China: The 2008 Olympics as a Major Activist Inroad
By Bart Mongoven
Fidelity Investments has sold off more than 90 percent of its holdings in Chinese state-owned oil giant PetroChina, Fidelity announced May 16. Although the company declined to explain the sale, it almost certainly is related to pressure from human rights and religious activists.

Activists argue that, as the primary oil field operator in Sudan, PetroChina is propping up the Khartoum regime responsible for the genocide in Darfur, so putting pressure on PetroChina is viewed as a way to pressure the Sudanese government indirectly. Fidelity's move marks an important strategic turning point in the battle between human rights groups and China over the Darfur region, and sets the stage for a far more powerful strategic thrust that will emerge during the summer -- one in which Darfur activists move from a financial divestment campaign to one focused on the 2008 Olympic Games.
Activists have long sought effective pressure points on China, and the Olympics look to be the answer. More specifically, activists are eyeing the list of Western corporate sponsors that are investing tens of millions of dollars in the Olympics and in companion marketing campaigns designed to run before and during the Olympics.

Olympic sponsorship in 2008 means more than in most past years. For Beijing, giants such as Kodak, Coca-Cola, McDonald's and General Electric are not simply the means to put on a good show; they are integral to its efforts to radically change international perceptions of China and establish its new place in the world. Beijing can control most of the variables that come its way -- the protesters, media investigations into corruption and other potential public relations problems that usually come with hosting the Olympics. And, with the sites chosen and no backup available, it can largely ignore the International Olympic Committee. What Beijing cannot control, however, are the decisions of the games' sponsors and the pressures placed upon these companies in the West.

Through the Olympic sponsors, activists have determined that the year leading up to the Olympics offers a unique opportunity to use market mechanisms to change Beijing's policies. The first Western movement to begin to capitalize on this vulnerability is the Save Darfur Coalition, which turned Sudan into a pariah state with which no Western company will do business only to have its efforts undermined by Chinese state-owned enterprises. Many other issues could have taken this mantle, but it appears that Darfur-focused activists have taken the lead on exploiting Olympics-related vulnerabilities -- and will manage the most effective Western campaign to change China's policies.

The coming year will determine whether activists can actually make Beijing blink. Moreover, it will determine how groups active on issues other than Darfur deal with the likelihood that the more focused Darfur coalition will overshadow their use of this golden opportunity.

Olympic Sponsorship

The decision to become an Olympic sponsor is a strategic one for companies. The price of sponsorship is steep -- estimated at roughly $55 million -- but that pales in comparison to the broader investment these companies make. The largest and most familiar sponsors have attached their most valuable asset, their brands, to the games, and have built long-term marketing plans in which the Olympics play an integral part.

With so much invested, Olympic sponsorship has always brought tension. The 2004 Athens games, which were twice threatened with a move to an alternate city due to poor organization, created stress among investors. Sponsors now have established offices in future Olympic cities, where they work as closely as possible with municipal authorities to ensure that the logistics and setup are on track.

In the years since 2001, when the 2008 games were awarded to Beijing, the games have carried an added political dimension for sponsors. Beijing recruited sponsors not just as sources of money, but as partners, and for large multinational corporations trying to learn how to operate in China the opportunity to work with Beijing was tempting. Those who signed on as sponsors see the success of these games not only as an opportunity to build their market share in the West, but also as a way to increase their presence in China. Beijing also subtly offered improved market access and other preferential treatment to companies that threw in behind the 2008 games.

Beijing, in order to assert itself on the international stage, has spent billions of dollars preparing for the games. It brought in the best stadium architects to build venues and hired Stephen Spielberg to choreograph the opening and closing ceremonies. In addition, the Chinese have razed entire neighborhoods to ease transportation and shuttered industries to clean Beijing's air. If it can be bought, Beijing is buying.

The support and presence of high-profile Western companies provided one thing that Beijing could not buy: legitimacy. The thinking is that the participation of major corporate icons will give a degree of continuity with previous Olympics, and that by extension China will be seen as a modern country rather than a developing one or, more negatively, as the killer of Tiananmen Square, the violator of human rights and the repressor of basic freedoms.
Activists who succeed in portraying corporate sponsors of Beijing's Olympics as supporters of China's behavior would undermine not only the companies' marketing efforts, but also Beijing's plan to use the games as a coming-out party

Darfur

The human rights controversy surrounding the civil war in Darfur has been growing since 1998. Khartoum's operations in Darfur mostly target Christians, and the issue surfaced from the concerns of evangelical Christian organizations active in Africa. By 1999, Darfur had emerged as a mainstream human rights concern, and organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch joined religious groups in calling for the United States and other Western governments to impose sanctions on the regime in Sudan.

Sudan essentially was a pariah state by the late 1990s, so it was obvious even at the beginning of the movement that diplomatic pressure on Sudan would be of limited value. Instead, recognizing the country's dependence on its southern oil production -- and on the companies that turn the resource into revenues for the regime -- activists focused on the corporations. With the flight of most Western companies in the first half of this decade, Khartoum, rather than lose its oil revenue, turned to China. Thus, through PetroChina the Asian giant has managed Sudan's oil operations and kept the money flowing into Khartoum.
Beyond the funding aspect, however, PetroChina's entry into Sudan has stood as a major symbol for Western human rights activists, who have come to view state-owned oil and resources companies as the most significant barrier to their ability to use market campaign pressure to change policies in developing countries.
In response to the globalization of corporations' operations and the rise of the World Trade Organization, human rights groups have come to rely increasingly on codes of conduct and other marketplace initiatives, such as the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative, to hold corporations accountable for their activities in developing countries. Western companies in particular are sensitive to allegations that they are complicit in human rights violations. State-owned enterprises abroad, on the other hand, are insulated from these pressures, and have begun to thrive in those places that Western companies dare not operate.
In human rights discussions, this is termed the "parastatal problem." It is the chief unsolvable barrier to successful efforts by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to use corporations as instruments of change in developing countries.

'Genocide Olympics'

Bumping up against the parastatal problem, the Save Darfur Coalition has begun to build toward using Olympic sponsors as leverage against Beijing. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed article published in late March, actor and activist Mia Farrow and her husband called for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics. The threat will fall on deaf ears, as the vogue of boycotting Olympics -- started by U.S. President Jimmy Carter in 1980 and re-tried in 1984 by the Soviets -- had no diplomatic effect and only made the boycotters' citizens angry.

The Farrow op-ed, however, contained a more serious threat: As long as China's state-owned enterprises remain in Sudan, the coalition aims to attack Olympic sponsors directly and rebrand the 2008 games as the "Genocide Olympics" (a term first used by Amnesty International to describe China's internal human rights record and the human rights implications of its foreign policy). More sensationally, the coalition threatened to name Stephen Spielberg the "Leni Riefenstahl of the Beijing games," a reference to the German filmmaker whose documentary of the 1936 Berlin games glorified the Nazi regime in the broader context of the Olympics. Spielberg now publicly calls for China to change its policy toward Sudan.

The threat to boycott is idle talk, but the threat to change the perception of the games is not. The Save Darfur Coalition includes many of the most talented corporate campaign groups in the world, and the realistic opportunity to change the situation in Darfur is attractive to Western activists of almost all stripes. In addition, the public has a high level of awareness of Darfur as a controversial issue, and most U.S. consumers recognize that China has a controversial human rights record. Sponsors are likely to be sensitive to allegations that they are supporting a "Genocide Olympics" and will take their complaints to Beijing. Given these factors, then, the campaign has an excellent chance of attaining at least some degree of success.
That said, defining "success" is a difficult task. China cannot simply stop the genocide in Darfur with a wave, and it must make a move that simultaneously satisfies its critics, has a chance of changing what is happening on the ground in Darfur and results in China's continued presence in Sudan. (Sudan supplies more than 5 percent of China's oil.) One problem is that China remains one of the last countries with any leverage against Sudan, so it is valuable to activists and governments alike as a point of communication with Khartoum. If pushed too hard, Khartoum could simply open to another state-owned company immune to Western public condemnation, kicking China out. Ultimately, China has few options. It could agree to try to convince Sudan to allow more U.N. and Africa Union peacekeepers into Darfur, but that would end the campaign only if the Save Darfur Coalition agreed that such a deal was sufficient.
In focusing the "Genocide Olympics" campaign squarely on Darfur, however, human rights groups are using a one-time opportunity to achieve a relatively modest goal -- and are passing up a unique moment to effect major change in China.

Falun Gong is another group that appears to recognize the unique opportunity the Olympics offer. This summer, Falun Gong is planning a wave of protests and actions that will bring world attention directly to China's human rights record. Other organizations -- labor, environmental, religious -- also could try to swoop in and use the Olympic moment.
China might be able to manage activist campaigns effectively and relatively peacefully. However, should pressure on internal fronts -- from Falun Gong or other human rights, democracy or free-expression activists -- get too high for Beijing to handle temperately, it could consider using Darfur as a public relations safety valve. Giving in and basically agreeing to work with NGOs on Darfur would satisfy critics by addressing what is for Beijing a third-tier issue.

A Journey Toward Respect

Our Voices Together Executive Director Marianne Scott reviews
Journey into Islam: The Crisis of Globalization
by Akbar Ahmed, Brookings Institution Press, May 2007

Thanks to Akbar Ahmed’s new insightful book, a global puzzle is finally fitting into place. It is one I have often pondered as I lived its various pieces.

After spending 11 years abroad as a Foreign Service Officer specializing in public diplomacy, I came back to work in the U.S. in May of 1998 from Nairobi, Kenya. Almost three months to the day of my arrival I woke up on a beautiful August morning to find that my office at the U.S. Embassy Nairobi was destroyed and some of my former colleagues killed by an al Qaeda bombing. After frantically calling my husband who was still in Nairobi but luckily not at the Embassy, I watched CNN. I saw on TV the streets and buildings I knew better than my new surroundings. I scanned the crowd scenes to see if friends were all right.

Over the next few years I tried to make sense of that bombing, the growing forces of globalization, and the fundamental shifts in the world during this post-Cold War period of dot com millionaires in the U.S. and the abject poverty in the places I had just lived. I tried to make sense of the huge gap I found between how my country understood our actions and place in the world, and how the rest of the world perceived us. I wondered where the input from the American public was in the formulation of foreign policy. With globalization, our own consumer decisions had a huge effect on our international relations and how others reacted to us. In the summer of 2001, I started a year-long fellowship at the League of Women Voters Education Fund to explore these areas and I was in the middle of writing A Citizen’s Guide to Global Economic Policymaking (published by the League in 2002) when al Qaeda terrorists attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001.

With globalization, our own consumer decisions had a huge effect on our international relations and how others reacted to us.

Just a few months later my college friend, Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl, was kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan, again the brutal work of al Qaeda. When the Pearl family told me they were planning to start a foundation to work on building cross-cultural understanding, the opportunity to do the kind of work I felt was so critical in honor of an old friend, called to me. I left the Foreign Service and began a new kind of service, first with the Daniel Pearl Foundation and now with Our Voices Together, a network of people and organizations, like the Pearl family, responding to terrorism by building a safer, more compassionate world. Many of these remarkable people lost loved ones to terrorism and in their honor are directly engaged in building a world where lives of dignity, opportunity and hope triumph over the allure of terrorist tactics. From building and equipping schools in Central Asia, to treating the mental anguish of war and terrorism in East Africa, to engaging in interfaith dialogue in North America, they are bringing good out of tragedy.

Yet the incongruence of the trends I had been living never left me.

While Anti-Americanism was certainly not a new phenomena worldwide, why was it used to justify large scale murder now?

Simple answers were offered up from many sides:

They hate our freedoms.
Islam is inherently violent.
3. Decades of exploitative government and corporate practices abroad coming home to roost.

These varied from just plain wrong to much too simplistic and self-serving to fully explain the situation.

Finally, a knowledgeable voice, informed by historical and contemporary research and vast personal experience, brings together the pre- and post-9/11 forces and tackles the myths and assumptions between the East and West to help us understand the why of what happened, and to offer recommendations to effectively diffuse the escalating clash.

Internationally renowned Islamic scholar Akbar Ahmed is that voice.

Finally, a knowledgeable voice, informed by historical and contemporary research and vast personal experience, brings together the pre- and post-9/11 forces and tackles the myths and assumptions between the East and West.

Journey into Islam: The Crisis of Globalization is a guided journey not just of the Muslim world but of the centripetal and centrifugal tendencies at work in the world today and how they interact with the struggles in Islam—both those within in Islam and those between the west and Islam.

Professor Akbar Ahmed and his American University team—two of his honors undergraduate students, his graduate students, and his anthropologist daughter—are the guides, showing you the Muslim world through their own religious and secular lenses. They allow you to see and hear the voices of the Muslim world as well as their interpretation of these voices as their own expectations are challenged by what they find.

Dr. Ahmed explains the struggle within Islam using a framework of three models of Muslim philosophies today:

1.the modernist,
2.the mystic
3.the orthodox literalist.

These three exist in both Sunni and Shia communities. Journey into Islam grounds them in three towns in India as metaphors for their world views..

He includes in this category socialist leaders of the Middle East,

He uses “Aligarh” for those who engage with modern ideas while trying to preserve what is, to them, essential to Islam.

1.Mohammad Reza Pahlavi the Shah of Iran, and democratic leaders of Malaysia in the 20th century.
2. He uses “Ajmer” for all those Muslims inspired by the Sufi and mystical tradition within Islam,
3. and “Deoband” for movements based in orthodox Islam, such as the Wahabis, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Hamas.

By sharing insights into his own spiritual path, he demonstrates a personal, fluid transition through these models as his own faith deepens and he seeks to make it relevant to the world around him.

Dr. Ahmed details how the modernist Aligarh has seemed increasingly conflicted, talking of the rule of law when most Muslim governments are not elected. Some modernists also have felt spiritually incomplete, encouraging Muslims to keep their faith out of sight while dealing with, and enjoying the benefits of, the western world.

After 9/11, the Ajmer mystic has been marginalized as his esoteric ideals of love seem increasingly unrealistic in today’s competitive world. But as Journey into Islam tells it, the Deoband literalist is crying out: Islam is under attack; we are being attacked. And it is this sentiment that feels most compelling. It is his call to arms that is being followed.

During their journey through the Arab world, Asia, North Africa and Turkey, Dr. Ahmed and his team queried the people they met in mosques, markets, schools, and fancy offices. Their questionnaires asked about historic and contemporary role models. While there was clear consensus on historic role models across all countries they surveyed—the Prophet Muhammad and caliphs—there was no such clear consensus on contemporary role models.

In this context the Deoband model has gained followers and relevance.

The West has increasingly equated Islam with terrorism while Muslims worldwide have equated Americans with warmongers, and the cycle of threat, anger and violent retribution continues on both sides, each reinforcing stereotypes of the other.

When Journey into Islam delves into the tribal nature of the Islamic world, Dr. Ahmed’s anthropology training comes through. He uses the word “tribal” purposefully, perhaps to reclaim it from the negative connotations that erroneously associate tribes with “primitive” people. He certainly uses the word to drive home the point that the Islamic world is a much older civilization than the U.S., and traditional societies are sophisticated and complex, with values, communities, and moral codes that must be taken into account if outsiders are to accurately interpret their actions. He focuses in particular on honor and dignity as being absolutely vital to any understanding of why the Islamic world has reacted the way it has to globalization and to the military, political, economic and cultural intrusion in their region.

Dr. Ahmed contrasts the “bubble” of most Americans’ daily routines that rarely take them off of familiar paths between work, school, home, and a social circle of like-minded, racially and economically-similar people, against the sense of upheaval felt in the Muslim world. Amidst the “foaming anti-Americanism” the team found in the Muslim world, they administered questionnaires which showed a clear majority of Muslims across the world citing “Western misconceptions of Islam” as the number one threat facing the Muslim world. And this overwhelming perception of American lack of respect for Islam and the attacks on the honor and dignity of Muslims helps explain both the popular appeal of the use of terrorism against the West and how to counter it.

Journey into Islam ends with a call to solutions that “take into consideration the interconnectedness of the world, the fact that everything happening in the United States is making an almost immediate impact in the Muslim world, and vice versa.” Our Voices Together is proud to be one of the examples Dr. Ahmed holds up as on the right path towards building a better world. His appeals for actions based in justice, honor and dignity to replace those that come from anger are logical and firmly based in an understanding of the people in the conflict. His advice that Americans must not distance themselves from the injustices of the world must be heeded. His case that true dialogue is essential to beginning the process to stop hate is more than compelling; it is indeed the best way and the only way.

Journey into Islam offers a role each one of us can personally play to catalyze peace, understanding and hope in the world. Listen to his voice today. Read this book! -- April 2007



Read and discuss Dr. Ahmed's new book for your book club! Click on the image at right to order the book from Amazon.com (available in May)

Lessons from the Edge of Globalization: 3 days in Iraq from the Syrian/Turkish Border to the Iranian Border
This blog is the continuation of an earlier post [3 Days in Iraq from the Syrian/Turkish Border to the Iranian Border]. I apologize for the interrupted storyline, but let me pick up where I left off. If you recall, I mentioned that I had met a family in Dohuk that is building a conglomeration of businesses. The amazing thing about this family is that they have built a conglomerate on the Edge of Globalization without access to institutional funding. They have accomplished this using sheer determination and employing canny business practices in an environment of instability and unregulated capitalism. They employ people, they build buildings, they utilize technology to manufacture and sell goods and services. They did not need governmental agencies telling them what to do -- they only needed a security envelope (provided by the Peshmerga) and a cooperative government that encouraged development without over-regulation.
After we toured the facilities, our team went to a luncheon provided by our hosts at a restaurant about 30 minutes closer to the Syrian/Turkish border where we met the local governmental officials. This meeting took place at a beautiful location on a river bank overlooking a 1,500 year old stone bridge.
Bob Love, who is Paul Brinkley’s hard charging, extremely competent, deputy in charge of Iraq reconstruction briefly met separately with the regional leaders. More about Bob in a later blog.
While Bob was finishing his meeting, Major John Wilson (the leader of the Civilian Affairs Team that heroically helped rescue Kurdish people from the truck bomb last week) presented a local leader with a flag that was flown over the U.S. part of the South Korean military base in Erbil as recognition for all he has done to build and make prosperous the Dohuk region.
Well-dressed children were coming around us and selling candy and asking us about America. We took some very poignant pictures with the children.
This was contrasted with the equally poignant children but in a more dangerous and destitute location outside a former Saddam Hussein prison.
We then headed further west to the border crossing checkpoint with Turkey. We entered a small U.S. military post on the border and saw how this border is managed. Completely full trucks, stretching for miles into Turkey loaded with any product you can imagine are seeking to deliver their products to buyers in Iraq. However, on the opposite side of the border another story unfolds. There is a two week wait (yes, I said two weeks!) for trucks coming from Iraq to cross into Turkey. Along the road are makeshift housing facilities equipped with satellite dishes that drivers can use during their two-week wait along a dusty and dirty road that moves trucks from one holding pen to another as they creep up to the border inspection stations in Iraq and then to their equivalent inspection stations in Turkey. A combination of inefficiency, lack of advanced technology, marginal process efficiency, poor synchronization between Iraq and Turkey and, of course, the security requirement to thoroughly search every truck means the long lines are not going to disappear anytime soon. However, this is not the worst thing about the crossing.
Virtually all of the trucks crossing back into Turkey from Iraq are completely empty. If there were robust manufacturing and other commercial business operations in Iraq, these trucks would be full of products to be sold in Turkey and to the rest of the world as they transit through Turkey’s ports. The only kind of trucks that do cross fully loaded are 3,000 gallon tankers filled with Iraqi oil destined for a Turkish power generation facility just over the border. The electricity produced by the plant is sold back to the Iraqi’s at western market rates. What this obviously says is that Iraq has the raw materials but does not possess the production capability to turn oil into electricity and as such pays a tremendous financial and strategic price for this lack of capacity. The net result of this border crossing reality is a Current Account trade imbalance of almost 100% between Turkey and Iraq.
Additionally, as Kurdistan booms economically, a tremendous amount of development work is being done by the Turkish companies who have the skilled labor and technology required to build the new Kurdistan. The Turks, however, are not bearing their fair share of the trade burden –- in other words, this is not a real partnership. Building the capacity to develop critical infrastructure industries is precisely what Tom Barnett and I are trying to build with our Development-in-a Box™ solution that provides reproducible solutions that can be rapidly delivered as a customizable push package to post-conflict, post-failed state, developing country environments. One big bright spot on our trip was in the energy production area. We saw a number of mid-sized energy production plant transactions being arranged and funded throughout Kurdistan. In fact Wayne Culbreth, a new friend and Managing Director of FDF Capital Management, is contemplating participating in or providing lead funding for an oil refinery in Kurdistan.
After we left the Turkish border, we drove south to the Syrian border. Along the way we saw a peaceful and pastoral landscape of rolling hills and dales. Interrupting that setting were roadside stockpiles of unexploded ordnance near where children played and animals grazed.The juxtaposition is unnerving and at the same time illustrates the resilience of the people and the regional economy to a constantly dangerous security and unstable economic backdrop. After the Syrian border visit, we proceeded to drive back to Erbil where we went through Kurdish checkpoint after checkpoint operated and guarded by the Peshmerga. They were on heightened alert as a result of the truck bomb of a few days earlier.
Our party stayed at the New City Hotel in Erbil. As you can see, it was quite modern and comfortable. It was while we were eating breakfast at the hotel that we heard the explosion from the suicide truck bomber at the Ministry of Interior about a mile and a half away.
In one of my earlier posts, I also mentioned that last fall Kurd Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani opened the city's largest shopping center – the New City Mall. The mall stands in stark contrast to what many people think about Iraqi shopping areas --dirt paths winding through colorful open air stalls. As the image shows, the New City Mall looks like any modern mall that you could find in suburban America.
The next day we were supposed to take 2 Chinook helicopters to Sulaimaniyah. The helicopters were grounded due to high winds so we improvised and the civilian affairs team plotted a land route to Sulaimaniyah. We formed up another convoy and proceeded on the 2 ½ - 3 hour journey across a mountain range towards eastern Iraq and the Iranian border. The mountains were again beautiful. As our convoy sped through them, we could see how different Kurdistan is from other parts of Iraq. It is largely green and lush with vegetation and speckled with people working the land.
When we arrived at the border of Sulaimaniyah we were greeted by the Governor, some of his officials, and a security team that led us into the city center. We immediately went into a meeting with government officials and business leaders. Paul Brinkley (Deputy Under Secretary Of Defense For Business Transformation) was introduced and then the Governor addressed the audience. Following the Governor's speech, Paul outlined his eloquent arguments about the need to rebuild the Iraqi economy and he extolled the relative safety and security of Kurdistan and Sulaimaniyah. The Governor then spoke about the growth of Sulaimaniyah and indicated that it needed to mature its banking sector rapidly. With that statement -- and considering all the discussions of the previous days in Kurdistan leading up to this meeting -- everything simply clicked in my mind as to how Development-in-a Box™ offers a transcendent governing principle for managing countries through the 4th wave of globalization.
As the Governor mentioned, the banking industry must be a key enabler of the Sulaimaniyah economy and needs to be immediately modernized and connected to the global banking ecosystem. Paul and I looked at each other in agreement, as if to say that -- here on the Edge of Globalization -- we have found affirmation of a new paradigm that can be used to smooth out the friction generated by the shifting of globalization’s tectonic plates taking place along the fault lines of what my partner Tom Barnett identifies as the seam between the Core (modern and integrating states) and the Gap (non-integrating, non-modern) states. Suddenly, the dialogues made sense that Maj. Gen. John Phillips, USAF (ret.) (who is Enterra’s Sr. Vice President for Global Logistics, Defense and a former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, Logistics) and I have been having for months with Paul about Enterra going to Iraq . I had been resisting the idea, but all my skepticism fell away and I bought off on making Iraq work. Paul is a little like the CEO of an emerging company. He is an evangelist for new paradigms within the Pentagon and has to convince numerous stakeholders to adopt new ways of thinking.
The rest of the day was spent in meetings with a number of different government and commercial entities seeking cooperation and investment by U.S. companies. I was able to engage with government and banking officials about the creation of a core banking system and how our Enterprise Resilience Management Solution™ for the regional banking entities could assist them. I was also able to meet and engage with officials from ASAI Telecomm who have a similar interest to that of Korec Telecom in developing a core telecommunications system for their institutions.
Our dinner, also hosted by the Governor, was at a local restaurant where our entire team sat outside and enjoyed dining on a beautiful late spring evening. Again, this underscored the fact that resilience pays dividends. The dinner was largely a business development activity that allowed people to meet and negotiate in a social setting. I was able to talk with the CEO of a leading information technology and management consulting firm and one of his senior technologists. They want to team up to deliver a ResilienceNet™ solution around critical infrastructure in the Sulaimaniyah region.
The next day the team arose early and separated into different groups to conduct meetings. Another new friend, Subbas Sircar, who is the regional vice president of AIG for the Middle east, Mediterranean and South Asia, had an interesting morning meeting with local bankers. They are seeking to expand and strengthen local banks as I discussed earlier. This group craved exposure to current international banking best practices, core banking information technology and know-how that would allow them to connect to the global banking industry as well as the training and education that would allow staff members to raise themselves up to a minimal level of maturity so they can foster commerce in their region. This experience with bankers in Sulaimaniyah and in Erbil, along with the telecommunications companies seeking the same capability in their industry, are proof positive of the need for Development-in-a-Box™.
Thus one lesson from the Edge of Globalization is that once a nation state or independent autonomous region, like Kurdistan, obtains a minimal level of security local stakeholders will seek, through their own efforts, to become market leaders. Entrepreneurs will virally develop businesses to meet market demands. Another lesson is that the people who possess resilient, adaptable and positive spirits are the ones that a make the difference. Throughout Kurdistan we found people who have that vital spirit. Therefore, I agree with Paul Brinkley, Bob Love and their team that Kurdistan is fertile for economic development and that it could be the bright shining beacon in the area for capitalism and democracy.
More later on analysis of the region based upon our last 8 days in Kurdistan.

Integrating Islam
By Jamie Glazov
FrontPageMagazine.com | May 16, 2007

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Jonathan Laurence, an assistant professor of political science at Boston College and an affiliated scholar at the Center on the U.S. and Europe at the Brookings Institution. Recent publications include Islam and Identity in Germany and a review essay on Tariq Ramadan in the current issue of Foreign Affairs. He is the co-author (with Justin Vaisse) of the new book Integrating Islam: Political And Religious Challenges in Contemporary France.

FP: Jonathan Laurence, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Laurence: Thanks for your interest in our book.

FP: What inspired you to write this book?

Laurence: Justin Vaisse and I found that many of the accounts of Islam in France coming out of the media and think tanks were light on data and heavy on fatalism. We were struck by the unavailability of social scientific analysis of this complex topic for English-speaking audiences and wanted to add some facts to the debate. The image of "Eurabia," for example, is compelling -- but it doesn't square with the fieldwork, interviews and data collection we had been carrying out since the year 2000.

FP: Ok, for the sake of our readers, explain a bit what the image of “Eurabia” means exactly and why that image doesn’t square with the facts. What facts are you referring to?

Laurence: The notion of Eurabia, popularized by the Harvard historian Niall Ferguson, relies on Bernard Lewis's projection of an "Islamicized" Europe by the end of this century. This mutant continent in the making would be hostile to the US and Israel, and would be governed by Shari'a law. In the writings of pseudonymous Bat Ye'or, who has promoted the term Eurabia, "dhimmitude" (minority status for non-Muslims) is never far away.

Ye'or engages in a fanciful reading of some early 1970s trade agreements and the "Euro-Arab Dialogue" (EAD) to justify her views that Europe long ago succumbed to an Arab-Muslim invasion. Yet I don't quite know what she means by this. Keep in mind that the EAD began soon after the Netherlands and the US were hit with the oil embargo. The aim of these diplomatic and commercial ties, from the Europeans' perspective, was to keep a steady flow of oil during the energy crisis. This was also clearly a power play to reassert French and European diplomatic and commercial weight after the postwar period of decolonization; 1973 was just over a decade after French withdrawal from its last Arab outpost, in Algeria. The politicians involved didn't see why the region should be left to be divvied up into American or Soviet spheres of influence.

From the perspective of some of the oil producing Arab states involved, the EAD was a forum in which to pursue economic ties and to press the case of the Palestinians and Israel's Arab neighbors who had just suffered another military defeat in the Yom Kippur war. So the participating Arab governments implicitly used the "oil weapon" in order to broach the question of Palestine. Yet isn't this just the kind of discussion that Saudi princes have with American Presidents?

I just don't see how this all adds up to a grand European capitulation. In fact, this was the moment when France began a major push towards energy independence through nuclear power. Precisely at the time of the embargo, moreover, European states with growing immigrant minorities from North Africa and Turkey officially ended mass labor migration -- there were perhaps 2-3 million migrant workers living in the European Community then, mostly single men. And no one can accuse the French (who have the largest Muslim minority in Europe) or the Germans (who have the second-largest) of being overly accommodating towards cultural or religious diversity. At least not with a straight face. To the extent that European governments accepted Arab states' offer of cultural programs for migrants at that time - e.g. in Arabic language and far less often, religious programs - they were motivated by a desire to eventually facilitate return migration and/or to police potential religious extremists who posed a threat to their home countries' political stability.

Under examination, the Eurabia claim boils down to an attempted explanation of Europeans' contemporary support for Palestinians in the Israeli-Arab conflict. But even as such it is unsatisfactory: it isn't clear to me how European attitudes towards Israel --which are hardly uniformly hostile -- would be any different without their Muslim minorities.

Finally, in my last several years of field research and interviews across Europe -- for Integrating Islam with Justin Vaisse (2006), for the report I wrote for the International Crisis Group on Islam in Germany (2007), and for my own PhD thesis on Muslims and the state in Europe (2006) -- I have not received the impression that the continent is on the verge of "Islamicization." There is indeed a new, visible minority. It creates a spectacular new set of policy challenges, including the potential threat of terrorism. But the integration problems that we witness do not seem linked to Islam as a religion, per se. It would take another discussion to get into how European governments have addressed the religion issue in concrete and even constructive ways in the last few years -- the French Council for the Muslim Religion, the German Islam Conference, the Italian Islamic Consultation, etc. These are all signs of state strength to me, not of weakness, since they are wrestling with the fundamental challenge of how to "domesticate" a transnational religion: an issue that preoccupied 19th century states as well (though with Catholicism and Judaism instead of Islam).
FP: I don’t quite get your point about the "oil weapon" and the analogy to the Saudi-U.S. relationship. You are assuming, without evidence, that the Saudi connection with US presidents has been benign. And it clearly hasn’t been. And this is all the more reason to regard everything connected here with suspicion.

I also find it interesting that you do not mention the EU pledges to eschew assimilation and foster the growth of Islamic culture in Europe. You also do not mention demographic trends either.
Furthermore, I am not so sure that how the integration problems we see are not linked to Islam as a religion. I think many Muslims in Europe would have quite a bit to say in reference to their religion in explaining why they don’t want to integrate into their host societies. Readers are welcome to read my recent interviews with Bat Ye’or, Bruce Bawer and Melanie Phillips, to consider the alternative thesis that Eurabia may not be such an unrealistic scenario, and that Muslims may indeed pose a threat to Europe -- and precisely because of the theological mandates of their religion.

Laurence: It appears we are coming to these questions from different perspectives and experiences.

Please tell me which French policies towards its Muslim minorities would fall into the category of "eschewing assimilation and fostering the growth of Islamic culture"? Additionally, if that were indeed a Europe-wide policy agenda, don't you think it would have been easier in the past for Muslims to get building permits for mosques, separate sections in cemeteries, halal slaughter facilities, visas for imams, or religious instruction for their children in schools? These accommodations were hardly forthcoming. Indeed we've seen laws against headscarf wearing, mandatory co-education in physed classes, deportations of radical imams, etc. To the extent that religious accommodations have emerged over the course of the last few years, they resemble existing arrangements for other faith groups and are subject to rather strict state oversight.

I appreciate your instinct to be suspicious and look for "everything connected here." But try to take a step back. The relationship of Europe and the Arab world is a nexus of diplomacy, trade, pragmatism and past history and cannot be reduced to a single variable. I didn't say that the Saudi-US relationship was benign, just that one can consider the ways in which US foreign policy can be distinguished from its energy policy. Is the US less supportive of Israel because of the government's close relationship with oil-producing Arab states who themselves don't recognize the Jewish state? European policies towards the Arab world are similarly the expression of their complex sets of national interests. This doesn't mean the US and Europe see eye to eye on these matters, or that they ever will. But their divergences cannot be explained simply by pointing to some secret Euro-Arab pact from 1973.

Finally, you raise an interesting point about the "theological mandates" of religion. But don't these change over time? Recall the connection between the development of civic and political rights for Jews and the emergence of the Reform Judaism movement in the 19th century. There is a spectrum of Muslim theologians -- from the very conservative to the very liberal -- who are at work across Europe to align the obligations of faith and the duties of citizenship. This does not happen overnight, but there are some promising developments.
FP: Well, suffice it to say that the mandate of jihad in the Islam religion is something quite different than anything that exists in Judaism and Christianity. All the schools of Islamic jurisprudence teach that it is part of the responsibility of the umma to subjugate the non-Muslim world through jihad.

But we’ll have to save the debate over this matter and the others for another forum.

So tell us the critical challenges that Islam poses to France today.

Laurence: Many Muslims in France experience socio-economic integration problems that do not have anything to do with their religion in particular, but which in the aggregate can threaten social stability - as we saw in October-November 2005. High unemployment and spatial segregation are chief among these. The religion itself, as it is practiced by the vast majority of Muslims in France, poses mostly practical challenges that are typical of newly settled religions, e.g. inadequate prayer spaces, insufficient religious personnel, and regulatory issues that still need to be ironed out (e.g. cemeteries, animal slaughter, etc.). The challenges of terrorism and anti-Semitism emanating from the Muslim population, which Justin Vaisse and I discuss at length in separate chapters, are also critical.

FP: Just to crystallize things: it should be the responsibility of Muslims to assimilate into the values of their new host society, right?

Laurence: I'm not sure what you mean by assimilation -- but if you mean respect for the law and speaking the local language then yes, sure. But smart governments will think of ways to encourage everyday integration without placing the entire onus on migrants and their descendants. If the children of immigrants do not have good educational opportunities and job prospects, or if they face discrimination at work or in housing searches, etc., then it is the state's responsibility to do something about this.

FP: Well I wonder whose responsibility it is to do something about the reality of many Muslim immigrants despising their host society, not wanting to integrate or assimilate in any way, and doing everything in their power to destroy the host society and to create a Sharia state in its place.

Laurence: You could begin to satisfy your curiosity about this reality by looking at poll data from Pew, Gallup, Zogby, the US State Department (see pp.45-47), or the French Institute for International Relations (IFRI). I humbly suggest these supplements to your Bawer, Ye'or and Phillips reading list; these data tell a rather different story and I encourage you to look at them.

You raise a fundamental question about diverse societies yet I fear you miss the forest for a single tree. Are you ready to ask Hasidic or Amish communities in the US to "integrate and assimilate"? Would you ask local archbishops to renounce their implicit (or explicit) legislative agendas? If not, it's worth considering how to extend your practice of religious tolerance to include Islam in western societies. Muslim populations, just like Jews and Catholics and many other groups, include some more fervent believers than others, including some who would like to live according to their own rules and/or who would like the majority society to adopt their particular set of values. So long as they pursue these goals in the same peaceable fashion that observant Jews and Catholics and others now do, I don't see how you could exclude Muslims from the pluralist framework in contemporary western political systems.
FP: Again, I think you are overlooking that the imperative to subjugate the world under the rule of Islamic law is deeply embedded within Islamic tradition (Qur’an 9:29, Sahih Muslim 4294; and a host of other evidence from all the Sunni madhahib and Shi’ite sources). This is the threat of radical Islam from abroad and also from within. There is nothing comparable in the cases of Jews and Christians.

But let's move on. Tell us some of the ingredients about Muslim integration in France.

Laurence: The existence of a universal model of citizenship and the accessibility of French language and culture are important ingredients. French Muslims' optimism about their future and their faith in French institutions --repeatedly demonstrated in the opinion surveys cited above -- will also remain a key factor in everyday integration. French politicians received a major wake-up call with the riots of 2005, however, and will need to remain vigilant that "liberté, fraternité, egalité" does not become an empty slogan.

FP: Are you optimistic or pessimistic about Muslim integration in France as well as in the pluralistic and democratic West overall?

Laurence: It's hard to make predictions, especially about the future. But it seems that Muslims in France and elsewhere in the West are going through a process of integration -- and reconciliation of the competing claims of religion and politics -- similar to what Catholics, Protestants and Jews went through before them. This makes me optimistic overall but I'm mindful that previous experiences of emancipation and integration were not all unmitigated successes.

FP: But again, surely you cannot compare these experiences. Christians and Jews believe in the separation of Church and State. Islam rejects this separation.

Laurence: It is interesting that you say "Christians and Jews" believe in the separation but "Islam" does not. You can find plenty of fodder for sweeping generalizations like the one you just made (or the opposite) in the original texts of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. What matters, in my view, is how people live their religion today -- especially those outside of their respective holy lands. As Justin Vaisse and I write in Integrating Islam, there is no single "Islam" -- it is what Muslims make of it.

FP: Well it doesn’t really matter whether it is interesting or not that I say that Judaism and Christianity support a separation of Church and State and that Islam does not, because all of this is independent of the reality that it is a fact. That’s why Christians and Jews built societies, and today live in societies, that respect the principle of rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s. This way of living is rooted in their theological texts. Islam rejects the separation of Church and State. It does not support a secular sphere.

So yes, Islam is what Muslims make it. But unfortunately to make Islam a religion that spawns a culture where the secular sphere is respected, and where individual rights are guaranteed, Muslims will have to remake their religion and change the theological mandates that negate the possibility of individual rights in a secular society. As I mentioned earlier, all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence teach that it is part of the responsibility of the umma to subjugate the non-Muslim world through jihad. That we have some Muslim allies that would like to change this reality is true. That they face a huge task remains a troubling reality.

Laurence: You may have missed my point, but at least we can agree that this is a huge task.

FP: Jonathan Laurence, thank you for joining us today.

Laurence: I appreciate the invitation.

Stanford Report, May 16, 2007
Roundtable probes the politics of China’s large-scale investments in Africa

BY ANNIE JIA

L.A. Cicero
Ryan Orr is executive director of the Stanford Collaboratory for Research on Global Projects.

When it comes to providing water, power and roads to developing countries, the rules are anything but clear, said Ryan Orr, executive director of Stanford's Collaboratory for Research on Global Projects (CRGP). In particular, China and other developing countries have begun to invest in large-scale infrastructure projects in Africa and other emerging markets, adding a new layer of complexity, Orr said.

His comments came during CRGP's third roundtable on global infrastructure investment held on campus April 27-28. The annual event brings together investors from various countries and Stanford scholars to discuss trends in international infrastructure investment.

Chinese investment in Africa has grown rapidly in recent years, and with it has come a need for the West to rethink its approach to doing business in the region, said roundtable participant Vishnu Sridharan, a Stanford law student and research assistant at the CRGP.

"It is undeniable that Western countries and other developing countries must begin to take China into account in their pursuit of economic and political objectives in the region," Sridharan said.

In 2006, Chinese contractors won a third of all public works contracts funded by the African Development Bank—eight times the number awarded to any other country. Furthermore, direct investment in Africa by China, in which Chinese financial institutions initiate and fund projects, more than quadrupled between 2001 and 2005, according to a joint study conducted by CRGP, Tsinghua University, the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. The study is slated to be released later this year.

However, not all are benefiting equally, said CRGP Director Raymond Levitt, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford and a researcher in the study. Most of the money is going to oil-rich countries, with Angola, Sudan and Nigeria—Africa's top three oil producers—accounting for more than 80 percent of China's investment in the continent, Levitt said, adding that China has even adopted a strategy of often taking oil as direct payment in place of money.

Playing politics
China's close diplomatic relationship with many sub-Saharan African countries has given it an advantage over many Western nations, which have more clouded histories in Africa, Sridharan noted. China's friendship with African countries has its roots in the 1950s, when the Chinese government began fostering close ties with the continent, largely in an effort to unite against imperialism, he said. African votes eventually proved invaluable to winning China a seat on the United Nations Security Council, he said, noting that the continent also has been a powerful ally in promoting the "One China" policy, with only five African countries maintaining formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan as of 2006.

While oil may be a big driver behind China's interest in Africa today, political goals also are a factor in Sino-African policy, Sridharan said. "China is interested in having a more multi-polar, heterogeneous international order," he said. "Also, they're trying to alter the idea of development, with an emphasis on political stability and economic development over democratic institutions. China wants to promote this vision of development in Africa in lieu of more Western ideas of development."

Such goals have led China to adopt a non-interference policy toward African governments by backing their sovereignty and keeping its hands off their internal affairs, Sridharan said.

"A lot of Western loans have requirements attached to them," Orr noted. "The fact that Chinese investors are willing to lend without these standards, often with very attractive terms, makes them an obvious source of capital."

This hands-off approach, which leaves the door open for environmental, political and human rights abuses, is exactly what Western countries find most troubling, said Henry Chan, a graduate student in civil and environmental engineering and research assistant at the CRGP.

"The West wants to find more sustainable ways to develop Africa, and they see China as a country that does not have the same intention," he said. "They see this as a big step backward in the ongoing effort the West has been engaged in over the last few decades or so to set environmental, governance and human rights standards."

Equator Principles
Dozens of major banks and other financial institutions in developed countries, such as Citigroup, have begun to adopt a set of voluntary environmental and social standards called the Equator Principles, said Suellen Lazarus, a senior adviser at the Dutch bank ABN AMRO. But Chinese banks have not adopted the principles, which were created largely in response to pressure from nongovernmental organizations and the media, she added.

However, for Jianzhong Lu, vice president of the China Communications Construction Highway Engineering Co., the need to establish infrastructure, such as water treatment projects, outweighs the need to address the ensuing environmental problems. These projects can sometimes have health and environmental benefits to people far greater than their environmental impacts, he said.

"The main point here is, what is the concern of African countries and local communities?" Lu said. "Even though when you invest in any infrastructure project, sustainability should be a consideration, it becomes a problem when it interferes with the implementation of a project," he added, citing badly needed projects in Africa that have been stalled for more than a year because of World Bank requirements for environmental assessments.

Underscoring the close relationship that China has had with many African nations, Lu said that African leaders were overwhelmingly positive about Chinese investment, which has increased competition for oil and thus raised prices. "Previously, Western countries could fix prices," he said. "Now African nations can sell their oil at market prices."

Global symbiosis
"Where you have more suppliers, the African countries believe they have more of a right to choose," added Akinyele Dairo, senior program adviser at the U.N. Population Fund, who offered an African perspective on China's infrastructure investments. "That means that whatever partnership they enter into will be beneficial to both parties. If you're looking at economic empowerment of the country, there has to be a win-win partnership."

When asked about the risks of Chinese investment in Africa, Dairo said, "If infrastructure development is done the right way, there is no way that it cannot benefit the general populace. There is just the need for Chinese companies to exercise more caution."

Dairo also stressed the need to more actively engage the African parties involved.

The increased competition places a burden on investors such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank to reevaluate their roles and business models in developing countries, Orr added. The end objective, however, is to foster collaboration rather than competition between the various parties, he stressed.

"Our goal has been to understand how water, power and these other infrastructure projects can be delivered to developing countries," Orr said. "A better understanding of the macro trends in the world will help all of the different parties."

The roundtable was funded by CRGP's industry affiliates and co-chaired by Stanford law Professor Thomas Heller; Barry Metzger of the Chicago-based law firm Baker and McKenzie; and John Cogan of the Washington, D.C.-based law firm Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer and Feld.

Annie Jia is an intern at the Stanford News Service.