The Power of Poetry -- Culture and the Rule of Law

Discovering the beautiful legal documents at the National Archives of Afghanistan

The Power of Poetry -- Culture and the Rule of Law: When I was in Afghanistan as the rule of law adviser to the NATO police development mission, I had the opportunity to embed in Afghan police units as their senior commanders crisscrossed the country, inspecting checkpoints and police stations, and meeting with governors and community leaders. These trips were fraught with danger and discomfort. Being an American civilian woman embedded in an Afghan formation was not exactly normal, even for Afghanistan, but it was revealing.

I did it because in order to connect policing to governance, we had to understand what that relationship looked like: not to us, but to the Afghans.

What was surprising to me was how important history and culture were to the Afghan vision of the role of a modern police force. Hardened veterans of brutal wars and semi-literate in most cases, these were not men I thought would be concerned with the fine arts. But I was wrong. Their generals took great risks in order to introduce young police officers to historic sites, illuminated manuscripts, music, and the lore of the Silk Road. The Minister of Interior spent almost an hour inspecting rose gardens with me at a training center near Herat, asking my opinion of the landscaping and personally directing the planting of a particular flowering vine. The generals told me that it was important for their future leaders to understand the land and its people – they could not fairly enforce the law if they did not understand its cultural context and the values that lay behind it.  These were especially reflected, they explained, in their poetry, and in private conversations amongst themselves, they quoted both modern and ancient Persian poets, a lot.

Three years later, while in Kabul this past January, I had the privilege of visiting the National Archives of Afghanistan. The beauty of the miniature paintings depicting Persian fairy tales, illuminated texts, and gorgeous legal documents left me amazed and mystified. I had always been told by my rule of law development colleagues that the Afghans had no national legal tradition – that their law was all derived from the Holy Koran, and there was little else to build upon. But there in the archives and open to visitors, was evidence not only of 200 years of written law, but treasured, valued, embellished, poetic law. It was law as art and culture, just as the culture was embedded in the meaning behind it. The Afghans valued it. That was clear. But I and most of my colleagues had apparently missed that point.

So it was with great interest that I read about “I am the Beggar of the World: Landays from Contemporary Afghanistan.” This recently-published book contains the poetry of approximately 20 Afghan Pashtun women and promises to be a revelation. We in the international community have spent a lot of time talking about the legal status of women in Afghanistan and we've certainly spent a lot of time and resources talking TO them. But as a rule, we haven’t been reading their poems. We haven’t been looking at the way they perceive their own experience, as expressed in their art and culture. Now we can. We probably should have been doing so all along. http://www.amazon.com/Am-Beggar-World-Contemporary-Afghanistan/dp/0374191875?tag=vglnkc4576-20

Kidnapping in Nigeria and #bringbackourgirls – Are we missing the point? (Part 3)

Kidnapping in Nigeria and #bringbackourgirls – Are we missing the point? (Part 3):  

Now more than a month after the kidnapping, the crisis continues and so does the debate over the Nigerian response. Having conducted a “security summit” this weekend, western powers, Nigeria, and its neighbors are coordinating an intelligence-led, military response, and appear to be on the verge of declaring Boko Haram as an international terrorist organization. The Nigerian President has declared that the entire incident was an "al Qaeda-led operation.”

Is all this cooperation and attention a bad thing? No . . . unless it continues to divert attention from the underlying problem that empowers groups like Boko Haram – governance, or in this case, the lack thereof and Nigerian inability to enforce the rule of law.

The fact is that regardless how good the military is, when a country suffers from unabated crime, corruption, inequality, and governmental ineptitude, just to name a few of Nigeria’s shortcomings, then escalating insecurity will persist. This is not a problem with a military solution. Nigeria has credible military forces that are reasonably well trained and equipped (for the region) with a decent reputation as peacekeepers – outside of Nigeria. Within their own country, however, both the army and the police are routinely accused of major human rights violations; they are poorly and corruptly managed; and they are unresponsive to the security needs of the population. In sum, they are inadequately governed. No wonder they can’t mount a credible response.

But governance, to include security sector governance, can be improved if there is political will and a focused, comprehensive approach backed by internal and external oversight and robust public engagement. This kind of approach is difficult, complex, and long term, so unfortunately, it is not the direction in which things are going. Instead, the dialogue is defaulting to what we know and what we’re comfortable with –declaring war on Boko Haram and formulating a rapid military train, advise, and assist response. It won’t address the governance gap in the north; it won’t address the government’s disconnection with its own people; it won’t strengthen the Nigerians’ ability to criminalize the insurgency and enforce the law; and it doesn’t improve governance and accountability of Nigerian security forces. But it generates a lot of action, and that’s apparently going to have to be enough.

The Afghan National Police – Finding Their Way in 2015 and Beyond

The Afghan National Police – Finding Their Way in 2015 and Beyond: In honor of the publication of my Report for the US Institute for Peace on the Future of the Afghan National Police, (http://www.usip.org/publications/the-afghan-national-police-in-2015-and-beyond) I’m digressing a bit from Boko Haram and lessons not learned in Nigerian Security Sector Reform.

Anyone who’s ever heard me speak or worked with me on Afghanistan knows that I am somewhat bullish on the Afghans. Once, after traveling for several days through Taliban-controlled territory with a senior Afghan police commander, I reported that I thought he was as good a leader as any of our own NATO coalition generals. I recall the reaction from some in my organization was something along the lines of: “what would she know; she’s just some female civilian.” Well, as a former senior Army officer who has also worked as a civilian special advisor to more than 100 US and NATO flag and general officers, I think I know what strong leadership under great stress looks like. This particular Afghan police commander had all the right stuff and was doing all the right things. And he wasn’t the only one.

So I read with great interest this week that the Kabul Chief of Police announced a crackdown on tinted windows. http://www.tolonews.com/en/afghanistan/14872-kabul-police-push-ahead-with-tinted-window-ban. (We need to do this in my own city, btw – as a former prosecutor, I unfortunately know where all the open air drug markets are, and it’s amazing how the prevalence of dark tinted windows increases as you’re passing some of these areas.) Anyway, the Afghan Ministry of Interior has ordered the crackdown for security reasons, so of course, the politicians, whose vehicles tend to be deeply tinted, are the ones complaining. The Kabul police tried to enforce the ban once before without success. Now, however, the Afghan National Police have an Interior Minister who has shown considerable resolve; an order from the President himself to make it happen; and a growing confidence and pride among the police that I hadn’t seen in the past but observed during my latest trip to Kabul in January.  Because of these factors and others, the Kabul police may actually be able to pull this one off with minimal abuse of authority and some degree of effectiveness. If they do, it will be another small victory for the Afghan National Police and another step in the march toward Afghan-style rule of law. I’m pulling for them.

Kidnapping in Nigeria and #bringbackourgirls – Are we missing the point? (Part 2)

Kidnapping in Nigeria and #bringbackourgirls – Are we missing the point? (Part 2):

I said I was going to come back to this topic and talk about a few issues that struck me as a Rule of Law and Security Sector Reform practitioner. In the meantime, I've watched a lot of prominent politicians and policy makers comment on the situation, and the U.S. has now sent military and law enforcement assistance to Nigeria to help find the girls. Which is great, but it still doesn't get to the longer term issues of how to keep this from happening again.

So here’s the first question that arose in my mind when the story broke: You’re a government fighting an insurgency and one of the insurgents’ core ideas, embodied in their name (!), is, “western education is a sin.” Why then, aren't your security forces operating in the contested areas treating schools as critical governance infrastructure? Surely, from a messaging standpoint alone, the war of ideas makes schools a strategic asset. This in turn makes them a strategic target. And since you’re fighting an organization that has negatively extremist views on the value of women that run counter to those of the law of Nigeria, then shouldn't protecting girls’ schools be even more important to affirming governmental authority? Viewed through this lens, the question isn't, why didn't the Nigerian military respond to the calls for help. It should be: Why weren't they already near the school, providing heightened protection in the first place?

I’m dead serious about this. In security system analysis, experience tells you to look first at the threat, then at whether security and justice institutions are postured to address it. It would appear to me that in the case of the Nigerian security system, this fundamental analysis hasn't been done, or if it has, it was ignored. Security force preparation and posturing is about more than train and equip. It is about creating organizations and assets that can assess needs and vulnerabilities, and position themselves to address them accordingly. Clearly that didn't happen here, and hasn't happened in previous, less-publicized attacks on Nigerian schools and the women who attend them.

Kidnapping in Nigeria and #bringbackourgirls – Are we missing the point? (Part 1)

Kidnapping in Nigeria and #bringbackourgirls – Are we missing the point? (Part 1):  Several years ago, I met a Nigerian woman human rights activist.  We were both participating in an effort by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to codify best practices for Security Sector Reform, and I remember her not because she was so personable or experienced, because she was neither.   What she was, was angry.  She was angry with us – so-called Western do-gooders who, in her mind, presumed to know how to provide effective, targeted security and justice assistance in her country, but time and again, skated past the hard issues and left things worse than we found them, especially for women. 

The kidnapping of almost 300 girls by Boko Haram (aka “western education is a sin”) in Nigeria’s unstable north, has garnered world attention as well it should.  But even as we mobilize international pressure on the Nigerian government to find them, we need to ask how and why this happened in the first place and why the Nigerian response was so anemic and ineffective. 

In particular, if I look at the situation from a security sector reform (or “SSR”) perspective, what does it say about U.S. foreign assistance in Nigeria, and particularly security assistance?  Have we been putting the emphasis on the right things?  If I were doing an SSR assessment of Nigeria, there are a few issues that need to be looked at very hard.  And if I were a betting woman, I’d wager they are not the things that underpin current U.S. SSR-related activities.  So over the next few days, I want to think about some of these issues.  The girls are important.  But let’s not miss the larger point.  So are the ones who’ve been kidnapped before them, and so are the ones who may be in the future.  Stay with me for Part 2.