Balance through diversification...
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Originally Posted by
Dayuhan
Sometimes the best way to promote development is not to look for ways to help people move forward, but to identify and help remove the obstacles that are holding them back. Of course that gets political, and can get very complicated... but it's tough to promote development apolitically in an environment where the primary obstacles to development are political.
Top down strategies are part of a solution, but limiting oneself to just one axis of attack or line of operation is similar to investing in just one stock. Good for you if you hit it out of the park, however empirical work on concepts such as efficient market theory, mean variance portfolio theory, capital asset pricing model, value at risk, etc. seem to suggest that there are greater benefits to be had via diversification when problem solving.
From FP, a 22 Jan 2010 post on Tom Rick's blog the Best Defense, Haiti watch (III): A role for retired Special Forces?
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By Robert Maguire
Best Defense Haiti correspondent
In 1994/95, following the US-led, UN-sponsored intervention that restored elected government to Haiti after three years of rapacious rule by the Haitian military and its allies, US Special Forces played a critical role throughout the Haitian countryside in restoring order and assisting local officials move forward with the always enormous task of providing services to citizens at the local and municipal levels. Much was written about this, but I recall it most clearly through a documentary produced by CNN called "Guardian Warriors." I recall from that documentary -- which I recorded on a VRC (it was that long ago) and is now stowed away somewhere on video tape -- that small Special Forces units around Haiti were playing a very positive role in this regard -- working with mayors; interfacing with local populations; providing technical and resource assistance. These men (I do not recall seeing any women) were portrayed as sensitive to local people and their culture and were finding ways to work within existing paradigms -- even broken ones. They were also very welcome by the local populations with which they worked.
Tom Rick's also provides a link to an applied GIS website about Haiti.
Wilf,
The GIS website allows one to examine/focus upon security concerns...
Add to our doctrinal materials,
in light of this:
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from Dayuhan
When I said that the farmers were resisting because they knew their land would be taken by people with power and money... who do you think those people were? They were the local political powers, of course, and individuals close to them. As soon as they knew the road project would be funded (and well before it was announced) they were already muscling in, acquiring legal rights to land and positioning themselves to profit from the road. The government would never have allowed those farmers to get legal title to the land in question because the people in charge wanted it for themselves.
Blazing Saddles. Never thought of that as a treatise in revolutionarty warfare, but its script is written above. And who can beat the ending.
Keep going, folks - looks like it's heading somewhere. ;)
Mike
I'm wrong because you're right
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I think that gut guess is wrong, and I don't think this program would work. There's an important point being missed. When I said that the farmers were resisting because they knew their land would be taken by people with power and money... who do you think those people were? They were the local political powers, of course, and individuals close to them. As soon as they knew the road project would be funded (and well before it was announced) they were already muscling in, acquiring legal rights to land and positioning themselves to profit from the road. The government would never have allowed those farmers to get legal title to the land in question because the people in charge wanted it for themselves.
Dayuhan,
You're so right! Unfortunately this is one of the too often encountered problems with development projects.
Just prove us that back ground, context, creative solutions are the best. Only limit being: you cannot expect having non political policies in development.
And trying to change the political environment seems a little out of our range.
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Tom Rick's also provides a link to an applied GIS website about Haiti.
Wilf,
The GIS website allows one to examine/focus upon security concerns...
So, we did figure out our location: seems we are going for Haiti, don't we?
The local politic may be as harsh as in the Pashto valleys. And the use of violence as necessary as in Astan.
Many reports of gangs killing people to get food and aid monopole and destroyed countries are wild wild West by definition.
Now, let's respond to the question to whom do we want to address it?
Are we trying to give a hand to US troops? To NGO? (who do not care about us by the way) To CIMIC?
My first feeling goes to CIMIC people. Most of those I now are good people who just would like to help, are seeking for advices but get bounced by NGO because they wear uniforms.
Here the advantage is that you no one will judge you on that.
They also are much more sensitive to security/development integrated projects.
Quick note...via the ipod
Restoring basic services is key. *Focusing for a moment exclusively upon water SMEs could assess the condition of existing pipe networks (via visual, dye, smoke, camera), pumping systems (booster stations, lift stations, well houses, river intakes, treament plants),*storage sites (tanks and facilities) and treament sites (package plants and dedicated treament plants) SCADA systems, and trucks (delivery tankers, vac trucks, and maintenance). *Target is to provide a clean 7 to 15 liters/person/day and treat the resultant wastewater. * **
1 Attachment(s)
Some questions to explore
In regard to the SWC "Experiment" in this thread, attached is a pdf file, with some introduction to terms and many questions, which would have to be addressed to reach longer-range targets. Basically, an edited cut and paste with only a few comments by me.
It might be helpful for internal use in setting directions.
Regards
Mike
Let's not reinvent the wheel
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There's a difference between "humanitarian aid" and "development aid". Humanitarian aid is about keeping people alive in extreme conditions; it's what we're trying to do in Haiti and in parts of Africa. Often in these conditions it's simply not possible to bring development aid into play effectively. Development aid to me is something that has to be carefully applied and used in plces and times where there's an opportunity. Tossing it around loosely ends up with the old paradigm of "poor people in rich countries giving money to rich people in poor countries", which is not what we want to do.
Dayuhan
Concerning that matter, unfortunately: NO.:(
Too often humanitarian aid is turned into giving poor people money from rich countries to rich people in poor countries at war.
The man who supplied WFP in Goma for years made a good amount of money (with 6 zero). And the local authorities took their part too.
In Chad, the "prefet" received a water tank of 20 000L for his personal use as proof of good will and cooperation from a very well known NGO.
In Lebanon, NGO distributed aid to Palestinian camps which were not even affected by the war. Several important families with strong hands in politic received through their foundations huge bulk of medical aid which they sold instead of distributing it.
In Liberia, WFP food smuggling was organized by the police.
I am thousands of examples. I even bought a refugee cart at my name for 500 US$ once and was registered under my real name into by HCR...
What you point out is just what we have to be careful of.
Steve,
Concerning water:
Have a look on Merlin and Oxfam web sites.
Basically assume that water is NOT DRINKABLE! portable water blazzer (5000, 10 000 L) will do the trick. compte 20 L per person/day.
Chlorine (you know the swimming pool stuff) will do the trick to clean the water and keep it safe. But the water must be kept out of sun light.
Form comities among the population to protect the water points around the water blazzers and explain to the people how to use the tapes.
Train people to chlorinate the blazzer when water is delivered.
There is no water tank trucks? Put a water blazzer 5000 L on a truck 2/3 full maximum (so it wont damage the blazzer when moving). You also have semi hard water blazzers (the bottom is in hard plastic) they are great for such use.
Blazzer must be 1 m higher than distribution point at least. Also build a bed of sand for the blazzer so you do not break it when you refill it.
Put you water point at least 10 m far from the Blazzer.
I highly recommand to NOT USE ROOF to set up water blazzer (1 L water = 1 KG: 5000 L = 5000 KG).
Roofs and buildings are fragile for the momment in Haiti.
Avoid distributing the big 100, 500 L drums. People will fight to get one.
When you install a blazzer, distribute jerricanes to the community around. 1 jerrican of 20 L per family. (if some receive 2... What the ####)
Also what comes with water is hygiene and latrines. In NGO/UN speaking language this is called watsan. UNICEF organise a watsan cluster every day, week, 2 days...(?). People have to participate! This is the main point where info is exchanged! ALL NGO ARE PARTICIPATING: NATIONAL, INTERNATIONAL... So should military acting in watsan! The same for shelter, food distribution, health... (I know, some UN agencies are better than others! But in the case of Haiti, I hope they will move their hass for once!)
All this is standard and in SPHERE.
For all possible activities, always have a look to the SPHERE standards from United Nations.
This is the basic international standards for emergency interventions. What the people have to receive at least to keep their dignity. (And Human dignity is cheap, believe me, even according SPHERE standards.)
When a guy says but who said the people have to have SPHERE standards water: just smach him! He is an idiot! :mad:
That's all for my practicle advices.
Mike,
Very usefull your pdf.
M-A
Soldiers doing civilian things
Hi Steve (in fact, hi to all the Steves :))
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from Dayuhan
Why would we want soldiers building water systems?
We don't (at least I don't; except for their own use); but ...
"instability situations" (where the US takes enough interest in an insurgency to intervene via "stability operations") are "insecure" - bang, bangs. Our civilian capabilities in those situations are either limited in fact (STP has spent 400+ posts describing those limitations) or foreclosed by charter (Peace Corps).
So, the Army's civil affairs units (and lesser so the Marines' two units) end up being tasked because they have the bodies and funding. Join in DoS and USAID (a shadow of its former self) components, such as STP (a armor commander in a former life), and that pretty much sums up the deployable components to build water systems in "instability situations".
No doubt that the US has a very large civilian capability to build water systems - and all other aspects of local governance. My own Copper Country could be stripped out (of its local governance folks) and they would make a very large "civil affairs" unit. The reality is that won't happen (for many reasons); and those USAian capabilities are not easily transferred to a foreign environment.
So, we are left with deploying military units, such as our local combat engineering company which has had multiple deployments (e.g., here and here). And, yes, we do recognize the effort - and that 40+ PHs were pinned, out of the 120 combat engineers who deployed (here).
One purpose of this thread is to find a better way - and, if PHs can be avoided or lessened, so much the better.
Regards
Mike
A truly outstanding comment and one that many need to read and heed, Dayuhan.
You have well encapsulated the major problems with the US approach (essentially "It's all about us...") in developing nations. I've seen it happen in half a dozen countries, every flaw you cited.
We need to stop trying to do this because we just flat do not do it well and usually do as much harm as good. Your point that development should not -- truly, cannot -- start until the security problem is resolved is spot on. I've watched us waste millions doing that stuff before the situation was resolved. Goos news is that we sometimes get to re-do it several times...
Military forces do military things -- development is not a military thing. You can use the military force to do that but it will do a mediocre job at best and too frequently, will just do a really poor job. I am familiar with all the arguments for 'why' the Armed Forces 'must' do this, to include the 'first responder bit. As I said, I've watched it many places -- and we have NEVER done it well, thus I believe most of those arguments to be fallacious and simply varied repetitions of 'that's the way we've always done it.' May be correct but that doesn't make it the best solution.
What is that old saw "If you're in a hole, stop digging..."
As Bob Killebrew said in his Blog post on the front page, "What we're doing now isn't working..." Too true. Yet we keep trying. I'm still wading through the over wordy and so far not terribly coherent offering from the great thinkers at CNAS (also on the the Front page) but I really get the impression that too many people think we should just keep doing things that do not work...:confused:
continuum and contiguum; the edge war theory
Hey Dayuhan, all the Steve, Mike and the others
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You have well encapsulated the major problems with the US approach (essentially "It's all about us...") in developing nations. I've seen it happen in half a dozen countries, every flaw you cited.
Well I think we are not speaking about the same thing.
State Building as a tool in Stabilization process is part of a greater plan.
You have 2 main issues on this. Most of the people tend to see Stabilization as a continuum that goes as follow:
Emergency/humanitarian => recovery/reconstruction => post conflict/pre development => development.
State Building is integrated at all stages with various tasks. What I developed in my previous mail is clearly located in Emergency/Humanitarian while what Dayuhan is addressing is clearly located in Post conflict and/or development.
This is the basic sheme for stabilization following the Rostow approach: a continuity in development from disaster (Prehistoric stage) to development (Full capitalist economy with democratic regime).
But conflicts are not homogenous. They are composed of a mosaic of situations that can be labeled in all the categories. Rather than mosaic, I prefer the concept of islands as the limits are porous. So you end up with a various rabge of micro contexts which can be extremely different: emergency in one village and development in the next one.
This is close to the edge concept that Surferbeetle was talking about.
In humanitarian “science” this is called a contiguum. This theory has been developed by a French guy based on urban emergency actions in the Balkans. I, basically (with others) extend it up to the village level.
So if the country as a whole is following the steps of the continuum, it is divided in a unlimited number of islands with a contiguum of situations going from war to stabilized economy for each of those island. The conytinuum situation of the country as a whole is determined by the prevailing situation in the majority of island. If it is emergencies then the country is still at the war/emergency stage. If it is development then the country is at the development stage.
So the first thing is to identify which box the place you are working in fits. Then when you know in which box you are then you can start pretty much standard actions. In emergencies all is covered by SPHERE Standards and NGO practices. In development, it is mostly best practices from USAID and other development actions. In the middle, then we can come with what we, as the practitioners part of SWJ, think are the best practices, the do and do not do.
And from that we can look at what CIMIC can do and how it is integrated into COIN or Population centric COIN or even POPULACE centric COIN.
And to respond to Steve
Yes, I think that a Civil/Military for the dummy hand book is what we, at SWJ, can contribute with.
may be not a science but certainly an art
Dayuhan,
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Humanitarian "science"? First time I've heard of such an animal, tell us more...
Apparently it’s a French delicatessen…:rolleyes: Well, actually in France you have 3 Universities teaching humanitarian actions and humanitarian Rights and Laws.
Plus one more university teaching logistic/administration… all the NGO administration stuff.
This came to the point they are developing humanitarian anthropology which is based on different bases that development anthropology.
Myself, in order to be much more bankable, I just passed a master in Crisis management: humanitarian and development actions at la Sorbonne, Paris.
But you have the Oxford Master program… There are some stuffs being developed on Humanitarian action as a “science” integrating civil security, emergency management, legal issues, rule of law…
“Science” is the only work that comes to my mind actually concerning this. There are already devastating bad effects: you see coming in the field young guys and girls thinking they know everything because they have been taught to do so and have a degree on it.
Sometimes, I’ll just like to sunk them in concrete, head first, just to remind them the hard way “we”, the stupid guys with long years spend in the field, we have learn our knowledge the hard way.
They do the same mistakes as us but now have a degree to back it up…
But the good thing is that some quite interesting theories as the continuum/contiguum have come out. Also some analyses of Culture as a tool to legitimize “civil society” disconnected from politic.
May be not a Science but certainly an Art :D
Steve,
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An ineffective national government, no effective sub-national governance structure, or credible plan for one, and, at the bottom of that pyramid, soldiers are supposed to build local governance to hand off to the national system that does not exist.
Two things are missing. If there was a subnational gov plan, us civ/mil could synchronize efforts to focus on support for implementation, but there is none, and there is no entity to either link or hand it over to.
A district with a $6 budget, no staff, and no cell phone is hardly going to be able to accept a hand-off of responsibility for an island of villages "redeveloped" by the US, and certainly cannot sustain or support any level of infrastructure/projects.
We can give all the advices of the world to good guys trying to do their best to build local governance capacity (a local administration basically in a good governance cheap dress). But without plan and vision of where to go by the Afghan… We build a white elephant. No doubts on that.
But anyways, I still think that there are best practices coming from the field. It’s may not be plug and play projects but rather how to build a project, what to do for assessment, what to look at, what to not do…
Still, it’s best practices that will help to have a better use of the money, time, energy… And may be achive results in the end
Standards are not meant to be: 1 you build a school 2) you build a well 3) you build a road…
Standards can be: 1) you assess the local production and markets. 2) you dress the gender task division. 3) you conduct focus groups…
Standards can be approaches…
This, it self is a debate. But once you have decide what you want to support then you have a good list of stupid stuff to not do, just like the Appalachian example.
best or worst practices... all a question of words
Dear Dayuhan and Rex,
I see clearly your point on best practices. In some how, we do agree and words are probably what separates us.
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Absolutely agreed. Indeed, I've often that we should spend far less time on "best practices," with all of the potentially dangerous baggage of external omniscience that it sometimes carries with it, and spend a little more time trying to understand "worst practices"--that is, how well-intentioned efforts can go awry, and what can be done to to mitigate those risks (or, at the very least, what questions ought to have been asked).
For me (And it's a personnal understanding) best practices includes DO and DON'T DO. And it's most of the time easier to find all the DON'T DO than even 1 I recommand you to process that way...
In some context, as emmergencies, you do have standards actions with basically: you do that way and no others for technical responses (Food distributiojns, water distributions, camp management...).
But I agree that it is limited for what I know best: immediat emmergencies responses. The "first box" if I can say so.
Even for recovery, (The very next box) you have "better" approach/practices and "practices to avoid" rather than a omniscient knowledge that you just drop on the people. Nothing is worst than a solution droped from the moon.
After, comes stages of "development" I have no clue of what could be a best practice or even a project. (I have no clue of what you do in rural development of a low developed country as Burkina Faso for example.)
If we go on a SWJ Experiment project that looks at providing a compilation of this community knowledge for State Building some steps can be just recommandations of what to not do with illustrated real cases.
The example of Dayuhan is basically a very good one, once you have clearly expose the context, of what to not do, how to not approach the problem...
But this example is may be something that is too far from the target we are looking at: advices for civil/military projects/actions.
We probably should be able to define the limits of such action and build the pre requirement of the advice: at that point you redraw and handover to the civilian development agencies, the local administration and step back until the local context falls back in a need for military action.
Governments are like most everything else.
Centralizing is invariably efficient. However, it is rarely as effective a a local or distributed effort...
All politics is local, quoth O'Neill. :wry:
I'll bow to your semantic distinctions Mike but I do believe
your examples made my poorly stated case...:wry:
Two noteworthy items from your informative Post:
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So, how does a country without much administration to begin with handle even the basic aspects of tax collection ? Unless the government is supported by foreign funding, it would probably find the easier path to be funding by natural resources (oil, narcotics, etc.).
Steve The Planner has provided a sensible answer -- my nonsensical one is that "Yes, it is easier and that's why there's so much of it out there..." :D
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probably West Virginia (if Sen. Byrd managed to snag that one).
Almost certainly there is one there, IIRC, there are 14 IRS Call Centers nationwide. The IRS 'puter center is there: LINK. :rolleyes: