Hi Steve,

You've managed to bring in the techie factor (which I omitted since I was focusing on my current areas of interest) as well as pointing out that there is a spectrum of efforts dependent on the situational environment:

from Steve

We could also discuss a five-year master plan for the AO on those same benches. Lets consider the demographics of who will be participating in these four separate events upon the multi-use benches.

1. Teachers/Teachers Assistants who are educated, vetted, paid, and supplied by an agreed to educational system.

2. Judges/Lawyers/Police who have been educated, vetted, paid, and supplied by an agreed to judicial system.

3. Politicians who have been educated, vetted, paid, and supplied by an agreed to political system.

4. Engineers/Tech’s/Blue Collar Workers who have been educated, vetted, paid, and supplied by an agreed to engineering system.

Capacity building (aka raising/training a local technocrat army) allows us to focus scarce resources upon the systems which sustain benches or buildings as the situation dictates.
No disagreement as to any of this, which depends on how primitive or advanced the systems are - and on capabilities (scarce resources) that are available.

If you are so lucky as to have an intact civil administration (as in Malaya), the task (besides providing security) is to enhance what is already there - as well as the colonial power (UK) being willing to provide a nationalistic Narrative (Malayan independence taking into account the three major ethnic groups, Malay, Chinese and Indian) acceptable to the vast majority of the People.

If you have a society that is more urban and modernized - as well as used to centralized control - such as Iraq, more conventional methods (more similar to what we would use here at home) can be successfully applied. Both you and Steve the Planner have pointed that out.

With the benches, I was looking at a more primitive rural situation in what could be called a failed or largely failing state. In all three situations, the folks have to be "educated, vetted, paid, and supplied"; but what those quoted words mean will differ greatly.

You (engineer) and I (bio-chemist in a former life; and lawyer in present life) would be over-educated for the roles needed in a very basic situtation. We could adapt (I suspect), but we would need to adapt to the very basic conditions and problems presented.

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Real Stone Soup

Great story. Giap's PUFL teams did just that, but the soup resulting was political. That is, the first step was to infiltrate the community (preferably with former residents) and determine what the gripes were - and what little non-muscle things could be done. After developing the local Narrartive (which had nothing to do with Communism), the teams would then subvert the community and radicalize it against the local government factors and symbols. Of course, that meant killing off unpopular landlords, local officials and teachers, etc.; but only after the local community was more or less ready for those more drastic measures. From our standpoint, it was a Devil's Soup.

Regards

Mike