FAO Quotables

"But being right, even morally right, isn't everything. It is also important to be competent, to be consistent, and to be knowledgeable. It's important for your soldiers and diplomats to speak the language of the people you want to influence. It's important to understand the ethnic and tribal divisions of the place you hope to assist."
-Anne Applebaum

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Malagasy poet Rabearivelo's "Lunar Images" from 'Almost Dreams' (Saiky-Nofy)

Poem of the week from Malagasy poet Rabearivelo's "Lunar Images" from 'Almost Dreams' (Saiky-Nofy)

Lunar Images (Sarisarim-Bolona)

















Moonlight, moonlight--what then?

Do not drink too much of the milk that drips
from the teats of this savage one-eyed dog
baying into the wild lands of the sky
as though to summon from within the desert of the night
its countless offspring
opening their eyes: myriads of stars












Moonlight, moonlight--what then?

The wind itself is milky,
which shakes the sculpted shadows
on the earth
and multiplies the number of visible
souls of all things
that seem to flee the baying--silent
but resounding everywhere

Moonlight, moonlight--what then?

Do you see those gentle birds
that grow within the spectral landscape?
They feed on shadow,
they peck at night.
What will they fill their crops
when the stalks of rice and corn
carried off by the cocks
become songs in them?

Moonlight, moonlight--what then?

I am no longer young enough
to seek a lunar sister outside
after the games of little girls:
I will hold my children on my lap until they fall asleep,
and there are many books to be read with my wife
until the moon changes
and becomes itself for us
while waiting for the dawn
that will overtake us on the shores of sleep.
















Other Madagascar Posts:
"Fruits" from Rabearivelo's Almost-Dreams
"9" from Rabearivelo's From the Night
"51" from Rabearivelo's Old Songs From Imerina Lands
"Zebu"from Rabearivelo's Almost Dreams
Peace Corps Vignette on Mango Season in Madagascar
Business Case Study on Mango Production in Madagascar

African Poets of the Week Compilation


Monday, February 25, 2013

CRS Report on Peacekeeping and Stabilization Missions Abroad: The Development of Civilian Capabilities (2004-11)

CRS Report on Peacekeeping and Stabilization Missions Abroad: The Development of Civilian Capabilities (2004-11)

I love these CRS reports.  This one has great historical detail on the subject--a great reference report.



https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4BE1_xKfeEUbUJISGpvSnNINGc/edit?usp=sharing

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Great info from the 15th Annual Africa Business Conference

15th Annual Harvard Business School Africa Business Conference

This is just the type of conference to which it would be great to send a newly selected O-6 Africa FAO.   Having a rising senior FAO at this type of conference would be an incredible networking opportunity (i.e. creating and building relationships), but also a great way to promote the FAO brand across a wide spectrum.

   If you go the website and check out the panels that there's a ton of great info.

http://www.hbsafricaconference.com/the-agenda.html



Friday, February 15, 2013

This Navy Seal "Shooter" Nonsense: Much Ado Something?

18 Feb Update: 

Following is a response to the article from Rear Admiral Pybus that answers many of my questions in the original post below:



This Navy Seal "Shooter" Nonsense: Much Ado Something?

I want to dedicate a full post to my thoughts on this but don't have the time right now.  I did, however, want to get a couple of my notes on it out there. 

LET ME SAY THIS FIRST:

The Esquire article was a well-written disaster that missed on the opportunity to explore so many key points.

Navy SEALs are brave dudes.   I have some good friends who are SEALs--they are all about 1000 times tougher than I will ever be.  And they all make incredible sacrifices at every level that I couldn't ever make.  The subject of the article was no exception. 

The military is full of courageous brave men and women. 

I flew search and rescue helos for the first part of my career and make no assertions or claims as to my own bravery.  As I've written about before here, six weeks of Leatherneck in Quantico before my senior year of college were more than enough to tell me that I could never hack it as a Marine (these men and women are also about 999 times tougher than me).  

MY THOUGHTS:  
The best way to address the myriad issues surrounding this controversy may be to break this down into the micro and macro level. There may been failures in the system but I would want to start at the Shooter's unit (i.e. the micro level).  

Because this story isn't really about real or perceived shortfalls within the VA!

It's more likely about possible shortfalls in the military to civilian transition process.

It's about the capacity of the military to transfer a battlefield ethos centered on 'taking care of your troops' to the civilian transition process.  It is imperative that leaders regularly counsel and mentor the troops under them--whether they are lifers or they are getting out.

At the macro level, there's a rabbit role that stems from all of this as to whether we are retaining the right people in our military today.  There's been much written about it but not much put forth that can be quantified--to this I would add that   think there's an appropriate verse from 1 Corinthians that would be applicable here:  

"If I speak in the tongues of men or angels but have not STATISTICS I am only a noisy gong or clanging cymbal."  

I am not convinced the military is losing its best and brightest until I see data that transcends the anecdotal.  

Micro:
Why did he get out at 16 years?
Who ran his TAP class? 
Did he go to his TAP classes?  All of his tap classes?
Who was his Commanding Officer and Executive Officer and did no pre-separation counseling go on from either of them?   

Macro Rabbit holes:
Military retirement system
Military retention system
Military evaluation system
Maybe, Department of Veterans Affairs Capability/Capacity (how best can we support them) but this isn't REALLY what the story is about.

LINKS: 

Confusion swirls around Esquire story on Osama bin Laden's killer (LA Times)

Army of None by Time Kane (Foreign Policy)

Not Much Better than Nothing by Phillip Carter (Foreign Policy)

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Valentine's Day Poem for my Wife



This is my life poem to my amazing wife and incredible mother to our daughters.  I added two verses to it over Christmas and plan to continue to add to it over the course of our lives together. 

You, My Love

You inhabit me my love
Grow deep and young inside me
Like a sapling
You sink your roots
They wander
and wonderfully
entangle me my love.

You transfuse me my love
My blood is no longer my blood
For you are present even there
Flowing
Ebbing
Beating
Searching out
my innermost places my love.

You have taken up residence my love
In the furthest reaches
Of the slumber of my sleep
You run with me
Your hand in mine
In impossible places
In surreal dimensions
of my dreams my love.

You come to me my love
A smile that creases my face
An echo of your joy
Surprising me
In the midst of my day
Memories of you
Flash and burn
Images of you
flickering and searing across my mind my love.

You, like a spirit my love
Like the inside of my soul
That I never knew
Before you
Who pulses now always
Inside of me my love.

You, embodiment of answered prayers my love
Extension of grace
Shining down upon me
Soaking into me
Seeping into my every thought
The crown upon my head my love.

You are there in the morning light my love
In my waking moments
I reach for you
I am drawn by the immeasurable gravity
Of your love my love
Against you
Amaranthine rock my love.

You infuse laughter in my life my love
You peal
And beckon me
Your song dances
Your voice
Clarion
Notes floating
And leaping
Whirling
And washing over me my love.

You abide restlessly in my heart my love
Always increasing
Pushing me further
Multiplying passion
Never ceasing
Insatiable hunter
Of my heart my love.

Always always always my love
You will remain the lover of my youth
As we grow old and everything around us decays and rusts
For you and I my love—nothing alters
For you my love
Are Beauty, eternally defined
Tattooed kisses accumulating overlapping everlasting
Across the story of my life my love.


You, the radiant carrier of life my love

Your belly swollen and growing

Your face beaming and golden

You, emerging and evolving

Into an even higher form of beauty

Me, falling deeper and deeper into you

You, Possessor of generations, my love.


You: succor, nourisher and protector,

Our babies cling to you

Like vines they surround and grow to you.

Pillar of strength and zenith of grace

Your love refuses to ebb and only grows

Washing over, sustaining, and imbuing protection

You are the sun and your gravity immense

Pulling us deeper into the chasms—of your love,

Mother and lover of our children my love.


You my love
Are me
And I
am you.

We.
my love.

We.



To my Readers: 
Incidentally, you should buy this book if you don't already own it.  The best love poems ever written: 
Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair: Dual-Language Edition (Penguin Classics) (Spanish Edition) by Pablo Neruda.

Friday, February 8, 2013

BBC Chronology: Ethiopia, Djibouti, Eritrea, Somalia, Libya, Sudan

BBC Chronology: Ethiopia, Djibouti, Eritrea, Somalia, Libya, Sudan


BBC News has some excellent timelines/chronologies of various countries that are well worth the time to check out.  Here's there one on Ethiopia: Ethiopia Profile

I cut and pasted a bunch of them and put them in word docs a while back:

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Notes on African Generational Politics (Articles by Toungara, Kagwanja, Abbink)


BONUS LINK:  My entire (so far) grad school notes collection can be found here. 

Notes on African Generational Politics (Articles by Toungara, Kagwanja, Abbink)
























Generational Tensions in the Parti Democratique de Cote d’Ivoire
By Jeanne Maddox Toungara
Sep 1995
*Two Elements: Gerantocracy in Abidjan and universal generational studies
- What/Where is the 6th Generation today?
- 5th generation is the generation of the long, extended economic crisis. 
*Main source of patronage is not cash but jobs
- Clientilism: easier to deal with from a U.S. perspective but hurtful in the long view because it’s near impossible to change.  Clientilism needs to stop but the 5th generation is suffering for the very reason that clientilism is retracting—and they aren’t getting there share. 

PDCI Background (this is from Wikipedia – not the article)
            The Parti Democratique de Cote d’Ivoire (PDCI) is a political party in Côte d'Ivoire. From independence in 1960 to 1990 it was the only legal party, and was led by President Félix Houphouët-Boigny. In 1990 the first multi-party elections took place, but the party remained in power. When Houphouët-Boigny died in 1994, he was replaced by Henri Konan Bédié. The party lost power when Bédié was ousted in a December 1999 coup.

Introduction
Toungara provides a brief overview of the PDCI Congress of 1990
-       The ninth Congress of the PDCI occurred in October 1990
-       President Felix Houphouet-Boigny had announced an end to one-party rule
-       The goal of the Congress was to develop a strategy that would keep it competitive in a multi-party system
-       Four groups emerged, wanting to influence the future of the PDCI
o   Les Anciens – the oldest, most conservative wing of the party
o   The reformers – wanted moderate change
o   The renovators – wanted to completely reorganize the party
o   Jeune loups “young wolves” – the younger generation who wanted to ensure a place in the party leadership
Identifying Generational Cohorts
-       Up to this point in modern African history, village elders have been “lineage patriarchs who controlled the distribution of labor, wealth, food, and wives…”
-       Now, Tuongara says, for the most part, Africans continue to support their lineages and respect the birthright of party patriarchs.
-       Toungara says that the common classification of generations into “old” (Anciens) and “young” (jeunes) fails to fully account for the actual generational dynamics in Cote d’Ivoire. So she proposes a system of five categories (I found this confusing because Toungara opened the article describing 4 categories – he does not mention the 5th generation in his intro).
-       Toungara’s five generations
o   First generation (Les anciens) - came to power after WWII; directed the anticolonial struggle until independence in 1960
o   Second Generation (Reformers) – educated abroad; entered politics in 1960s;
o   Third generation (Renovators)– also educated abroad; entered politics in 1970s; took managerial posts in public and private sector
o   Fourth generation (Radicals)– educated domestically; entered political scene in 1980s during recession; experienced high unemployment
o   Fifth generation (Currently coming of age) – still in school; entered politics in the 1990s in the midst of political upheaval as PDCI transitions to multiparty system
The New PDCI: The Ninth Congress Reforms
-       All five generations were present at the congress, seeking to influence the reorganization.
-       The groups were accommodated in the short term
-       Houphouet made a large number of appointments for all groups

Additional Information (more from Wikipedia – not from article): The Toungara article was written in 1995. The following excerpt from Wikipedia describes events that occurred after the article was written:
The PDCI announced in early 2000 that it would hold a congress to choose new leadership, and Bédié denounced this as a "putsch"; the party decided to retain Bédié in the leadership, however. In August, Bédié and four other PDCI members registered as candidates in the October 2000 presidential election; shortly afterward, Emile Constant Bombet, who had served as Interior Minister under Bédié, defeated Bédié for the PDCI presidential nomination. Bombet and Bédié were both barred from running by the Constitutional Court in early October, and on October 10 Bédié called for a boycott of the election.
In the parliamentary election held on 10 December 2000 and 14 January 2001, the party won 94 out of 225 seats.
On 18 May 2005, the PDCI and the Rally of the Republicans (RDR), despite a history of hostility towards one another, signed an agreement to form a coalition, the Rally of Houphouëtists for Democracy and Peace, along with two smaller parties, the Union for Democracy and Peace in Côte d'Ivoire (UDPCI) and the Movement of the Forces of the Future (MFA), ahead of the presidential election then planned for October 2005. This election was delayed several times, finally held in 2010.



‘Power to Uhuru’: Youth Identity and Generational Politics in Kenya’s 2002 Elections
By Peter Mwangi Kagwanja
October 2005
Importance of eliminating the sway of groups like the Mungiki (which are almost cult-like) to the point where they challenge the role of the military
why didn’t the youth movement here become more violent???
what caused people to leave the movement later on?  Clientilism, police effectiveness, jobs?

Introduction
-       This article examines the 2002 elections in Kenya
-       Some hailed this event as “one of the most significant political changes since independence.”
-       President Daniel arap Moi lost the electionending a 24 year patrimonial rule
-       However, this multi-ethnic victory occurred in the midst of widening inter-generational discord and tension
-       The road to the 2002 elections was marked by the widespread fear of youth rebellion
-       Bowing to pressure, Moi stepped down and endorsed the relatively young Uhuru Kenyatta, son of his predecessor, to be his successor
o   The intent was for Kenyatta to be a proxy for a continued reign by Moi
o   The hope was to get support from Kenya African National Union (KANU), but this tactic to mobilize the youth backfired causing intra-KANU conflict
o   Still, it appealed to many followers in the youth group, Mungiki
o   Criminal elements in Mungiki deepened their patron-client relationship with KANU elite
-       The Youth in contemporary Africa are eschewing Western modernity in favor of re-traditionalization
o   They have incorporated traditional religious beliefs and initiation rites into their resistance
o   Mungiki started out in rural areas using traditional forms of mobilization, espousing moral order and re-traditionalization, but when it ventured into Kenya’s urban areas (slums and shanty towns), it absorbed many criminal elements and transformed into a violent gang that was co-opted by some of the ruling elite

From fighting generation to lost generation
-       Youth revolution is not new in Kenyan politics
o   KANU and KADU both mobilized youths in the struggle for state power after independence
o   During the Nyayo era, (1982 – 1990), President Moi used the KANU youth to monitor and punish public dissent
o   Mungiki resorted to terror and extortion
o   This is a sign of  “generational politics as an idiom for the accountability of state power.”
o   The mid-90s saw “frightful levels” of the instrumental use of generational identities

‘Project Uhura’: nation, tribe, and generation politics
-       Prior to the 2002 elections, President Moi launched what came to be known disparagingly as “Project Uhuru”
-       Project Uhuru denoted Moi’s whipping up of generational sentiments and elevating the “Uhuru generation” to the higher echelons of his party

Conclusion (cut and pasted from the article because it is a good wrap-up)
“This article has examined how Mungiki used a generational discourse and adopted traditional Kikuyu ideas concerning the transfer of power to challenge their powerlessness and to stake claim to leadership in the politics of Moi’s succession. In a sense, Mungiki signified not only a logic of instrumentalization of disorder that has characterized Kenya’s multi-party era, but also the effort to re-traditionalize governance in an essentially modern space. However, the movement’s leadership was co-opted by the dominant elders in the ruling party and joined the KANU bandwagon in support of Project Uhuru, introducing a violent streak to electioneering. It abandoned its original moral crusade and embarked on reckless violence that eventually undermined its legitimacy and its influence in the public realm. Its continued violence in the post-election era convinced the government of the need to restrain youth as part of its reconstruction agenda and to restore public order and security.
            This has translated into the bureaucratization of the matatu transport sector, identified with the culture of vigilantism and youth violence. While the reform of the public sector coupled with enforcement of the law has effectively contained youth violence and seen the exit of the Mungiki from the public sphere, among other youth groups, the need for generational equity and empowerment will continue to haunt the political elite in the post-Moi era. As scholars announce the ‘end of the post-colonial state in Africa — meaning that the African state has ceased to resemble its colonial progenitor — it is important to rethink the ideological foundation of the African state that is emerging from the wave of democratic projects. Consequently, this article has argued that the future of the African state lies not only in transforming (moral) ethnicity into the foundational myth of modern African political thought, but also in grounding the state in Africa’s multi-ethnic and multi-identity reality. Generational identities are part of this reality.”


Being Young in Africa: The politics of Despair and Renewal
By John Abbink
2005

This article is the introductory chapter to Abbink’s book.
The ‘problem of youth’ in Africa
-       “The exponential population increase and the fierce competition for resources within the contexts of malfunctioning or failing states have led to a relative decline in the well-being and social advancement of young people in Africa.”
-       Youth are facing mass unemployment, health problems, poverty, aids, lack of education, lack of skills
-       They are marginalized and have weak legal positions
-       They are over-represented in armed rebel groups and insurgent movements as well as criminal activities
-       Children are highly valued by adults, but they are valued less and less as they become adolescents
-       Being young in Africa is perceived as problematic
-       We should avoid characterizing “youth” as destructive
-       Rather, we need to integrate them into our analyses
-       The chronic problems faced by youth have significant political impliations
o   They are numerous
o   They are available
o   They are anxious to do anything they can to relieve their poverty
Defining ‘youth
-       There are many opinions on what exactly should be considered “youth” in Africa
-       For the purposes of his book, Abbink decides to use the 14 – 35 age bracket
-       He gives a number of reasons why on page 6 of the article
Recent Debates
-       Generational tensions are a recurring phenomenon in Africa
-       Academic literature is quick to highlight all the doom and gloom associated with the “youth
-       There are a number of responses to this literature
o   First response: Agency – emphasizes the active role of youth in determining their destiny
o   Second response: Interventionist – in the face of enduring youth deprivation, remedial policies should be implemented; local and national NGOs should be involved;
o   Third response: a descriptive-analytic response – tries to offer historically and sociologically grounded accounts to explain what has been happening to the youth
-       Generational tensions have always existed in Africa, but they are at a crisis now due to colonialism, modernization, social upheaval, population growth
-       These tensions have led to massive recruitment into revolutionary and insurgent movements since the 1970s

Youth and Politics
-       In much of eastern and southern Africa, the generation that secured independence excluded the youth from participation in political life and state bureaucracy

Youth and Violence
-       Youth are prominently involved in most of the armed conflicts and criminal networks on the continent
-       However, “The mere facts of demographic generational imbalance and socio-political tensions do not explain why and how patterns of conflict and violence emerge among younger age groups, nor why they show such a remarkably uneven spread and intensity across the continent.” (page 17)

Youth and Religion
-       21st century youth are perhaps showing “a remarkable shift towards religious activity.”
-       Religion may offer meaning and dignity after the failure of politics to do so
-       Christian and Muslim movements, both, disdain traditional African cultures and values
Youth and reconstitution of African societies
-       “There are high hopes in much of the literature about the potential and promise of youth in Africa and elsewhere.”
-       However, “it is not the aim of this book to evaluate this normative issue.”

Relevance and Theory
-       the social relevance of studying youth in order to influence the development policies of donors, state, NGOs, and self-organizations is growing
-       There is a need to develop sound theory for the study of youth and generational conflict, if only to be able to ask the right questions