It’s rare that a major international organization will admit to the general failure of  foreign aid activities in fragile states but that’s exactly what the OECD  (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) ‘almost’ did when it reflected that:

The current ways of working in fragile states need serious improvement. Despite the significant investment and the commitments of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (2005) and the Accra Agenda for Action (2008), results and value for money have been modest. Transitioning out of fragility is long, political work that requires country leadership and ownership. Processes of political dialogue have often failed due to lack of trust, inclusiveness, and leadership. International partners can often bypass national interests and actors, providing aid in overly technocratic ways that underestimate the importance of harmonising with the national and local context, and support short-term results at the expense of medium- to long-term sustainable results brought about by building capacity and systems. A New Deal for engagement in fragile states is necessary.

At the 4th High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness held in Busan South Korea last November over 35 countries endorsed the New Deal proposal. This is what they agreed to:

- In 2012 the group will develop a set of Peacebuilding and Statebuilding Goals which will be used to track progress towards achievement of the Millenium Development Goals and other objectives.

- The group will focus on developing country-led initiatives to find the ways out of fragility.

- The donor countries will work in a more coordinated fashion and try to bring more accountability into the overall process.

All in all these are laudable goals. It remains to be seen whether they can be brought off the drawing board.

Michael Keating

Twitter: @mihailovitch

So what is a Tuareg? If you are like most of the world you might know Tuareg as a brand of SUV put out by Volkswagon. If you are a jewelry aficionado you might have seen or purchased some of their intricate silver and stone designs which are currently very much in vogue. If you are a world music lover you may listen to Tuareg musicians like Bambino, who performed last week in Portsmith, NH and before that in  Paris and elsewhere, or the group Tinariwen who are something of an international sensation and have performed with groups like Carlos Santa and TV On the Radio. If you are a French nuclear power plant operator you may know the Tuaregs as the people inconveniently living in the outback of Niger where France gets a great deal of its uranium from. If you are a Libyan you may know Tuaregs as mercenaries fighting on both sides of the recent rebellion. If you ever wondered where Timbuktu is, it’s right in the Tuareg catchment inside Mali and it is now part of the nascent Republic of Azawad which was declared last week by the political wing of National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad.

In short, Tuaregs are not very well known but here are a few facts about them. They are a non-Arabic nomadic Berber pastoralist tribespeople spread out across at least six African countries. For the most part they practice a very specific, non-fundamentalist form of Islam that allows a great deal of freedom for women and they have absolutely nothing in common with the folks at Al-Qaeda or any other Islamic sect intent on imposing their views on others. In the Malian conflict certain radical Islamic groups have sought to undermine or even co-opt Tuareg leadership and this has led to confusion and an inaccurate pairing of Tuareg political goals and radical Islamic jihad fantasies.

Most westerners are probably unaware that the Tuaregs have been fighting low-level insurgencies in  Niger and Mali for the past several decades and the events in Mali are a culmination of a long process of attempted negotiation, broken promises and attempts by successive regimes in Mali and Niger to smash Taureg resistance. Like the Kurds in the Middle East the Tuaregs have been marginalized and in some cases oppressed in each of the countries where they live and the attempt to establish an independent country for themselves in Mali should not necessarily be dismissed as either quixotic or without justifiable reasoning.

Michael Keating

Every once in awhile a news item really hits home. I just received this concerning my very good friend Mae Azango. I first met Mae in 2006 when she  came to UMass Boston as part of a contingent of journalists who were doing internships at various media outlets around town.

Since her stay at UMass Mae went on to be one of Liberia’s most famous and fearless journalists who took it as her mission to tell stories about the sufferings of ordinary people. Her coverage of the persistence of female genital mutilation in Liberia has obviously outraged supporters of the practice and we can only hope that she receives the full protection of the Liberian government. To its credit, the government has recently issued a statement in defense of Mae after public campaigns by the Committee to Protect journalists and Amnesty International,  but let’s hope they follow-up with decisive actions.

Another controversy riling Liberia this weeks concerns legislation targeting gays. Despite her recent Nobel Peace Prize, the President of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, has come down strong against the rights of homosexuals in Liberia saying, “we like ourselves just the way we are.” Check out this video exchange between the President and a very uncomfortable looking Tony Blair

Michael Keating

photo: New Narratives

It isn’t often that romantic comedy and economic sustainability show up on the same screen but that’s what’s on offer in Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by the Swedish director Lasse Halstrom.

Here are some thoughts from the perspective of development theory. They are not meant to spoil the fun, which this film truly is, but to just raise a few questions. (Attention! Spoiler alert!)

The project in question is a water management scheme in Yemen that will have the secondary benefit of providing recreation and tourism in the form of fly-fishing for salmon. All of this is the brain-child of a mysterious and fabulously wealthy fly-fishing fanatic with the somewhat unimaginative name of Sheik Muhammed (Amr Wakend). The  Sheik is also something of an Anglophile which might explain the several huge estates he has bought himself in Scotland to pursue his passion, as well as his interest in hiring Fred (Ewan McGregor), a U.K. Government Fisheries expert, and Harriet (Emily Blount) a private investment counselor to bring his brain-child to life.

So far the project is a public-private partnership writ large. The problem is that the Sheik lives in a country that has a lot of people who do not want western influences and probably resent his jet-setting life style. Despite warnings, the sheik pours tens of millions into the project only to see it disappear down the drainage ditch. Literally.

But this is where development theory comes into the script. After the large grandiose project is foiled by local politics, Fred and Harriet, who by this time have predictably become romantically entangled, vow to start over again (presumably with even more of the Sheik’s money) but this time to get ‘local buy-in’ and to get the locals to adopt the project ‘as their own.’ It’s not clear how this trio of idealists is going to overcome the deep political divisions that beset Yemen and it is also unlikely that they are going to get buy-in to a fly-fishing scheme from the well armed crew that upset their plans in the first place but in place of this skepticism, the film, through the words of Sheik Muhammed, asks us to have ‘faith’ that the project will succeed.

Despite the billions he has at his disposal to pursue an over-the-top life-style the Sheik, you see, is a deeply religious and philosophical man. For him fly-fishing is not so much a sport but a grand metaphor for the relation between man and the universe. His faith in the success of the project turns out to be much stronger than the forces aligned against it. Development projects fail not because they are ill conceived but because their authors simply do not have enough faith that they will succeed. In other words, they do not trust the universe.

In addition, we learn early on in the film not to jump to conclusions about specific countries and geographies. When he is presented with the project, Fred’s initial reaction is complete disbelief that it will work ‘because salmon need water and there isn’t any water in the desert!’ But as it turns out, this is a wrong assumption (but one probably shared by 99% of the people in the world when they think about Yemen.) We are told that this particular part of Yemen is different from the rest of the Arabian peninsula because it has a yearly rainy season and many underground water sources. Who knew?

The point that the filmmaker is trying to make is that we need to test our assumptions about people and places because much of what we have in our heads is simply wrong. Point well taken!

One of the other delights of the film is the performance by Kirsten Scott-Thomas as Patricia Maxwell the acerbic, Blackberry addicted  Press Officer for the British Prime Minister. Not interested in the social benefits of the project at all, she views the whole scheme simply as a ‘good story coming out of the Middle East’ that can offset all the dreary news coming from Iraq and Afghanistan. In this view, development assistance on the part of Western countries is simply a public-relations scheme that is intended to keep people’s minds off other things.

Since DFID, the UK’s well funded and very generous development agency, is not mentioned in the film (and as they would likely be involved in such a project in real life) it is fair to say that the film is a bit misleading in how development assistance really works. It is also unfair to the British tax-payer to suggest that their development assistance dollars are paying for little more than infomercials for British political ambitions.

As light entertainment, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen succeeds admirably. As an exploration of how development works in the real world it’s a bit fishy.

Sorry, I was just casting about for slippery end!

Michael Keating

The deals look great on paper. A large mining, energy or agriculture investor pulls into an impoverished country offering cash, jobs, schools,  and clinics. There is a ribbon-cutting ceremony where the President of the country and the Chief Executive of the company beam for the cameras, native dancers perform, and a long list of benefits are read out to the grateful populace.

Fast forward a few years however and the picture never looks as good as that day when the media caravan rolled into town.

In the developing country I am most familiar with, Liberia, that caravan has been rolling on a pretty consistent basis during the first term of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Communities throughout Liberia have seen the CEOs of iron ore, palm-oil, rubber, and more recently oil companies pull up in their Land Cruisers — or descend in their helicopters —  only to disappear once the ink is dry on the contract.

Thankfully researchers have followed up on some of these deals and the news is not always good. In a just published report entitled “Smell- No- Taste: The Impact of Foreign Direct Investment in Liberia,” researchers from the Center of International Conflict Resolution at Columbia University concluded that FDI deals in Liberia just aren’t working the way they were supposed to and are sowing the seeds for future conflict.

Here are the five main conclusions from the report:

1. The marginalization of indigenous communities during concession negotiations and project implementation has resulted in high tensions around a number of FDI projects. This tension has occasionally led to violence and other forms of social unrest, which could feasibly lead to conditions that might threaten peace in the country.

2. Compensation rates for loss of land and crops are outdated, low and inconsistently applied across concessions. Unless directly hired by the concessionaire, members of PACs (Project Affected Communities) experience little improvement to living standards as a result of FDI. In some cases, the shift in land use priorities are producing enhanced food insecurity for PACs.

3. Job creation and industrial economic diversification are challenged by the structural characteristics of the sectors, low human capacity levels and high energy costs. While FDI has produced jobs, they have so far not been of a scale that addresses the extremely high unemployment rate in the country, and it is difficult to imagine how this will change even when the projects become fully operational.

4. Government corruption and financial mismanagement have compromised the good intentions of concessionaire-financed Social Development Funds (SDFs) and contributed to a rising mood of distrust and hostility regarding some concessions.

5. Institutions lack the full ability to effectively monitor compliance of concession agreements and penalize infringements. A rush to sign new deals and fast track economic growth has overwhelmed the government’s ability to ensure that concessionaires act responsibly and are subjected to sound oversight.

There are certainly no quick fixes for issue of improving governance or reducing corruption but NGOs on the ground can do a better job of monitoring the situation  and bringing  issues like these to the attention of the media and to international human rights and humanitarian groups.

In Liberia most of the national media is in the capital Monrovia and they simply don’t have the funds to travel out to investigate the concession areas where abuses might be occurring or where promises are not being kept.

Assisting in building capacity for local watchdogs will be much more effective in the long-run than reports from foreign academics, but this report is certainly a useful and hard-hitting start to what hopefully will be an on-going process of discovery and reportage.

Michael Keating

Fascinating article about academic blogging from the London School of Economics. The authors believe that academic blogs are becoming indispensible tools for all fields of research and that blogging is the most effective way to draw attention to more established forms of academic presentation, i.e. journal articles, conference presentations.

There are several key points that the authors make:

1. Multi-author academic blogs are likely to be more successful because they guarantee a steady stream of content.
2. Blogs should have a clear focus on one or two topics so people know that’s where they should go for the latest on ‘topic x’.
3. Blogging should also be supported by tweeting and Facebook links.

Academic blogging gets your work and research out to a potentially massive audience at very, very low cost and relative amount of effort. With platforms like WordPress (which we use here), you can set up a blog and have your first article online in no more than 10 minutes. Recent research from the World Bank has shown that blogging about an academic article can lead to hundreds of new readers when before there were only a handful. Blogging in multi-author blogs is a great way to build knowledge of your work, to grow readership of useful articles and research reports, to build up citations, and to foster debate across academia, government, civil society and the public in general.

The recently concluded London Conference on Somalia is probably the most high profile that has been held for Somalia. As a Somali citizen I see a glimmer of hope for Somalia in the London Conference. It looks like the entire international community is acting together cohesively and that will hopefully eliminate the competition and division among the international community itself on the issue of Somalia. Fifty heads of state and representatives attended the conference; even the breakaway self-declared Somaliland was pressured to attend the conference by Britain. This is what really makes this conference different from the others before it. At past conferences there were too many doctors in the operating room, many of them were suspected by Somalis of operating with dirty knives,  but this time the world seemed to be united with one message. Today the people of Somalia celebrated the London Conference and in support of the London Conference they decorated the main roads of Mogadishu with Somali and British flags.

Thank you to mayor Tarzan of Mogadishu (a legal resident of the UK) who was also invited in the conference. This is the first time that the flag of a western country was decorated on the streets of Mogadishu in the last two decades and that shows trust. As Professor, Ken Menkhaus of Davidson College said this week, the London Conference is the subject of considerable anxiety, skepticism, and hope among Somalis. It is widely seen as a critical moment in Somalia’s long 20-year crisis, a meeting that could shape the direction of the country in the coming years, for better or for worse.

The goal of the London Conference seems attainable with the focus on piracy, famine and terrorism which is the number one concern for the West. Terrorism is also equally a concern for Somalis. Terrorism, lack of security and rule of law is what led to both the famine and the piracy in Somalia today. The international community and the Somali government should carefully focus on Al Shabaab which seems to be crumbling by the day. As requested by the Somali Prime Minster Dr. Abdiwali Ali, airstrikes should intensify. AMISON troops whose number was increased this week by the Security Council from 12,000 to 17,000 should also now be able to compound pressure on Al Shabaab who recently joined Al Qaeda. The Kenyans and their TFG ally forces in the South are moving very slowly and they should be pushed to move quicker and capture Kismanyo. This war is about winning the hearts and the minds of the people as no one can win the public with prolonged foreign occupation. It is essential that Ethiopia and Kenya help TFG forces fully quickly liberate Kismanyo,  Baydhabo and the other Al Shabaab strongholds  and withdraw rapidly after these cities fall under the TFG control which must get ready to fill the void. Keep in mind, the people of Somalia are tired of war, civilian casualties and the interventions of their neighbors especially Ethiopians.

The London Conference will bolster the security accomplishments and the momentum is likely to continue. The once feared Al Shabaab is now crippled to a point where the only option for them is to hit and run. With that being said, it’s an uncomfortable truth, but direct dialogue with groups like Al Shabaab is sometimes indispensable to reach a sustainable peace. And even if it turns out that dialogue gets us nowhere with Al Shabaab, talking and listening can help us to better understand how we can bring  some of the moderate ones on board. Al Shabaab recently joined Al Qaeda and that may create divisions within its ranks. For instance, there are reports that some members of the Al Shabaab leadership are  a bit more moderate than hardliners like Ahmed Godane,  who is the current Al Shabaab leader. Generally speaking, there are three groups of Al Shabaab.  Some are hardline,  the so-called irreconcilables (Godane and foreign jihadists fall in this category); the reconcilables (often showing a nationalistic agenda and a conciliatory tone) and the third are those who lie somewhere in between the  two. The Somali government will have no choice but to fight people like Godane and migrant foreign jihadists to the end but the TFG must initiate a negotiation effort that empowers Somali traditional elders to reach out to those Al Shabaab members who are willing to talk. The Somalis should recognize that military power alone cannot defeat  an insurgency; even the Americans are now talking to the Taliban in Afghanistan. We should talk to our young fighters and The International Community should also encourage this dialogue with Al Shabaab in order to reach a lasting peace in Somalia.

By: Saeed Aden

The Author is a fellow at the Center for Peace, Democracy and Development at the University of Massachusetts, Boston and is the Director of Global Peace Aid-Somalia.

2010/ AFP Photo

While the world of journalism mourns the death of journalists Marie Colvin and Anthony Shadid, reports out of France tell the extraordinary tale of a French Doctor, Jacques Beres, the 70-year old co-founder of Medecins Sans Frontieres who has smuggled himself into Homs to ‘witness and to heal.’

Like Colvin and Shadid, Dr. Beres is no stranger to war zones.

He has taken his black bag to Liberia, Bangladesh, Chad, Congo, Chechnya, Rwanda, Iraq, Sierra Leone, Lebanon,  and Palestine.

Although a founder of MSF he quickly ran afoul of management constraints as he preferred the action of the field to the paperwork of running an organization.

UPDATE ALERT!

Since we published this the New York Times has posted a more recent take on the reasons Dr. Beres was forced to leave Syria.

Michael Keating

Killers Sans Frontieres?

At first I thought it might be a joke or at least a painful oxymoron. “Killer” and “NGO” are generally not two words one usually finds in proximity. But when you read Col. Gary Anderson’s call for the establishment of Killer NGOs in today’s Foreign Policy magazine you may never think the same about the World Wildlife Fund again.

Anderson, a retired Marine Corp officer, says that citizens of the U.S. will never support wars against terrorists that require invasion forces the size of those that invaded Normandy. Instead he proposes the funding and establishment, in places like Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan, etc.  of small private armies that are made up of indigenous fighters, are well armed and trained, have a development component and are dedicated to eradicating terrorists organizations, yet another kind of NGO according to Anderson.

As their paymaster we will have control over them and if they go rogue then we can simply cut off their funding. Sounds simple, right?  Nothing can go wrong with a plan like that.

What distinguishes a Killer NGO from a plain old mercenary army or militia is their professionalism and their development arm. What distinguishes them from the national army of whichever country we are speaking of is their willingness to take on bad guys our way and not get involved in the complexities of local politics.

Personally I have a lot of problems with this kind of wordplay. It is hard enough for real NGOs to operate in these places without fear that they might be labelled a ‘killer’ by some crazed warlord. It is much better if the fighters and the healers keep a wall between themselves otherwise innocent people in conflict zones might not be able to get the help they need.

Besides we already have a global killer NGO. You can find it here.

Michael Keating

photo by: mritunjay