In Honor of Martin Luther King Day, Reflections on his Nobel Acceptance Speech:

In Honor of Martin Luther King Day, Reflections on his Nobel Acceptance Speech: Today is Martin Luther King Day (formerly known in my adopted home state of Virginia as “Lee-Jackson-King Day” for Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Martin Luther King, a juxtaposition which I, as a transplanted northerner, always found morbidly amusing).  MLK Day is a banner day for the rule of law as we honor one of the great Americans who staked his life on the principles of human dignity, inherent worth, and justice for all.  

For most of us, when we recall the Reverend Dr. King’s message, we default to the famous “I have a Dream” speech that he gave during the March on Washington in August 1963.  Less familiar is the acceptance speech he gave when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.  It’s a shame, because King’s Nobel Acceptance Speech is no less compelling than “I have a dream,” and in light of current events, even more powerful and relevant.   In particular, as we consider the challenges to freedom of expression, religion, speech, and equality throughout the world, and the inherent problems of governmental corruption, oppression, and predation that lie at the heart of so many current conflicts, it is important to ponder these words (emphasis mine):

I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.

He went on to proclaim:

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. I believe that even amid today's mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow. I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men.  I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down men other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive good will proclaim the rule of the land. "And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid." I still believe that We Shall overcome!

This faith can give us courage to face the uncertainties of the future. It will give our tired feet new strength as we continue our forward stride toward the city of freedom. When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds and our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, we will know that we are living in the creative turmoil of a genuine civilization struggling to be born.

On December 10, 1964, the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King issued a call to action.  Today, as we celebrate his life, work, and legacy, I believe we owe it to ourselves to consider how each and every one of us intends to respond. 

Happy MLK Day!

*The full text of the Nobel Acceptance speech can be accessed at http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1964/king-acceptance_en.html.

**Lee-Jackson-King Day was celebrated in the Commonwealth of Virginia from 1984-2000.

Where Politics are personal, relationships matter

Where Politics are personal, relationships matter --   

Meeting with litigants outside an Afghan provincial court to gauge their reactions after a hearing

An online article on the upcoming turnover of diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul in Foreign Policy caught my attention this morning.  It talked about the fact that this summer, at a critical juncture in the U.S. relationship with the Afghan government, almost all of our diplomats with Afghan experience will be leaving, replaced by Foreign Service Officers who have little to no experience with the Afghan government.  This is a huge problem, and points to issues that I've been seeing in most post conflict environments -- the absence of continuity among development professionals and the inability of U.S. government officials to actively engage with their host nation counterparts.

Politics are personal everywhere you go, and especially in governments that are organized around tribal, familial, ethnic, and religious affiliations.  In these places, power sharing arrangements are negotiated between individuals based on relationships that are nearly impossible to discern from the outside.  There is a trust (and mistrust) component to every political deal.   As a result, to conduct effective development within the local context, it is essential that outside interveners get in and engage on an equally personal level.  One’s ability to influence the governance system is dependent on one’s ability to build a trust relationship with host nation counterparts.  Only then will they begin to share some of the hidden details of why things work the way they do, and what risks are involved if reform is to occur.  Close collaboration is everything, and if one is to be an effective adviser and development partner, one has to one must have the kind of nuanced understanding that can only be achieved through sustained presence and intelligent empathy. 

Unfortunately, there are several factors that are making this nearly impossible to achieve.  Personnel rotation policies favor quick-in/quick-out in order to mitigate the impact of separation and discomfort for our personnel abroad.  Within the military, deployment rotation cycles move key individuals in and out of a theater of operations in a matter of months, not years.  Within the civilian community, the problem is even worse.  Labor agreements ensure maximum consideration for working conditions, with minimal consideration for operational impact.  Furthermore, in the post-Benghazi environment, our tolerance for security risk is nil.  Embassy personnel are rarely allowed to leave protected compounds or headquarters unless security can be guaranteed.  The result is that we now have islands of diplomatic and development professionals who never see the reality of governance and rule of law in action in the countries that need effective development assistance the most.

I saw this firsthand when I returned to Afghanistan in January to conduct independent research on the future of the Afghan National Police.  I have been working on Afghanistan issues for five years and never before encountered so many key U.S. and international officials who were operating in a complete vacuum of personal experience and observation.  None of the individuals with whom I met had any meaningful contact with Afghan leaders on their “home turf.”  They had never seen an Afghan governing body in action, never seen a court in session, never observed police performance outside that of the customs and immigration officers at the international airport, and never had the opportunity to talk with Afghans who were trying to access justice or other government services.  And yet these were the people who were making policy recommendations, programming decisions, and evaluating resource strategies for development.  It was startling, and even a bit shocking.  The Afghan officials with whom I also met were aware of the problem, and resentful.  After all, they pointed out, they were the ones who suffer the impact of ill-conceived,  ill-informed, and poorly evaluated development.      

I understand the security and personnel concerns.  But the bottom line is that that governance and rule of law development is a participative and collaborative process.  If we say this is an important U.S. strategic objective, then our own bureaucratic decisions must enable relationship building and allow the necessary trust to be established.  Our personnel must accept inconvenience, separation, and assume a certain degree of intelligent risk, and they have to be empowered to do so.  If we’re unwilling or unable to build the relationships necessary to effectively engage in partnered development, then frankly, we might just as well go home.

Citizenship, Independence, and the Centrality of the Rule of law

Citizenship, Independence, and the Centrality of the Rule of law:  I had the great honor yesterday of attending the naturalization ceremony of a close personal friend who, more than 12 years after leaving her native Russia, was finally able to become an American citizen. If you've never witnessed a naturalization ceremony before, I highly recommend it. Set in the beautiful neo-classical courtroom of our local federal courthouse, it was an emotional experience for all of us.

There were more than 100 soon-to-be citizens in the room, and by the time half of them had stated their country of origin, I had lost count of where they were from – Afghanistan to Ethiopia, Canada, to Thailand, New Zealand, Peru, and all parts in between -- their diversity was amazing.

As a rule of law practitioner, I was struck by how central the rule of law is to the process. The materials on which our new citizens are examined before the process even began required them to learn the values that underpin the Constitution, our system of government accountability, the responsibilities that we, the governed and the governing, all share under the law, and the major decisions of the Supreme Court. The proceeding itself was a demonstration of the rule of law in the way it was conducted -- according to the law, with all of the reverence we accord to a court proceeding and under the watchful eye of a sitting federal judge and a certifying US attorney. Prospective citizens, having been fully vetted according to law, then swore their personal allegiance to the law not once, but five times in the Oath of Citizenship; “justice” as the underpinning to our liberty and freedom, was cited throughout. 

Afterwards, over celebratory glasses of wine and the last, local softshell crabs of the season, we talked about what it all meant, and how easy it is for those of us born into a society that values the rule of law to take it for granted. My friend’s husband remarked that in Russia during the Soviet times, they had a beautiful Constitution that guaranteed individual rights and liberties. But, he reflected, it was rarely followed and never enforced. We discussed the guarantee of religious freedom, and what a rare and important commodity that is. We talked about the opportunity that the law provides, when evenly enforced, for everyone to realize their individuality and potential. The pursuit of happiness, as the Judge had noted during the ceremony, is not some abstract good idea – it is a concept that can only be achieved when it is supported by law.

It was a beautiful reminder of why the rule of law matters so much to each and every one of us. So with that in mind, I want to wish everyone a happy 4th of July. We are so fortunate to live in a land where individual patriots were, and are, willing to sacrifice their lives and their fortunes for equality, justice, and the rule of law. It makes freedom possible and we need to value it more.

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.

Targeting Peacemakers in Afghanistan: Can the Afghans turn Tragedy into Victory for the Rule of Law?

Targeting Peacemakers in Afghanistan: Can the Afghans turn Tragedy into Victory for the Rule of Law? 

I had intended to close out the week by talking about the meaning of “community” and why it matters to rule of law developmental approaches, but my ideas were overtaken by yesterday’s events.  To summarize, three American medical personnel were killed outside of the hospital in Kabul where they were educating and assisting Afghans in general surgery, and child and maternal health.  http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/three-americans-slain-cure-hospital-kabul-n88376.

The story was breaking news when it was first reported, but by this morning, it was hard to find.  I had first seen it on NBC so I started there.  But I had to work my way through the human interest reporting from the local affiliate where one of the doctors was from to find the main story.  To see the Washington Post reporting, I had to type “Afghanistan” into the search engine because I could not find the story by clicking through any of the usual links.  I never did find it on cnn.com.  But enough about my internet woes.

The bottom line is that attacks on medical personnel, teachers, journalists, and other assorted aid workers have a huge impact on public perceptions about the rule of law in Afghanistan.  There are the obvious conclusions that everyone who works in conflict stabilization and counterinsurgency draws –attacks like these demonstrate that the government is not fully in control; they undermine public confidence and freedom of movement; they scare away international donors and foreign aid; they represent the conflict of ideas between factions and power structures, etc., etc.  All of these are important points and important discussions.  I get that.

There is a more human and less tangible dimension to the problem, however, and it is the one that always hits me hardest when I’m in an unstable environment working with people who are putting everything on the line to restore the rule of law.  These types of attacks are attacks on the peacemakers – and specifically the ones who serve as role models for ordinary people in extraordinary situations.  If governance is going to succeed, you need so-called “ordinary” people to buy into the possibility that rule of law is possible.  Why else would they try to play by the rules?  Role models, like the doctors who were killed yesterday, or Kimberly Motley, the high profile American female lawyer who has been litigating cases in the Afghan Court system since 2008 are really important; unlike many who are happy to comment from the sidelines of the green zone, these people get right in there with their Afghan counterparts.  Their participation and commitment demonstrates that Afghan systems can work.

If you think it’s difficult to measure the impact of that one person -- one peacemaker – can have, just stop for a moment and consider the web of relationships that are involved.  Knowing how things work in Kabul, I can make an educated guess that the Chicago doctor who was killed yesterday had daily influence on the following:  hospital security personal and his personal protection team; drivers, expediters and translators; hospital administrators; civil servants in the Ministry of Health and the nascent health care infrastructure of Afghanistan; medical students; fellow Afghan medical professionals; patients; and of course, patients’ families – which can be pretty extended in Afghanistan.  When you think about it in these terms, this one guy was an example of hope, progress and eventual normality to hundreds of people every single day he was there.  His presence and persistence said: “You can do this; you can build this; you will come through this difficult time and things will get better if you just stay the course and don’t give up.”

So what should happen next?  Is there a way to turn tragedy to triumph for the rule of law?  Being a glass-half-full kind of gal, I would say yes.  The Afghan government can, if it is committed to the rule of law, demonstrate clearly and unequivocally that attacks on peacemakers will not be tolerated.  This is a fairly straightforward criminal case (to the extent that murder cases are ever straightforward) so it presents an opportunity for the government to show that its criminal justice system can work.  To do so, the case needs to be treated as a murder, and not be allowed to be hijacked by the politics and jurisdictional minefields of insurgency. 

The international community should quietly, but forcefully put its support behind the Afghan criminal investigation, prosecution, and hopefully, incarceration.  The Minister of Interior needs to ensure that key personnel, to include the prosecutor and judges assigned to the case, are protected throughout.  The rights of the Afghan security guard who was arrested for the crime should be vigorously protected by the Afghan defense bar, and the Afghan government should publicize its compliance with its own constitutional protections.  

Afghan media reporting during the entire investigative and judicial process should also be protected and incentivized.   I still remember attending the first public criminal trial in Kuz Kunar District, in Eastern Afghanistan in 2011.  The actual case was a only minor stabbing that arose out of a dispute at the local bazaar, but 14 Afghan media outlets filmed the entire proceeding live and later re-broadcast it across the country to great impact.  That same kind of attention should be lavished on this incident and the message of national intolerance for these types of crimes should be clear.  I want to point out also that all of my recommendations are Afghan tasks.  This is not merely “putting an Afghan face” on a course of action.  It means that we as outsiders are firmly behind the Afghans’ own decisions and supportive of the Afghan's own activities.

Targeting peacemakers is a standard tactic when someone it trying to take down a government or weaken its influence and control.  Key to restoring trust, confidence, and hope, and neutralizing the impact, is how that government responds.  Out of this terrible tragedy, an opportunity exists for the government of Afghanistan to demonstrate that accountability matters, and peacemakers do as well.    Let’s hope it rises to the occasion. And in the meantime remember, in honor of those who gave all: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for theirs is the kingdom of God.”

If You Want Peace, Work for Justice: From Words into Action

If You Want Peace, Work for Justice: From Words into Action – I was struggling to decide what kind of rule of law theme I wanted to discuss during Easter because it seemed important to say something on one of the highest Holy Days of the year for Christians.  And then I thought about Pope John Paul’s message:  “If you want peace, work for justice,” or, as I used to hear when I was working in Colombia, “Si quieras la Paz; trabaja por la Justicia.”  (beautiful in Spanish!)

I have tried to live out my professional life according to this saying.  I learned early on that the desire for fundamental fairness is written on our hearts.  Even in the worst conflict environments, or amongst the most incorrigible individuals, when you peel back the layers, there is a sense of grievance and injustice that hasn’t been addressed.  All of the world’s great religions contain justice as one of their core themes, and throughout human history, we have struggled to balance our baser instincts with the knowledge that without justice, there is no peace.  And in my world, without the rule of law, there is not justice.

So I want to challenge us all – what are we each doing to foster justice in our own communities and work?  How are we addressing the grievances of those around us?  Are we demonstrating mercy, compassion, empathy, or are we just assuming injustice away and dismissing the hurts of some as less important than others?   Are we actively working to make peace, or are we satisfied with mere words?

If you want peace, work for justice -- make these more than words.