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.

---

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.

Warning, this is not a thoughtful post. This is a cranky post.

In "Time for a Rethink?" praktike offers a review of positive comments and views from the liberal or "left" part of the American political universe on the encouraging signs of political change in the Middle East. Though he points out some of the continued weaknesses of the Bush Administration's policies, he calls on opponents of the neocon approach to Iraq to get behind those Bush policies we can support. Time to be constructive.

This is not a new theme for prak, and it's an approach I've consistently endorsed. I've advocated elsewhere that opponents of Bush's foreign policy nonetheless give vocal support to specific policies that are consistent with what we ourselves would be promoting if the Bush team weren't still running the show.

With those principles in mind, I have been supportive of the shifts being made gradually over the past six months by the military field commanders in both strategy and tactics. I have been supportive of the shift in approach which appears to have been adopted by the US embassy since the handover to the interim government at the end of June. My most recent endorsements of Bush policies have included supporting the Iraqi elections and the Administration's broad strategy toward Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. I have repeatedly cautioned against reproducing a domestic Vietnam-style polarization. To my way of thinking, an America polarized by foreign policy debates is a dangerous America for the rest of the world. But I have also vigorously opposed the disinformation campaigns that the Bush Administration waged as part of the presidential campaign or the gamesplaying with military budgets and force planning. So I want it understood that these comments are not an attack on prak's overall intentions which I share.

Two things have me seriously out of sorts. First -- and more on a personal level than anything I suppose -- I am quite resentful of the notion that somehow, as a vocal critic of the Bush policies regarding the invasion and occupation of Iraq, I have something to explain or apologize for. I don't think I'm misreading the subtext, even coming from those who aren't engaging in the recent rounds of "traitors on the left" triumphantalist hyperbole. The suggestion seems to be that if as critics we "can't admit we were wrong," we're being partisan or we're somehow not for democracy and freedom. That it's our lot to accept the "olive branch" offered by the David Adesniks of a bipartisan policy based on "democracy promotion." Gracious in defeat, don't you know.

Sorry, if there is an olive branch to be offered by the victorious, it should in point of fact be extending the other direction, from those of us who have long advocated policies that the Bush Admnistration is only now begining to adopt. I am eager to be magnanimous in victory, but it appears quite unlikely that my branch will even be acknowledged by the Administration's supporters, let alone accepted by a foreign policy team that's never made a mistake.

This brings me to my closely related second source of crankiness. The so-called "left" is being diverted by the unnecessary self-justifying squawks that have been coming out of the liberal hawks. Those who opposed the first Bush Administration shouldn't be wasting time squabbling on who was more right or more wrong about the war. They should be joining together now be saying to the new Bush team, "Glad you guys have finally come to your senses. Nice to have you back on board." We should be looking forward, trying to make sense of this post-Iraq world that's starting to emerge, to see what we think about the current Administration's priorities and policies as they are starting to take shape.

As I see it, the Bush Doctrine and the Iraq adventure have represented a severe dis-continuity in American foreign policy, and we're now returning to something approaching our normal balance. This is an idea that requires a much longer and more developed essay that's still rummaging around in my brain. For purposes of this discussion, let's simply focus on the issues of political change (not other elements of global politics like NATO or environment, trade etc).   more »

{update Jan 31 9:35PM EST} by nadezhda

This article was written in the hours just before the polls opened in Iraq on Sunday. Since then we've all been absorbing the remarkable, uplifting images of Iraqis by the millions -- of all ages, gender, ethnicity, faith -- celebrating in their "wedding finest" their hopes for their future, and with a degree of courage hard to fathom.

We still await the actual results of the Iraqis' historic exercise of their political voices - one which many of us around the world have long called for. Once the votes are counted, as I note in the article, we'll have a better sense of what possibilities face the Iraqis as they take their next steps toward self-governance.

While we wait the tally, there's been considerable reaction across the blogosphere. As the article indicates, I'm not surprised by the nature of most of that reaction, though I have to admit I'm sorely disappointed in many respects.

Where I can't say I'm disappointed, however, is that chez Nadezhda has been the beneficiary of some of that froth of blogospheric excitation, with links to this essay from a number of other blogs. We haven't been Instalanched, but we have been "Dispatched" and "Winded," among others. Thanks for the positive response, and our blogging service thanks you for the extra bandwidth fees!

praktike has an great roundup at Dean's Nation of some of the best responses to the elections (best from the viewpoint here at chez Nadezhda). The quotes he collects come from the center and center-left of the blogosphere. They reflect the best thinking of those whom Steve Clemons of the New America Foundation and Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy, describes today as one side of the new cleavage emerging in US foreign policy.

In a must-read essay in The Washington Note, Clemons explains that the main cleavage of post World War II foreign policy was between the realists and the liberal internationalists -- setting to one side the more strictly "anti-war" left and the "pull-up-the-castle-gates" right . As Steve points out, the dividing lines are now shifting. Those of us whose intuitions draw on the heritage of the post-WWII generation -- Truman democrats (small d) if you will -- find ourselves on the other side of an emerging and vocal alliance of neo-con "heavy" and "lite."

The relative scarcity in the blogosphere of loud responses from Truman democrats is a warning of how rare a bird we "pragmatic optimists" are in the blogosphere. Not surprisingly, I personally believe that's an important absence that needs to be redressed with more efforts like ours here at chez Nadezhda and Liberals against Terrorism.

{update: Jan 31 11:45AM EST} by nadezhda

Though we don't yet have the election results, there are some interesting initial takeaways. The always reliable Dan Darling outdoes himself with an indepth report on the insurgency and security issues surrounding the election, and what it may mean for the Zarqawi jihadists.

Zarqawi suffered an unqualified defeat today - one that he is not likely to soon recover from. Not only did he fail at his purported desire to derail the Iraqi vote, but he was unable to carry out anything resembling the kind of operations that his group has mounted in the past in either the Kurdish or the Shi'ite areas of the country. This was literally his "make or break" moment in the eyes of the al-Qaeda leadership and goes to show just how limited the insurgency is to a single geographic area of the country, only being able to launch attacks in other areas such as Irbil or Basra with extensive preparation and planning.

See "Iraqi Elections: Zarqawi Gambled -- and Lost."

{update: Jan 30 12:50AM EST} by nadezhda

Seems there's someone else who shares my suspicions of debating the metrics of success. Brad Plumer doesn't think much of any "armchair narrative we decide to impose tomorrow."

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{Article originally posted by nadezhda Jan 29 2005 4:00PM EST}

Some years ago I concluded that the common abbreviation for the United States of America -- US -- is all too apt. We have become a self-absorbed nation and society that defines everything in terms of "us."

In part, that's just human nature. Recently, however, we've displayed a bit more human nature than is altogether healthy. And rarely more so than in what passes for analysis in the run-up to the Iraqi elections. SuperBowlWeek has nothing on IraqiElectionWeek as a content-free zone of emotionally-charged vapidity.

The phenomenon is shared across the entire political spectrum, but the item that compelled me to the keyboard this morning came from Andrew Sullivan, who asks what the measure for "success" should be on Sunday.

I asked myself, is this like Howie asking Bradshaw during the pregame show -- if they beat the point spread can we also call the Patriots a dynasty?

I single Sullivan out merely as an illustration of our collective self-absorption -- on both left and right -- that produces such a profoundly wrong-headed perspective on the world. A self-absorbed worldview is a dangerous one in an interdependent world such as our own.    more »

[UPDATE 12-24-04] The best reformers turn crises into opportunities. That's what the Orange revolution has been attempting in Ukraine, and that's what Rami Khouri, executive editor of Beirut's Daily Star is calling for, although on a far less dramatic scale.

As has become official, with the release Wednesday of a statement by UNDP (see below), the third annual Arab Human Development Report will not be issued by the UNDP itself but rather by a to-be-created organization located in the region. Khouri is calling on regional business and intellectual leaders to see this as a great opportunity to put their money where their mouths have been all these years: take the initiative and establish a truly independent regional think-tank and civic action center to promote reforms in the region.

If the timing of press initiatives is indicative, such an institution is already in the works and is to be discussed seriously this weekend in Beirut. We'll now have to see whether those Arabs who hold themselves out as dedicated to true reform are ready to take what would be an important symbolic step.

But first, let's review the bidding. It seems that the third Arab Human Development Report, to be published under the auspices of UNDP and which is devoted to freedoms and good governance, has stirred a number of hornets nests. The first is with the US, which was reported, initially by Tom Friedman (see initial story below), to have objected to a portion of the report critical of US policies in Iraq and Israel, and was forcing a publication delay. Various denials and confirmations of Friedman's story (official and unofficial) have appeared in the press. The story has over time expanded to include reported opposition by Egypt and other countries.

As of three days ago, it seemed there is general consensus that UNDP will not be the official publisher of the new AHDR, and if it is published it will be issued by a to-be-established organization. According to AFP, the criticisms of the draft report come from a fairly wide group of governments, not only Egypt but especially countries in the Gulf.

The draft "includes serious elements and others that need correcting," Arab League Secretary General Amr Mussa told reporters Tuesday.

"There are problems preventing its release by the UNDP. We expect it to be issued by a third party," said Mussa, a former Egyptian foreign minister.

The Arabist Network has the transcript of an interview he conducted earlier this week with one of the principal authors of the report, Nader Fergany, as well as further perspective on the politics surrounding the issue of the first and second AHDRs.

And now Transitions Trends has the text of a press statement released by UNDP in which it denies that it is being threatened by the US government with withholding of funding if it issues the new AHDR. The text of the press statement needs to be read carefully, since it was clearly written with great care.

UNDP statement on Arab Human Development Report

New York, 22 December 2004—There have been numerous press reports in recent days concerning the Arab Human Development Report (AHDR), published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The AHDRs are the product of an independent editorial team of Arab scholars, policymakers and practitioners. As such they are not statements of UN or UNDP policy, although UNDP, according to its mandate, has been and remains involved in programmatic follow up to many of the recommendations contained in the report.

One of the strengths of the AHDRs has been their status as frank, independent analyses of the state of human development in the Arab world. Different countries, both within and outside the region, have warmly welcomed some of the recommendations and views in previous reports while raising objections to others. That has been part of the aim of the reports: to catalyse constructive debate about how best to promote human development in the region. While at different times concerns have been raised by some Governments about the content of the forthcoming report, no formal discussions on editorial content have taken place, no Government has asked for their suppression, and press reports that the US has threatened to cut future contributions to UNDP in relation to the upcoming report are inaccurate.

Nevertheless, any report coming out under UNDP’s name must meet the high standards of impartiality expected of a UN agency. Further, the difficult political climate in the region makes our principal motive – finding common ground around reform – difficult. UNDP has for some time been exploring the possibility of helping to create a new, independent centre, situated in the region, that could become the institutional home of an editorially independent AHDR going forward. This would provide full freedom for the authors to promote their views while institutionalizing the series of reports as a representative voice of Arab civil society. This has always been our end goal and is fully consistent with the central message of the AHDRs that successful reform needs to be driven from within the region. UNDP, along with other partners, would directly support such a centre and remain actively involved in following up on key recommendations in current and future reports. Consultations are currently being held in the region to agree on the best way forward. Following these discussions, UNDP will be able to provide further details on the publication of the forthcoming AHDR on Freedoms and Good Governance in Arab countries, which is now in final stages of preparation.

There follows my comments at Transition Trends regarding the UNDP press statement:

Many thanks for following up on this story we've been watching with great interest at Liberals Against Terrorism and chez Nadezhda.

The wording of UNDP's release is more than a little telling. The key words are "formal," "asked" and "threatened."

Pretty clearly the following has happened. US staff from State or another agency have expressed to UNDP the likelihood that, given the various sources of great displeasure with Kofi Annan and the UN expressed on Capitol Hill these days, the Arab Human Development Report would be the last straw, and a brouhaha of over-sized proportions would explode. Since the text would be critical of both the US gov't and the Israelis, the Bush Admin wouldn't be able to defend UNDP vigorously. Congress has already cut the US' contribution to UNDP in the past, and there are some folks in the key committees who would be happy to have the new AHDR as an excuse to make further highly-publicized major cuts.

UNDP has realized that they can't leave themselves and the AHDR of Arab reformers at the mercy of the US Congress every year, simply because Congress has the power of the purse over UNDP's funding.

Rather than issue the third AHDR now, and then clean up the political mess later, they've tentatively decided to use the third AHDR as the first "product" of a to-be-created regional institution that can take over the process of issuing new reports going forward.

UNDP has issued the press statement because this whole matter is in the process of escalating out of control. At the very least, US State Dept wants a statement out there because otherwise it appears that Richard Boucher and other officials have been lying when they've said they haven't insisted on changes or forced UNDP to delay publication. Boucher, when he says they'd like the thing issued and that the US policies on reform in the region benefit from the contents of the reports, is in fact telling the truth from the perspective of the State Dept. He can't very well say, "We'd like it issued, but Congress would have a tizzy fit" when it's his party that controls Congress.

The question for UNDP now is what type of institution to set up, where, who will "own" it, how will it continue to be funded (especially if it keeps taking on the regional governments, it's not as if the Arab League is going to sponsor the thing). Can another multilateral, such as the World Bank, take on an oversight/governance function to give it some international credibility and protect it from regional governments without running afoul of the US Congress. How much will UNDP "seed" the funding of the new institution, etc. beyond transferring its ownership rights to the current draft. Gets very, very complicated for them.

We'll be watching how this develops with great interest. Keep us posted if you learn anything further! Thanks again.

So now the ball has moved to the Arabs' court, and to mix sports, Rami Khouri says "it's showtime!"

Set up an independent Arab Human Development Center

For all those activists and reformers in the Arab world who have worked for years to promote democracy, civil society and political freedoms, this may be the moment to act decisively to promote their goals in a practical manner.
[...]
The irony is that this third AHDR, which is now ready for printing but is still being held up by UNDP until the diplomatic controversy is resolved, focuses on political freedoms in the Arab world - an issue that the U.S. government has pushed in the past three years with exuberance and militarism that have sometimes verged on hysteria. The report, which is written by respected Arab scholars and activists, represents precisely what the U.S. wants to see happening in this region - free-thinking Arabs analyzing their societies and proposing means to make them more free, democratic, pluralistic, accountable, transparent and happy all over.
[...]
So what does the Arab world do in the face of this difficult situation? The urgent aim must be two-fold: The Arab world itself must move quickly to prevent damage to UNDP's credibility and programs because of its courage in publishing the first two AHDRs, and, the Arab world must find a way to continue this series of useful reports and make them more effective as instruments of Arab modernization, reform and democratization. For in the final analysis, these reports are not about the U.S. or UNDP. They are about us, the people, societies, identities and power flows in the Arab world.
[...]
The most sensible option to do this would be to establish a new, independent, pan-Arab think tank - an Arab Human Development Center - in the Middle East that would publish this report and subsequent ones every year. The talent and policy-making direction for such a center would come from the group of respected Arab individuals that wrote the first three AHDRs.

The key element is finding funding for the new center, and this is where Arab activists and democrats must step forward quickly and decisively. It takes only about $1 million a year to produce and publish each report.

Activist, reform-minded, democratic and wealthy Arab businessmen and women should get on the phones with one another in the coming week, round up $5 million to fund a new Arab Human Development Center for its initial three years or so, publish the third AHDR on time in January 2005, and announce the next three reports that will come out in subsequent years. The fourth report is scheduled to focus on women and the gender deficit in the region (I would suggest that the fifth and sixth reports focus on youth, and civilian control of the military-security systems in the area).

An indigenous research center publishing the AHDR annually should also initiate other activities to promote pan-Arab reform, including publishing annual surveys of political, press and personal freedoms, annual reviews of Arab military vs. human development spending, educational quality, gender- and youth-related rights, and other elements of modernity and sustainable national development. Civil society and, in some cases, possibly some government institutions, might join forces to monitor trends in these key areas, diagnose persistent problems and constraints, propose reform policies, and generate the coalitions in society needed to implement such policies.

Arab private businesses and individual investors have earned tens of billions of dollars in profits in recent decades and it is time for them to repay their societies by funding an independent research institution for pan-Arab human development. All those reform-minded Arab businessmen and women who have spoken out so eloquently at reform-focused gatherings in Dubai, Sanaa, Alexandria, Doha, Beirut and Amman must now step forward and take this process to the next critical level: establishing an independent, indigenous Arab human development research center that would provide quality research as well as play a critical advocacy and monitoring role in Arab societies. It is time for Arabs to protect the Arab human development reports, and to bring them home.

It would seem that action on this should be forthcoming in fairly short order. According to the same AFP article, one of the principal authors of the report, Nur Farahat, a law professor at Zagazig University in Egypt, has confirmed that efforts are underway to ensure the AHDR's release in January.

Farahat supervised the drafting of the legal aspects of the document entitled "Towards Consolidating Freedom in the Arab World."

He said the report's authors and consultants would meet in Beirut Sunday and Monday to review final preparations for launching the document.

Rami Khouri's "call to arms" was reprinted the same day in a number of English-language newspapers in the region, laying the groundwork for an announcement of further steps to "bring the AHDR home."

The establishment of an independent reform research center that was "owned" by Arabs, not by an international agency, would be a terrific step,. It would certainly have added importance and its voice would be enhanced by being seen to have been established in opposition to the US. This would also help remove some of the reformers' current taint of too-close alignment with US policies. The principal worrisome note was that sounded by the Arab League General Secretary, who seemed to indicate that the report would need to respond to a wider collection of criticsms from regional governments.

If such an institution is to be truly effective, it will have to be seen to be independent not only from US influence but from regional governments; that makes its funding and governance structure of special importance. It remains to be seen whether independent action is truly possible by academic experts who depend for their livelihood on funding of their universities or institutions by governments in the region. That is why Khouri's call for funding to come from individuals and investors, not from governments, may ultimately determine whether this is an opportunity that is grasped or the cause of another in a long line of disappointments.

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[From Dec 21 2004] Maybe Tom Friedman isn't crazy after all! Or to be more precise, maybe his story about the Bush Admin sitting on the release of the UN's 2004 Arab Development Report wasn't just some particularly malicious and unfounded gossip he picked up from his buddies in Dubai.

The same day that praktike noted that Friedman seemed to be talking sense for once, there was a flurry out of which a State Department denial emerged. And that was the last I'd heard.

At the time, I'd assumed there was at least some smoke there -- that Friedman hadn't been totally suckered by someone why had virtually invented the tale from whole cloth, and that the US was in part responsible for the publication's delay. But I figured, given the complete denial from Boucher, that it must have been someone other than State (e.g. NSC) who was yanking the chains of the UN staff, and that State would straighten things out now the press was asking about the matter.

Well, Friedman may not have wanted to get into a slanging match with State over his sources, but someone else has picked up the baton. Rami Kouhri from the Daily Star -- who is generally pretty good on these sorts of things and who, BTW, was in Dubai at the same conference where Friedman picked up the UN story -- has the makings of a little expose in Tuesday's edition.

Democracy in the Middle East, but only on America's terms
U.S. anger over Arab development report threatens UNDP

Document describes impact of Israeli and American occupations on regional sentiment
[...]
Authoritative sources directly involved in the matter revealed that the U.S. State Department had accused the UNDP of publishing "false accusations" against the U.S. in the third report, which is finalized and ready for printing. The report has been held up since October due to this political problem. Last year the U.S. cut its funding of the UNDP by $12 million, to $89 million, making it clear that the cut reflected its displeasure with some of the contents of the Arab Human Development Report (AHDR).

UN officials believe that the report as it stands now is factual and fair. It has already been heavily edited to meet normal UN standards of fairness and accuracy, and in its present form it describes the impact of the Israel-Palestine and Iraq situations on sentiments and public opinion in the Middle East. The UN's dilemma is that it could never edit or change the text sufficiently to reflect Washington's view that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is "a man of peace" and that the American presence in Iraq is an act of "liberation," as one person involved in this matter noted privately. Yet publishing the report as it is would lead to a severe funding cut.

Options being explored now include suppressing the report (which would be a great blow to UNDP credibility), publishing the third AHDR in the name of the Arab writers and researchers who produced it, without the UNDP's name on it (which would effectively mean the end of the series of reports from the UNDP), or finding a way for this and future reports to be published by a third institution not linked to UNDP. Some UN officials fear that the U.S. could cut its entire budget contribution to UNDP in retaliation for the 3rd report being published in its present form.
[...]

Poor UNDP. No good deed goes unpunished. And the Bush Administration -- not only showing something less than a strong, principled commitment to free speech and opinion from Arab reformers, but also demonstrating a bit of recidivism on still-fresh pledges to not act unilaterally. Wonder whether that was on the agenda during the chats Kofi had with Colin and Condi the same day Richard Boucher was issuing fulsome denials.

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 »

Why is this man smiling? Because President Saparmurat Niyazov's ingenious election officials have invented a revolutionary approach to "Get Out the Vote" efforts. The bureaucrats in Ashgabat have set a new standard for "full service" -- in addition to handing out special gifts for voters who show up to vote, they even make house calls!

"Polling stations were nearly empty throughout Sunday's Parliament election in Turkmenistan, forcing officials to carry ballot boxes door to door. But the government announced a nearly 80-percent turnout in the former Soviet republic that is ruled by a one-time Communist boss who now is president-for-life."

That would certainly get around those pesky problems of long lines due to too few voting booths, provisional ballots tossed because they were cast at the wrong precinct, lost ballots showing up months later in warehouses, and troublesome e-voting or butterfly ballots. Karl Rove, eat your heart out!

Photo: Alexander Zemlianichenko, AP (File May 2000)

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 »

[UPDATE 12-15-04 8:00PM EST] Only 5 more hours left in the Friends of Iraq Blogger Challenge, which ends at midnite Pacific time.

Let's make sure Team Pajamahdeen breaks $5,000!

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The Spirit of America's Friends of Iraq Blogger Challenge closes at midnite Pacific time. So only a few more hours for the Pajamahdeen Team to secure some bragging rights and, more importantly, raise funds for the Viral Freedom project.
   more »

This is an update of the earlier post and comments about the the absurd Treasury regulations effectively banning works by authors from countries under US sanctions (e.g. Iran, Cuba, Sudan) from being published in the US. The regulations are being challenged in US court by Nobel Prize winner and Iranian human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi.

This article in the Seattle Times from Dec 8 provides fuller info and some clarification. Apparently it is possible to obtain an exemption via one's literary agent and publisher applying for a license to engage in the business of turning a manuscript into a published work. So in that sense, the regulations aren't quite as draconian as they initially appeared, although we are dealing with licensing speech, which is generally frowned upon in US law (she says in her mildest understatement).

According to the article, however, the situation is almost worse than originally presented. Treasury has for all intents and purposes overruled a legislative provision enacted several years ago to exempt publications from the application of the Trading with the Enemy Act. The system Treasury has come up with sounds like a catch-22 for political dissidents worthy of both Yosarian and the Red Queen. (HT folkbum at LiberalStreetFighter.com)

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Not an update exactly. But related.

The position of the US government on Iranian authors is especially repugnant in light of the situation in which dissident authors, especially journalists, are finding themselves today in Iran. US attempts to isolate the regime through restricting flow of information and ideas are unlikely to have any effect on the mullahs, will deny Americans the ability to understand and support those opposing the regime, and as often as not wind up limiting our ability to help them.

Iranian woman journalist freed on bail, hospitalised

TEHERAN (AFP) Dec 11 An Iranian woman arrested in a judicial crackdown on reformist journalists was freed on bail but needed hospital treatment due to her detention, her husband told AFP on Saturday.

According to Ahmad Beigloo, journalist Fereshteh Ghazi “was kept in solitary confinement for 38 days and had to be checked into hospital as she was not in a good physical or mental shape”.

The woman was arrested over her articles on women’s rights published on Internet sites. She was released on bail of 500 million rials (about 57,000 dollars).

In recent months, Iran’s hardline judiciary has arrested a number of pro-reform journalists accused of publishing propaganda against the regime, acting against national security, disturbing public opinion and insulting religious sanctities.

Four jailed reformist journalists, three of them recently released, have written letters of repentance, saying they were ”brainwashed” by foreigners and “counter-revolutionaries”.

Two weeks ago the European Union lodged a formal protest with Iranian authorities over the arrest and harassment of journalists, staff of non-governmental organizations and members of religious minorities.

To follow up on the "confessions," from AFP Dec 14:

Iran’s reformist government admitted yesterday that it was concerned over how the hardline judiciary managed to exact written apologies and confessions from several detained dissident journalists.

“People making statements that go against their convictions cannot win the confidence of public opinion and raise questions,” government spokesman Abdollah Ramazanzadeh told journalists.

Just because the neanderthal judiciary and their goons are beneath despicable doesn't mean we should punish Iranian authors. Nor, I should add, is it causus belli for going to war against those same neanderthals.

The December 2004 issue is now online. Looks fascinating. Its focus is on Arab media and how it relates to reform. In addition to a number of country-specific articles, it has statistics, regional trends of various sorts, and information on journalists and funding.

Insights and Analysis

• Shattering the "Politics of Silence:" Satellite Television Talk Shows and the Transformation of Arab Political Culture By Marc Lynch
  Arab satellite news stations represent one of the Middle East's most potent forces for reform.
• Arab Satellite Television: Can It Rise Above Spectacle? By Jon B. Alterman
  Pan-Arab satellite TV has brought more open political talk into studios, but not yet more open politics on the ground.
• Privatization Alone Will Not Loosen Arab Governments' Grip on Broadcasting By Naomi Sakr
  Until Arab broadcasting is independently regulated, aspiring independent broadcasters will face pressures from above and below.
• Cyber-Struggle: Islamist Websites versus the Egyptian State By Omayma Abdel-Latif
  Islamist websites are trying to break the state's monopoly over the political and social agenda.
• Washington and the Challenge of Arab Press Freedom By William A. Rugh
  It is no simple matter for the United States to apply its cherished press freedom principles in its Middle East policy.
• Iraq: Nightmare of Violence Dashes Hopes for a Free Press By Borzou Daragahi
  Iraqi journalists face dangers from the insurgency, U.S. forces, and the Iraqi interim government.
• Kurdish Media After the War By Maggy Zanger
  Kurdistan is the most secure and economically thriving place in Iraq, but the Kurdish media are slow to take advantage of the situation.
• Media Reform in Syria: A Door Ajar? By Ammar Abdulhamid
  The Syrian regime is tolerating limited expressions of dissent in the media, but will reformers take advantage of the new opening?
• Still Shooting the Messenger in Morocco By Aboubakr Jamai
  King Muhammad VI has displayed an ambivalent, sometimes hostile attitude toward Morocco's new independent press.
• Egypt: Political Films and the Politics of Filmmaking By Walter Armbrust
  The politics of Egyptian film reflect an often complex mix of internal and external forces for change.

News and Views

• Statistics on the Arab Media
  
• Trends in Media Law Reform
  
• Trends in New Arab Media
  
• A Snapshot of the Iraqi Media Scene
  
• Reports on Press Freedom in Arab Countries
  
• Private Broadcasting in Palestine
  
• Al Jazeera Initiatives
  
• New Journalists' Associations
  
• U.S. Funding for Arab Media
  
• Views from the Arab Press

Read On
A roundup of new writings on Arab media and reform.

The Arabic edition of this issue of the Arab Reform Bulletin will be available by December 22 at http://www.alwatan.com.kw/arb.