulnerable and will take quite a bit more time and initiatives by Musharraf to consolidate.

Musharraf has forced Pakistan's military into an abrupt and wrenching U-turn. If Pakistan is to modernize and moderate its internal politics, and become less of a disruptive force externally, remaking Pakistian's military certainly must be at the top of the list of critical tasks. And let's be realistic about the process. It's going to be difficult and often violent. If the military in Turkey was the, frequently brutal, force for secularization and internal modernization, Pakistan's military has been built for leadership in "Muslim renaissance and pan-Islamism" as part of a strategy of "political hegemony" in South-Central Asia.

Shahzad sees it as a matter of "Purging Pakistan's jihadi legacy:"   more »

Did the last pretense of democracy in Russia just drop away?

More Russian fun here.

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[UPDATE] by nadezhda

At first I thought that Dec 17 in Russia must be like April Fools Day in the US, because if it's a send-up it's a great one. But I don't think so. Can you imagine what these guys could do with Michael Powell's powers to fine broadcasters!?!   more »

Ok, the election is done with, I'm already tired of debating how the Democrats should be reaching out to disaffected red staters — though for what it's worth, I think elrod in the Tacitus diaries has a pretty good premise for that, together with Mark Schmitt (see his entry after that too). Best of luck to the party as it rights itself and all that but any hopes that I might personally make some contribution to bridging the red state-blue state divide is pretty well wiped out by the fact that I'm still an elitist godless secular-humanist liberal even when I'm back home in Indiana, so I don't help much with the emerging consensus that we need to do some work on our collective brand image. But that's all beside the point! The point is I want to blog about something else right now, that ended up getting shelved until after the election like so much else.

I took Praktike's recommendation from a week or so ago and watched Frontline's piece on Rumsfeld's War. It really was a fascinating program to watch, and a complex one too since a lot of different threads seem to be at work: the title is somewhat deceptive because there are actually quite a few conflicts surrounding the Secretary of Defense presented within the program, any single one of which could probably merit a whole program of its own.   more »

Major provincial conflicts involving Muslims and majority ethnic or religious groups are hitting the news once again in Asia. This time in China. Martial law has been imposed in a rural portion of the central province of Henan after four days of ethnic clashes.

The fighting was between farmers of the country's ethnic Han majority and the Muslim Hui minority living in neighboring villages, as well as thousands of military police sent in to restore order. It appeared to be among the worst incidents of ethnic violence known to have taken place in China in recent years.

The latest unrest followed a clash this summer in a nearby village in which police fired rubber bullets at farmers protesting land seizures and anti-government rioting two weeks ago in the western city of Chongqing. The Henan fighting served as a stark reminder of the varied tensions tearing at this vast nation as it undergoes rapid social and economic change.

The situation in Thailand is becoming increasingly tense. As David Fulbrook writes in the Asia Times:

Thailand's own September 11 may be moving closer, accelerated by the government's tough but inept policy that is alienating moderate Muslims in the deep south, possibly opening the door to foreign hands. A brutal response by disgruntled Muslims to last week's carnage [the death of 78 Muslims detained in connection with riots] would severely test relations with Buddhist Thailand and Muslim-majority neighbors Indonesia and Malaysia, potentially fracturing the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

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Although Senator Kerry deserves to be excoriated for allowing himself to be politically pressured into semi-supporting invasion with a force authorization vote, invading Iraq was nowhere near the political radar screen until Bush gave his disastrous Axis of Evil speech, the speech that set the wrong course for his Presidency and should set your lever-pulling course on Tuesday. The decision to invade and conquer Iraq was and is entirely the property of George W. Bush. It was probably the most disastrous foreign policy decision in our nation's history, and its author should not be given the opportunity to strike again.   more »

I found the article I think I mentioned earlier by Professor Haqqani on the madrassa movement from an issue of Foreign Affairs; I'll share and reccomend it here as well.

In a basement room with plasterless walls adorned by a clock inscribed with "God is Great" in Arabic, 9-year-old Mohammed Tahir rocked back and forth and recited the same verse of the Koran that had been instilled into my memory at the same age: "Of all the communities raised among men you are the best, enjoining the good, forbidding the wrong, and believing in God." But when I asked him to explain how he understands the passage, Tahir's interpretation was quite different from the quietist version taught to me. "The Muslim community of believers is the best in the eyes of God, and we must make it the same in the eyes of men by force," he said. "We must fight the unbelievers and that includes those who carry Muslim names but have adopted the ways of unbelievers. When I grow up I intend to carry out jihad in every possible way." Tahir does not believe that al Qaeda is responsible for September 11 because his teachers have told him that the attacks were a conspiracy by Jews against the Taliban. He also considers Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden great Muslims, "for challenging the might of the unbelievers." ...

Muslim states are now calling upon Western governments to support madrasa reform through financial aid. The proposed recipe for reform is to add contemporary subjects alongside the traditional religious sciences in madrasa curriculum. But Madrasas will probably survive these reform efforts, just as they survived the introduction of Western education during colonial rule. Can learning science and math, for example, change the worldview shaped by a theology of conformity? I asked Tahir if he is interested in learning math. He said, "In hadith there are many references to how many times Allah has multiplied the reward of jihad. If I knew how to multiply, I would be able to calculate the reward I will earn in the hereafter."

As I said in my comments on the Tactius thread (cross-posting my comments below) where I first excerpted this: we continue to ignore this at our own peril.

A high-minded review of Cairo's Azhar Park, the new green space that is just out of view in this photo of mine. Now I understand what my guide at the Blue Mosque was trying to tell me.

While a park is certainly superior to a garbage dump, my hunch is that the park itself isn't going to be the kind of revitalizing influence that its designers intended it to be. Across a major thoroughfare, atop a hill and surrounded by walls, it isn't connected to the fabric of the neighborhood at all. The history of urban design is littered with the detritus of grandiose but ultimately inhuman monuments to the ego of the designer. It's the people, stupid! (And the connectivity) What's more, it isn't catered to the needs of the residents, who would probably greatly prefer soccer fields to formal gardens. Nor does there seem to be a plan for the type of development spillover that such urban parks are usually designed to generate. My old prof, Alexander Garvin, would raise his elfin eyebrows at the missed opportunity. Vincent Scully would bemoan the inhumanity of it all, and mumble something uplifting about the ancient Greeks. And David Sucher, if he weren't such a mild-mannered fellow, would have a conniption.

Far more beneficial than the park, I think, are the kinds of community building activities being undertaken by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture--training locals to renovate and upgrade their own neighborhood, educating them about the rich architectural and cultural heritage of Islamic Cairo, involving them in the revitalization process. The architectural visitor's center is an overdue idea; hopefully it will be a meeting point for tourists and interested residents alike.

All of which, of course, the Times reporter Nicolai Ouroussoff is saying in the article, but in a fancier way.

UPDATE: [2:10 PM 10/25/04] by praktike: Thoughts on the park from "Hellme," one of the few Egyptian bloggers I've come across:

The first thing that comes to mind is the question of how long it will take the locals to ruin the new Agha Khan Azhar Gardens (eloquently covered in this article). Knowing Egyptians, and knowing the flood of people that decend on the Giza Zoo whenever the weather allows or during public holidays, I have a haunting suspicion that Al Azhar's garden's - a multimillion project that demands as much attention as the Alexandria Bibliotheca - will wither away and die, and become a distant remnant of what Cairo could be, but isn't. I also wonder whether I'm just being obtusely pessimistic without cause.

Cheerio.