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Will Pakistan follow Egypt?

 Gleaned from Patricia Lee Sharpe's mailbox: an Op-Ed by Zubeida Mustafa in Dawn (Karachi)  February 23, 2011.

The question above is agitating many minds today. If we believe in the domino effect, other states should follow suit. Egypt came after Tunisia and now there are rumblings in other parts of the Arab world.

I tried to look for the answer to this explosive question in the poem Fahmida Riaz recited at the Critical Discourse session of the Sindh Education Foundation recently.

Here Fahmida Riaz spoke on the Urdu dictionary published last year by the Urdu Dictionary Board of which she is director. This 22-volume publication is no ordinary work of lexicography. In Fahmida’s words, “it actually traces the history of our civilisation, being a discourse on 1,000 years of our culture, tradition and customs”. Containing approximately 254,074 head words, it took 51 years to complete when the first Oxford English Dictionary was compiled in 70 years and had 414,825 entries.

Described very simply yet eloquently in the invitation as “a poet, feminist, human rights activist”, Fahmida Riaz, gave an insightful talk on her team’s experience of compiling the Urdu dictionary. The animated discussion that followed made it a wide-ranging dialogue on the Urdu language.

It was her poem that she recited at the meeting that was thought-provoking in the context of Egypt. It shed ample light on our national psyche as it has evolved over the centuries. The fact is that the people who stage revolutions — it is still too early to say how much will change in the land of the pharaohs — should have the capacity for collective action of the kind that was witnessed in Cairo.

The first attribute that distinguishes the Muslims of the subcontinent from others is our innate desire to cling to what we have conventionally believed. Even when we discover that our belief is flawed, we do not let it go. Fahmida described this national weakness succinctly when she narrated her experience of researching the roots of various words. She found it disquieting when her team discovered that the word ‘ababeel’ which figures in the Holy Quran is not the name of a bird as many of us have believed all along. To her utter surprise she learnt there is no bird by that name in Arabic. ‘Beel’, a collective noun, stands for a flock of birds.

Drawing an analogy with our tendency to reject what negates our own popular perceptions, she says it is essential for one to uncover the truth howsoever unpleasant it might be. These lines from her poem say it all:

Banatay hain hum ek farhang-i-nau/ Jis mein har lafz ke saamnay darj hain/ Wo muanee jo hum ko nahin hain pasand’. (Know that we seek to bring forth a new lexicon where each entry contains meanings we frowned upon.)

The other quality that would disqualify us from an Egypt-like revolution is the exclusivity displayed by those who would be expected to spearhead the process of change in society and the political dispensation. Fahmida dwelt at length on this concern when I met her later. She is pained by how supremacism has penetrated deep into our soul. This has its roots in the overblown distant memories we still cherish of the great Muslim empires of yore. “But the fact is that there was a lot of diversity in those empires which also included non-Muslims in their fold,” Fahmida reminded me.

The need for us is to adopt an inclusive approach and acknowledge the greatness of others as well — even the non-Muslims. When Muslim societies embraced diversity and plurality they flourished. When we abandoned this quality of acceptance of the ‘other’ living in our midst, our society went into a state of stagnation. This is how she puts it:

"Doosron kay liyay sirf nafrat liyay/ Khushk honton pe harf-i-hiqarat liyay/Jo khala hai jahan us ko bhartay naheen/ Chaar aankhen haqeeqat say kartay naheen." (Harboring only hate for the ‘other,’ our lips have gone dry with brother’s contempt for brother; we've failed to regenerate worlds gone up in smoke and fire; we have not met the eye of the liar.)

She is spot on. After witnessing all the hatred that is being spewed around us, an article I read in The New York Times struck a chord. Writing two days before Hosni Mubarak stepped down, a spokesman of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest Islamic party, wrote, “We aim to achieve reform and rights for all: not just for the Muslim Brotherhood, not just for Muslims, but for all Egyptians.”

In contrast, our Islamists delight in branding as ‘kafirs’ our non-Muslims and the minority sects. They even abuse ulema from other parties. How can there be any orderly change here? There can only be chaos.

But Fahmida Riaz tried to inspire some hope in the future when she spoke of the daybreak opening up new possibilities when pluralism, diversity, equity and egalitarianism will become our norms.

"Is gulistan kay har ek mehmaan kay/ Roo buroo hon gay hum asl imkaan kay/ Jis kay aagay barabar hein mein aur too/ Jis ki nazron mein yaksaan hein hum aur woh/ Banatay hein hum ek farhang-i-nau."  (We will be flowers beholding the joy of possibilities that smile upon us, as if to say there is no wall, no difference, between you and me.  All illusions gone, we are revealed as one: such we intend our lexicon to be.) 

But can one share this optimism? The fissures run deep. They are multiple and overlap one another. Can they be bridged in a lifetime?

Note: I don't have the complete original works, but knowing well the poetry of Fahmida Riaz, I have dared to modify in the direction of currant English usage some of the syntax in the translations by Badri Raina. PLS

PD in Kolkata: The Maharani and Her Scion

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Is U.P.’s “Top Cop” a now-outed toady?  Or is he a  modern Sir Walter Raleigh?  Do we see him in servile mode?  Or was he succumbing to a gallant impulse, when he stooped to mop mud from his Lady’s shoes as she alit from a helicopter ? 

The photo of a high-ranking police officer performing this low level service for Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati ran with disapproving headlines in most Indian dailies.  Their judgment: fawning, not impulsively gallant. And the Times of India was inspired to run a satirical editorial on the all too enduring attraction of “power feet”:

It really is time for Manolo Blahnik, Salvatore Ferragamo and all the uptown mochis [shoemakers] to brave the heat and dust and fly to Lucknow.  Just imagine how much free publicity they’d get the next time Madame’s PSO feels duty [if not devotion] calling….And it will certainly happen again.  If the shoe fits, people will clean it.  And pray while doing so that they may just escape the boot.

Some people, like Mayawati, don’t handle elevation well.  It goes to their heads.  They don’t try to inspire their subordinates.  They rely on the imperious style.  This syndrome doesn’t afflict every U.S. Foreign Service Officer, but I ran across quite a few in my time, including a couple of career Ambassadors and a pair of Consuls General.  The current U.S. CG in Kolkata seems to be a particularly virulent example of this self-crowned sub-species, and her PAO is something of a scion with a prince-and-the-pea complex.  Maybe they’ve been infected by some sort of Indian virus. Maybe, relegated to distant darkest Kolkata, they imagine themselves to be invisible and thus free of constraints.   Maybe it’s another indication of inept human resource management in the State Department.

Back in the days of the British raj, more than a few  Colonel Blimps carried on as if they were maharajas, and three different sources have told me*, independently, of a recent  Consulate town hall meeting that had the reigning maharani—oops! the current CG complaining about staffers’ inattention  to her personal comfort.   

FYI a Town Hall meeting at an American mission gathers everyone together, Americans as well as locally-recruited staffers, for some important purpose.  Perhaps awards are being handed out.  Possibly there’s a major security threat.  Or maybe the Consulate needs to orchestrate a SECSTATE or CODEL visit so that everything goes smoothly every single minute. 

Some professionally appropriate topics may have been on the agenda that day, but what had the CG really ticked off, evidently, was personal inconvenience.  To remedy indignities she could no longer endure, she made these very weighty demands: 
·    You must anticipate my thirst and hand me a glass of water before I ask for it.
·    You must sense when I am chilly and place a shawl around my shoulders before I ask for it.
·    You must watch closely as I eat and remove my plate before I have to tell you that I am finished.

The CG wasn’t making these demands of her secretary or personal assistant—demands she couldn’t force on such subordinates in the U.S. anymore, by the way.  She was laying down the law to local staffers  who’d been hired to fill highly responsible positions, as cultural program directors, as  information assistants, as librarians.  They were shocked.  The shawl bit really got to them.

IIP: A Bureau Playing with Fire – Or Maybe Not

By Patricia H. Kushlis

On February 11, USA Today reported that the State Department had just launched a controversial new approach to connect directly with opposition movements in Iran and the Arab World via Facebook and Twitter.  The same thrust is found in Marshall Kirkpatrick's post with the titilating title "Will Twitter Become the New "Voice of America" Propaganda Arm?"

The goal of this initiative? To become “part of the conversation” –“to reach out to people where they spend their time online to listen, to present US views and values, and to engage as we work to advance a better and more prosperous future” – in Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy Judith McHale’s words. 

Coincidentally, McHale’s announcement came just before violent clashes broke out in Tehran a day after the Department began its first Tweet in Farsi and as anti-government copy-cat rebellions spread like wildfire from Tunis and Cairo across the Arab world

The locus of McHale’s new endeavor is the Department’s Bureau of International Information Programs (IIP).  The social networking component is part of a larger reorganization or realignment of the bureau under Coordinator Dawn McCall.  Contrary to the AP report and Kirkpatrick's essay, however, this supposedly controversial assignment may also not be all that new or all that controversial - depending upon the direction it takes.

Egypt, the Middle East and the US - It’s Over; It’s Just Begun

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Afer 18 excruciating days, Hosni Mubarak the now former President of Egypt, finally and reluctantly left the scene on Friday morning turning over power to the army and a caretaker government as a popular uprising against his continued rule grew larger day by day. 

Now the rebuilding needs to begin in earnest. 

Despite its venerable ancient history, Egypt today is a young country sporting a huge youth bulge. Its members were the real leaders of and inspiration for the revolt.  They must be a party to the debates and discussions that decide the shape of Egyptian politics to come.  Furthermore, most are not Islamists, Islamic radicals or radicals of the left or right.  They are foremost educated middle class professionals who more than anything want their Egypt to join the democratic world because, if nothing more, they want a say in their own future.  In short this was a democratic not an Islamic revolution.      

That these twenty-somethings were inspired by the success of the revolt against Ben Ali, a hated dictator in Tunisia who had stayed on well past his time, should be no surprise.  This was the spark that lit the dry tinder of Egyptian society and is spreading throughout the Arab world.

Egypt, the exceptional

Yet Egypt is special in ways Tunisia and other Muslim countries are not.  Not only does Egypt have the largest population of any Arab country, but Egypt, after all, is crucial to the quest for Arab “hearts and minds” and perhaps other Sunni Muslim ones as well:  Al Azhar University in Cairo – where Obama spoke in 2009 – is the heart of Sunni religious thought. Cairo – except for the upstart but influential Katari-based Al Jazeera - is the heart of the Arab media that is beamed throughout the region.            

Mubarak = Shift + Delete (sign seen at Tahrir Square)

That these young Egyptian professionals used all the organizational tools in their arsenal – from Facebook and Twitter to age-old calls to the barricades delivered by foot in the streets of Cairo’s slums – should also not be a surprise.  That they formed alliances with Mohamed El Baradei, former head of the IAEA and modernizer with loads of experience abroad as well as the Muslim Brotherhood and others in the opposition should also not surprise:  they needed all the allies they could muster.

The youth coalition has called upon Ahmed Zewail, a Nobel laureate in chemistry, and other respected figures . . . to be their intermediaries with the country’s new military chiefs, according to Kareem Fahim in The New York Times.       

That the drama that unfolded on the stage of Tahrir Square was seen around the world thanks to the technological skills and ingenuity of the Egyptian youth was combined with the experience of the international media - especially Al Jazeera, CNN and BBC – should also be no surprise.  Using Facebook and Twitter to organize is one thing:  to broadcast the pictures and videos in real time to most of the world adds another complex dimension.   

Or that the planning and organizational sessions of the demonstrations that tuned into a revolution took place around the kitchen table at a young man’s mother place should have been expected. After all, you’d hardly expect anti-government protestors to hold their strategy sessions out in the open air, at a restaurant or at someone’s office particularly in a police state where the walls and pavement have ears.

Playing the China Card in India

By Patricia Lee Sharpe 

The U.S. is cultivating a broader and deeper relationship with India, while finessing a rewarding but fraught economic and financial relationship with China.  The delicate balancing of interests which underlies each project isn’t made easier by the not wholly friendly relations  between the two Asian giants. 

The February 7, 2011, issue of Outlook, a highly respected Indian news weekly, came with an inflammatory cover and an only slightly less alarmist special report inside.  The cover promised that “China’s secret war with China” would be “revealed,” based especially on the “confessions” of “top” Naga and Manipur militant leaders.  Inside there was an enticingly-detailed account of arms-running through Myanmar and Bangladesh.  But the information was squeezed out of the accused during interrogations, which surely undermines its credibility.  The Indians are not squeamish about their methods.   Further evidence of ongoing subversion, according to Outlook: a few fairly colorful spies have been apprehended, and goodly amounts of Chinese cash were found in a residence of the 17^th Karmapa, who fled from China about 12 years ago.  This currency cache revived suspicions that Ogyen Trinley Dorje is not a bona fide incarnation.  He might be a Chinese plant whose purely political mission is to found a chain of faux monasteries along the contested Sino-Indian border.  

Wow!  This seems like overwhelming evidence of subversion well on the way to a tipping point, doesn’t it?  Either India will implode, or the cost of countering Pakistan’s pressures from the West plus the cost of fighting half a dozen insurgencies in the East will prevent India from competing  with China’s surge on the economic  front.  And so the territory-grabbing, flame-throwing dragon will reign, securely ensconced on an ever-growing pile of gold.

But maybe this picture is too true to myth to be true to life.  Foreign affairs specialists, according to Outlook, are not entirely certain that China is actively supporting separatism and insurrection in the hilly areas of Eastern and Northeastern India.  As for the spies, they say, that’s standard operating procedure in the world of real politik.  No doubt China is also swarming with Indian agents, which may be why New Delhi has muted the complaints until recently.  When India’s language got a little plainer, the Chinese replied in the very useful voice of offended innocence:  “It sounds as though Delhi doesn’t trust us.”

Indeed!  The question isn’t whether China is putting pressure on India.  It’s about the intensity, frequency and nature of the pressure.   The other question is whether India is squawking more loudly about China to draw attention away from domestic problems.  Like some horrendous corruptions cases, for example. A case involving bandwidth allocation is particularly juicy.

Spying is one thing and it’s never going to stop.  Information is crucial to security.  Arming insurgents is another matter altogether.  It really can’t be tolerated, and China’s denial by deflection is almost as hard to swallow as many confessions are.  So what do the experts think?

Four fairly predictable theories are being articulated in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it seems:

• The Chinese government knows nothing about the gun-running.  It’s the work of black market profiteers.
• China as such is not involved in the arms trafficking, but sees no advantage to stopping it.
• Beijing is actively involved, but at a distance, to preserve deniability.
• Hard-line Chinese ultra-nationalists are promoting “low cost activities inimical to India”  while “moderates in the [Chinese} establishment look the other way, being convinced that such acts will not strain relations between China and India."

Re the last possibility, it would appear that Indian policy makers are similarly split between those who want to confront China more stridently and those who believe that insurgents don’t go looking for guns unless legitimate efforts to get grievances addressed have failed.  Deal with the problems, the anthropologists say, and the unpleasant symptoms will go away.

Telegraph correspondent Sunanda Datta-Roy, having examined accounts of the Indian government’s examination of the Karmapa’s accounts, suggests that one explanation for the persecution of the young Tiibetan Buddhist leader “is that a genuine fit of China-neurosis grips a government seeking to atone for ignoring floods of Saudi funds invested in mosques and madrassas.”  Another manifestation:  “the Government’s Research and Analysis Wing  peremptorily calls leading research institutions to demand details of whatever their academic guests from China said or did.”  If you don’t talk, Datta-Ray claims, a fictional report is filed.  Hence the “evidence” cited to implicate the Karmapa, perhaps. Datta-Ray also subscribes to the distraction theory as at least a partial explanation:  Delhi needs attention to be focused away from its own problems.

Meanwhile, I’ve been making my own inquiries.  I have a journalist friend from Assam  who frequently visits family members living in close proximity to insurgency.  Another friend is a Bengali who hails from a town that’s adjacent to an area where Maoists have a strong presence.  Do they believe that the insurgencies that impinge in their friends and families are instigated and/or materially supported by the Chinese government?

My Assamese friend is much more concerned about the flow of Bangladeshis into Assam.  The cultural mix in her hometown has been turned upside down.  The Assamese are now in the minority, and they don’t like it.  My Assamese friend had recently explored the possibility of starting a school for disadvantaged children in her home district.   “Don’t bother,” her uncle said.  “Whatever you earn, you’ll be paying to one or another band of insurgents.”  Most “rebels” are very good at extortion. 

My Bengali friend, a very keen political animal, discounts the importance of Chinese subversion.  “Of course, you’ll find Chinese weapons when you raid an insurgent camp,” he says.  "Gun-running is a very profitable business.”

My next piece will look at why the hill dwellers of Eastern India – that’s West Bengal, Chattisgarh and Jharkund  ̶are so unhappy.  I’ll follow that up with a piece on the upcoming elections in West Bengal.  It looks as if the CPI(M) is going to lose.

 

Chinese New Year in Kolkata: photo courtesy of The Telegraph.

Love Children: Some Valentine's Day Thoughts

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

 Love children?  Definitely, as in the verb meaning to cherish and care for them.   But love children referring to the consequences of the love ‘em and leave ‘em approach to copulation?  Isn’t it an absurd misnomer?  Shouldn’t we toss it overboard? Procreation doesn’t require love.  All it takes is an adequate sperm count, a functional delivery system and a vessel, willing or not.

 These thoughts came to me as I continued to encoounter snippets of gossip about the not so private life of Julian Asange of Wikileaks fame.  First the rape charges.  Now the news that he has four “love children” scattered around the world.

 Obviously, I think that rape is a form of assault that deserves a place in the criminal code, and that rapists should suffer the consequences, but I do wonder about the timing of the prosecutions in Sweden.  And I am equally put off by the titillating revelations about Asange’s sex life anywhere.  We have long since learned that achievers of all kinds, including pious Congressmen and paragon golfers, have feet of clay and zipless jeans when it comes to women. And some of the women are willing.

To the extent that it’s not criminal, I don’t care about the personal life of Julian Asange.  I don’t care if he’s an egomaniac.  I don’t care if he’s a bad boss.  If he were a conventional nice guy, he wouldn’t be in the rather useful business he’s in. 

 Meanwhile, his massive leaks have raised some very important questions about the uses and misuses of secrecy.  So far, the harm seems less than catastrophic.  But gadflies are extremely inconvenient, and generally they are squashed by any means available.  If you can’t get him for treason, ruin his reputation and/or nail him on a “lesser” charge.

 Children born “out of wedlock” used to be called bastards or by-blows.  The latter is an all-too-accurate description of what comes of irresponsible sex, whether it stems from rage, impulse, foolish infatuation or whatever. The former was a legal term: a child with no legal right to a patrimony.  It was also a poisonous label for a child.  Getting rid of it was a good idea, and the switch to “love child” was equivalent to Gandhi’s deciding that untouchables should be called Harijans or Children of God.  Noble idea.  But it didn’t really work.   And no modern kid on the playground wants to be known as a “love child.  Outing Asange’s children, may damage his reputation with some people, but it does more harm to the children, of any age, who have nothing to do with his politics.

So, please.  Children are children.  All children deserve love and parents who, married or not,  cherish them.  Those who aren’t so lucky can do without the coy labeling.    

America the Imperial: PD’s Dim Vision at the Kolkata Book Fair

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

I was truly tempted to open this blog piece with epithets.  Instead, I'll  introduce the shock more gently because, maybe, this thing I'd run up against wasn't intended to be brash and overbearing.  Maybe it was just  another example of cluelessness masquerading as public diplomacy. In Kolkata this time.

Imagine you joined me in my taxi, heading for what was once the outskirts of a megalopolis but is now thoroughly incorporated.  I was off to the annual Kolkata Book Fair, trying to reach there by two pm, when it opens each day, to avoid the crowds.  This was a totally futile ambition.  Already, miles away, the stop-start of a major traffic jam had begun, which gave me plenty of time to scan the horizon, where you would also have seen an enormous white dome lording it over the city.  A gigantic mosque, minus minarets?  A Vatican-sized cathedral?  Neither, as I knew from previous visits  and re-confirmed, when I reached the predictable sprawl of non-descript temporary structures that house the Kolkata Book Fair.  It was the American Exhibit.

So there it stood, a replica of the American Capitol!  A clever idea, perhaps, but ludicrously, embarassingly,   out of scale.  It loomed like the Second Coming of the Moghuls.  Or maybe the Second Coming of the English, who built their neo-Moghul monuments to power in New Delhi.  No wonder the curious were queuing to enter. 

Being these days an ordinary tourist, I joined the line and ended up in a dimly-lit (the better to view computer screens, I suppose) cavern that dwarfed people and everything else, especially the bank of computers plopped on a long counter.  Very few of my queue mates touched a keyboard as they filed by. It's 2011. Computers aren’t  exactly novel, even in India, and these weren’t set up to entice interaction from the uninitiated or the jaded.  In fact, the only thing that mildly curious visitors were invited to contemplate, re computers, was the popularity of social networking.  Now Facebook may be a global phenomenon.  Millions belong.  But it's hardly a gateway to worthwhile knowledge of the U.S.

I wasn't surprised,though.  I'd been told that the American public diplomats currently posted to Kolkata aren’t interested in purveying literature or lecturers or any kind of boring intellectuality.  Just fun stuff for cool Under Thirties.  This cohort, I might uncoolly remind them, doesn’t include today’s decision-makers, and it probably doesn't include tomorrow's either! Anyway superficiality is the order of the day, it seems.  Although India has great writers and world class universities along with a vibrant print and electronic press employing courageous editors and many fine investigative reporters, the recently hired top local for the PD section in Kolkata used to  head.... a fashion magazine!  A mere clone of an international brand at that.  What's the motto for India’s glitz-and-glamor industry?  If you’ve got it, strut it! flaunt it! knock 'em dead!  Ergo: the vulgar Capitol look-alike.

I continued shuffling along with the queue.  People in front of me.  People in back of me.    I was looking for something that would have told the uninformed something about the significance of the hulking white shrine that had sucked them in. Nothing came to eye. Maybe I just missed it. In fact, maybe I missed a lot.  There was no coherence, no order, no clear sequence of focal points in the dusky half light. Pretty soon, approaching the exit, we passed a big flat TV screen that  signaled the end of hope for engagement. All it offered was a list of what you’d get for your money should  you join the American Center (at cut rates) during the Book Fair.  Not many visitors gave it a glance  as we turned toward a sliver of daylight.  It was well above eye level. 

Now what if that last chance screen had beckoned with attention-compelling videos? The library info (animated, maybe?) could have appeared at frequent brief intervals between artfully-chosen clips.  People would have stopped.  They'd  have craned their necks up, watching for awhile  They'd have seen THE MESSAGE several times over.  Producing such a piece  isn't technically difficult.  As for expense, negligible.  Especially compared to the cost of erecting an overbearing faux Capitol.   

Instead: another muffed opportunity. My companions kept moving-moving-moving toward the exit.

Get ‘em in.  Get ‘em out.  Was that the plan? Certainly no one was gathering around any of the bookcases lurking in the shadows like ghosts of yesterday’s world.  Books!  Real books!  But displayed so negligently and creating one inescapable impression: the American Center doesn’t think that books matter anymore.  So why stop?  Keep moving!

Actually, there was a spot in this vast unpleasant space where, undoubtedly, it was hoped that visitors would pause:  the counter with staffers to sell memberships.  Unfortunately poor lighting obscured its purpose.  And shouldn’t the point of sale come after the pitch, not the minute you enter? (Some new members were probably roped in (there were PRIZES as inducement), but imagine how many more if only the exhibit had had some oompf and integrity to it!)

Yes, there were PRIZES for new members, a loud unpleasant voice told us, repeatedly, over a PA system.   I’m not sure whether every newbie was to get a prize or whether a drawing was involved, so I suspect that at least some of the others passing through were equally befuddled.  What I did catch was this: we’d come to a Book Fair, but the prize wasn’t a book.  It was a tee shirt. 

Once upon a time there was an exhibits division within U.S.I.A.  It was abolished years ago, during one of many cost-cutting exercises.  But frankly it doesn’t take much money or A.I.A. architects to create an appropriate presence at a book fair whose infrastructure is traditionally as modest at that at the Kolkata Book Fair.  Look carefully at the pix that accompany this piece.  These unimpressive, even crude structures were crammed with people quite contentedly seeking and buying books.  Within an hour the crush would be almost unbearable.

If there’s anything worse than a pretentious exterior, it’s a pretentious shell with nothing much inside.  The American presence at this year’s Kolkata Book Fair managed to offend on both counts. That makes it a prodigious accomplishment of some sort. 

Meanwhile, let's concede, for the sake of argument, that history is on the side of the electronic media, which I and many other compulsive readers also appreciate. This exhibit made it clear that American public diplomacy lacks the skills or (more likely, since geeks can be hired) the imagination to make effective use of the enormous electronic  resources already at its disposal.  The impossible lighting, which could have been used as an aid to focus and sequencing. That wallflower-like bank of computers! The stupid static screen by the exit.  The grating voice from the depths. My thirteen year old grandson does better than this. 

As I filed out of that dark and unprofitable cavern, I had a vision of the real Capitol, in Washington D.C., and what’s usually going on when crowds of people file through without stopping.  They’re passing a bier, paying last respects.   So, American public diplomacy, rest in peace.

 

 

The Peculiar Case of US Embassy Luxembourg – Three Wrongs Don’t Make It Right

By Patricia H. Kushlis

It’s bad enough to have a totally incompetent political ambassador assigned to head the US Embassy in Luxembourg. This is also not the first time.  Two retiree friends of mine were sent out to that same mission a decade ago because the campaign money-bundling titular head at the time couldn’t hack the cushy position either.

Neither the State Department nor Hillary can be blamed for making the latest screw-up appointment – that fault lies squarely with the White House and its apparent need to reward Cynthia Stroum, a particularly assiduous campaign contributor, with a mini-palace in Old Europe’s medieval heart.

I’ve written about the campaign bungler –oops bundler - problem during the George W. Bush administration. Looks like it's time to unearth that post from our WV archives along with my primer for political ambassadors wishing to remain ensconced in their comfortable mansions complete with household staff, and car and driver for the duration of their three year appointment abroad at taxpayer expense.  

The State Department can and should be blamed, however, for assigning as public affairs officer an unqualified – and painfully incompetent consular coned foreign service officer with only two stints under her belt – neither in public diplomacy - before being sent to head the albeit miniscule public affairs office at American Embassy Luxembourg.

Now a program the size of Luxembourg’s should not be a difficult task to undertake.  That is, if the person assigned has the requisite experience and is given authority to run a small, but multi-faceted show.  Obviously, from the recent Inspector General’s report, the PAO had neither the experience nor the authority so it’s no wonder the program is a mess. Then add in an abusive and demanding Ambassador to boot.

Recipe for disaster.

According to the inspectors, a public diplomacy strategic planning document – which had been left by a predecessor – was in rough form at best.  (Note: such documents crucial for well functioning public diplomacy disappeared after the destruction of USIS in 1999 only to resurface near the beginning of the Obama administration). The strategic planning document in Luxembourg such as it is, was ignored by the current PAO, according to the Inspectors.  No surprises – given the circumstances.

It also obviously didn’t matter very much.

In a way, that only makes sense since the program outlined in the OIG report is way too complex for a small post like Luxembourg with only 1 ½  locally engaged staff to run well.

As a former USIS officer who served as both cultural and information officers here are a few unsolicited recommendations: