Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and the Joy of Being Able to Celebrate Our Freedom of Religion

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and the Joy of Being Able to Celebrate Our Freedom of Religion – First and foremost, I want to wish anyone who is reading this a very merry Christmas, and for my Jewish friends, a wonderful Hanukkah celebration.  It’s always special when the dates of these two holidays coincide as they do this year.  It makes my Christian family get-togethers with our close Russian friends who are practicing Jews all the more meaningful.  In fact, one of the things we celebrate with them is their ability to openly proclaim their religious heritage and belief.  It is something that they frequently talk about since they couldn't do that without fear of reprisal in Soviet Russia.  Discussing the current trends in Russia, they often express their fears of a return to a time of repression in their native country.

According to the Pew Research Foundation, more than a third of all countries in the world “severely restrict” religious practice.  The U.S. State Department reports that religious persecution is at an all time high, and “all around the world, individuals are subjected to discrimination, violence and abuse, perpetrated and sanctioned violence for simply exercising their faith, identifying with a certain religion, or choosing not to believe in a higher deity at all.”  We are watching entire religious communities in North Africa and the Middle East being all but eradicated.  And across the globe, religious minorities are under attack in every way possible – legally, socially, and mortally.  In sum, religious freedom is becoming increasingly precious.

I've lived and worked in some of these countries and can attest first hand to the chilling effect that religious repression has on individual expression, freedom of conscience, and freedom of choice.  It is no way to live.

It seems appropriate then to reflect on what we have in America –the ability to practice any religion we choose (or none at all), openly and without governmental prejudice.  I have little sympathy for the freedom from religion advocates that are so adamant about ensuring we limit outward displays of the religious nature of our holidays in public places.  I fear that in our zeal to be “inclusive,” with all of our deliberately neutral “happy holiday” greetings and carols, we forget just how special it is that we CAN say “Merry Christmas,” or “Happy Hanukkah,” or any other acknowledgement of the religious origins of a particular holiday or event.   So Merry Christmas everyone.  It’s what I’m celebrating and I’m happy to be able to proclaim it.  After all, why would we want to constrain ourselves when our very freedom to profess our chosen belief is so remarkable?

Corruption in Afghanistan – Does the Ghani Government Have a Chance?

Corruption in Afghanistan – Does the Ghani Government Have a Chance?

Michelle Hughes meeting with the Director of Criminal Investigation, Afghan National Police

I had the opportunity last week to speak at a NATO Building Integrity “Expert Consultation.”  NATO planners were trying to figure out the best way to target corruption in the Afghan National Security Forces during the coming year.  Resources will be scarce, access limited, and influence reduced with the security draw down.  So what, if anything, they asked, can be done?

For me, one of the great things about the consultation was that for the most part, the participants were true subject matter experts.  Here were people who had spent years on the ground, struggling to make sense of the Afghan government, the ISAF coalition, and international donor objectives.  Working with all of these very complex elements of the development puzzle, in an ever-shifting framework for cooperation and oversight, was a challenge that each person in the room understood all too well.  The insights and the discussions on what can and must be done in 2015 and beyond were genuinely insightful, and well-informed by experience. 

What struck me within the first hour of the consultation was the sad consensus that there had been a “magical window of opportunity” in Afghanistan from approximately 2009 – 2011, but that the international community had squandered it by focusing on quantity over quality, and short-term outputs over  long-term outcomes.  Accountability and oversight, and building the right capacity to ensure it, simply was not a priority.  We said that it was, but didn't mainstream the concept into our capacity building plans as a condition predicate to assistance; as an essential element of all other training, equipping, and advising we were doing; or as a “testable item” for senior leader performance.  As a result, anti-corruption took a backseat to other, more tangible and easily measured development activities.  The resultant Afghan perception was that corruption didn't matter that much to the international community after all.

So here we are.  Full responsibility for security has passed to a new Afghan government, but the capacity to oversee and control security force performance remains questionable.  International development and economic assistance is greatly reduced, but the Afghan economy is now hostage to entrenched corruption and graft.  Even with political will, the Afghans lack the technical capacity to detect, investigate, and successfully prosecute complex financial crimes and criminal networks.  After 12 years of police and justice sector development, the core competencies simply do not exist on a sufficient scale to even begin to tackle the problem.  Candidly (because I was there), the skills that are now needed were not even meaningful components of our police or prosecution development programs at the height of our assistance.  They were not seen as critical to the fight.

But they are critical to winning the war – the war that the new Ghani-Abdullah government must wage against corruption if it is to have any hope of legitimacy, economic growth, or sustainable security.  Anti-corruption may not have been a development priority before, but it has to become so now if Afghanistan is to survive.  If it isn't, then the Ghani government really doesn't stand a chance.