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.

Turmoil v. Freedom of Expression: Community Policing into the Fray

Turmoil v. Freedom of Expression:  Community Policing into the Fray -- Watching the spiraling violence that surrounded the protests in Ferguson, Missouri this week, I was reminded of a discussion that I had with a friend of mine from Freedom House (http://freedomhouse.org/  Look them up -- they do great work!) about the importance of freedom of assembly as a fundamental right.  We were talking about Burma (aka “Myanmar”) which frequently uses its Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Procession Law as a way to arrest and imprison political and human rights activists.  The Burmese Parliament amended the law in June, but the changes have been criticized as cosmetic, and Burmese police continue to arrest those who are protesting against government actions.  As my friend and I explored development options (how do you change a culture of repression and control?), we realized that we had a growing list of countries that have been unable to strike a balance between freedom of expression and the need to maintain public order and safety.  It further reminded me of the discussions that my French Gendarmerie Deputy and I used to have in Afghanistan about the balance between policing as a security function for the government, and policing as a tool to ensure that individual rights are protected and dissenting voices are heard.

With this in mind, I watched the escalating violence in Ferguson and its increasingly militarized policing response over the past four days.  Until last night, it appeared as though nothing short of calling out the National Guard was going to quell the unrest.  And then, into the fray, stepped Missouri State Police Captain Ronald Johnson, the highway patrol official appointed by the governor to take control.  Captain Johnson ordered troopers to remove their tear-gas masks, and in the early evening he accompanied several groups of protesters through the streets, clasping hands, listening to stories and marching alongside them.  It worked.  The situation deescalated, and news this morning showed residents and protesters hugging Captain Johnson, and applauding his community policing-centric approach.   

Not all protesters have peaceful intent, of course, and there are always bad actors who will use public assembly as an excuse to incite violence and other criminal activity.  Crowds frequently get out of hand  (Recall the pro-Palestinian protests in France recently, which led to attacks on Paris Synagogues and Jews.) and when I was in Afghanistan, military commanders frequently opined that community policing techniques were irrelevant given the level of violence and instability.  But community-centric approaches do work.  They remind the public that the police are a part of the fabric of the community and not merely the face of the government.  They validate individual concerns, and the importance of individual rights.  They allow voices to be heard and frustrations to be aired. 

There are important discussions ahead about the increasing militarization of police in America, and the ability of police to demilitarize in unstable or repressive regimes abroad.  But what events in Ferguson illustrate is that it’s not an either/or proposition.  Community policing is as relevant in high tension and conflict as it is in peace.  And regardless of context, it can and does work.

Federal Judge to Supreme Court: "STFU". Really?????

Federal Judge to Supreme Court: "STFU".  Really?????


It's a story that only a rule of law nerd would catch and pay attention to.  A sitting U.S. federal judge, angry about recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions regarding Obama Care and the requirement for corporations to provide coverage for, shall we say, "controversial" women's contraceptive services, blogs that the Supreme Court is causing more harm than good and needs to, in this judge's words, "just stfu." 


The underlying cases and controversies aren't what caught my attention.  (You can read the story at http://cnn.it/1ojSYz7)  What troubled me is that like it or not, the United States Supreme Court represents the highest judicial decision-making body in the land, and this lower court judge's public and juvenile reaction is the kind of thing that casts doubt on the legitimacy of one of our three branches of government on which we depend for rule of law in this country. 


The fact is that courts often get decisions wrong.  I spent nine years as a trial lawyer in federal court with a 90% win-loss rate, which is darn good.  But I still spent an uncomfortable amount of time trying to explain to my clients why a seemingly rational judge could irrationally gut my client's legally meritorious case.  Judges have opinions, agendas, and emotions; laws are often ambiguous, contradictory, or so poorly written that no one quite knows what they mean.  Sometimes, the evidence in a case just doesn't come out the way you think it should.  It's an iterative, incredibly imperfect process (Japanese internment, anyone?) but it is a process that reflects the U.S. Constitutional, legal, and political structure.  Disrespect it and you throw the legitimacy of the entire government into question. 


In the end, the only thing that really makes a justice system work is if the people who participate in it -- lawmakers, judges, lawyers, law enforcement officials, and litigants -- believe that it is legitimate and worth resorting to.  Otherwise, you have Somalia, or Syria, or Russia -- places where there is little confidence that anyone in the government is willing or able to do the right thing.  The legitimacy of the judicial system is more important than the legitimacy of an individual decision, because it's the system that enables enforceability.    


This federal judge, the stfu guy, knows that very well.  His own canon of judicial ethics mandates that he keep his opinions to himself in order to protect the legitimacy of the higher courts' decisions, which he will now be bound to apply.  For whatever reason, however, he's decided that he is now above the rules.   It's wrong and it's dangerous, and frankly, this particular judge needs to stfu.

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.

Branding “God” and Other Judicial Decisions – The flip side of the rule of law

Branding “God” and Other Judicial Decisions – The flip side of the rule of law:  Last week, I participated in a high level round table on strengthening national rule of law capacity.  It was an initiative of the Rule of Law for Development program run by Loyola University Chicago’s School of Law, and was hosted at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service.  The participants were fantastic – a select group representing Open Society, the World Bank, Millennium Challenge Corporation, Oxfam and the Council on Foreign Relations, among others. 

Everyone was in violent agreement on the importance of strengthening the rule of law in developing and transitioning States.  But they expressed increasing concern over the way in which nations are using “rule of law” to justify suppressing dissent, limiting transparency, and restricting individual freedoms such as free speech and freedom of religion. 

So it was in light of that discussion that I did my usual morning news scan, and the one that really caught my attention was a decision by the highest court in Malaysia that Christians cannot use the word, “Allah.” http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia-pacific/2014/06/top-malaysian-court-dismisses-allah-case-20146232448487953.html.  Had I not been thinking about the roundtable, I probably would have missed this story as it wasn't widely reported in the U.S.  But the more I read, the more it concerned me.

Basically, what happened is this: Christians in Malaysia have been using “Allah,” the Arabic word for God, in their Malay-language Bibles and other publications for basically as far back as anyone can remember.  And then in 2007, citing concerns about public order, the Malaysian Home Ministry threatened to revoke a Catholic newspaper’s license unless it stopped using the word.    An appeals court later decided that the newspaper had a constitutional right to use the word, and anti-Christian violence ensued.  The high court reversed the ruling.  Apparently, there is a risk of, for want of a better term, brand confusion when talking about God that might cause Muslims to think they can convert.  So Christians are prohibited from using it. 

To be fair to the ruling, the court is trying to clarify that the ban only applies to the newspaper, but the basis for that distinction is really unclear.  It’s arbitrary and has the effect of limiting freedom of the press in addition to limiting free speech -- and belief.  And (potentially) interfaith dialogue that may be important to conflict resolution in a religiously-pluralistic Muslim country that is, like so many others, experiencing increasing tension between religious groups.  Because how do you search for common ground if you aren't allowed to speak the same language or share the same words?

In cases like this one, upholding the rule of law means that the State protects individual rights, with even greater vigor than before, to make a demonstration that they matter.    The non-rule of law approach, disguised as "upholding the rule of law" because it comes out of a court, is to restrict individual rights because there is risk.  It's a balancing act, and Malaysia got it wrong.

Empathy and the Power of Conflict to Make Us Forget

I was traveling during the last four weeks, and it seems as though the world went to hell in a hand-basket while I was away.  Ukraine is getting more complicated, not less; the level of violence in Syria has reached a point where it's not even shocking us anymore; Kenya is spiraling into a level of instability and no one is seriously talking about it; Sudan doesn't even make the news, nor does anything else in Sub-Saharan Africa it seems; and now Iraq has imploded.  And of course, we've totally given up on the kidnapped Nigerian girls. (#bringbackourgirls was nice while it lasted.)  There are so many things I could say about each/all of these, and probably will at some point, but all I can think of today is this:

In each and every conflict, real people are involved.  They bleed.  They mourn.  They fear.  They pray.  They hope.  They suffer.  They die.  They see their lives explode in front of them, but can do nothing about it.  They worry over their children, and panic over their safety and their future.  They see everything they've ever dreamed of, worked for, or believed in go up in smoke.  They find themselves fighting disease, hunger, thirst, destitution, loss, chaos and despair -- all at the same time. 

Because the fact is that most people involved in a conflict are not really involved in the conflict.  They're just there.

Funny thing is, however, the bigger the conflict, the less we think about the human cost.  All this week, I've been following the news from Iraq, and then it hit me.  What is the one thing no one is talking about?  That's easy -- it's the impact this crisis is having on the hundreds of thousands of ordinary Iraqis who were, before now, just trying to live out their lives with some semblance of normalcy.  So just for a few minutes, let's take the time to empathize with them.  And then let's not forget.

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