Overdoing diplomacy

Yeah, what he said.

Contracting foreign aid

Tom Friedman has a great column in today’s New York Times on the dysfunctional contracting processes in the US Government.  Although he talks about this mainly from the military side, it resonates strongly with my experiences in foreign aid.  I quit the US Agency for International Development (USAID) because I could see that my job was basically a contract manager.  I was an economist for the USAID mission in Tanzania and was not implementing any projects.  Rather, my job was to solicit proposals and monitor contractors’ progress on implementation.  Now I am on the other side as a contractor.  The amount of wasteful paperwork and confusing regulations the contracting process has created is simply unfathomable.  I feel for the poor people at Georgetown who have to negotiate these issues and I thank them dearly for keeping me out of these eye-crossingly complex processes.  It would be much easier – not to mention more effective – if USAID went back to implementing.  The contracting process is broken.  It’s time to get rid of it, but that is wishful thinking.

Karzai’s catch-22

Dr. Abdullah Abduallah announced today that he is withdrawing from the second round of Afghanistan’s disputed presidential election.  His main stated reason was that he had no reason to believe that the second round would be any more credible than the first (a belief that has a lot of support).  Karzai and his supporters want the election to go forward because they feel a decent turnout could bring Karzai much-needed legitimacy. Alternatively, the US and its foreign allies would prefer to skip the second round and declare Karzai the winner, due to fears of violence on election day.

Interestingly, Abdullah’s decision to withdraw puts Karzai in a tricky position.  On the one hand, if the government holds the second round and voter turnout is very low, there are a large number of protest votes and/or there is a lot of violence, Karzai’s already shredded legitimacy will sink even further.  On the other hand, canceling the second round could suggest that Karzai believes he can’t win a credible victory, even if he is the only candidate on the ballot.  This would also damage Karzai’s legitimacy.  In retrospect, Abdullah may have made a very shrewd decision.

Delusion at the National Democratic Institute

The National Democratic Institute (NDI) recently issued a press release on their recommendations for the second round of voting in Afghanistan.  Their recommendations make me wonder what country their observers were in during the first round.

Here are some choice excerpts:

Security by the Afghan police and army and international forces should be enhanced so that secure voting areas are expanded….

No ballots should be sent to polling centers that are not secured by Afghan security forces and adequately staffed by the Independent Election Commission (IEC)…

Planning should begin immediately to ensure that sufficient staff from the IEC and the ECC are available for the voting, tabulation and complaint process…

Now, I don’t mean to bicker, but NDI makes it sounds like the Government of Afghanistan chose to be incompetent on election day.  While I don’t deny this is part of the problem, has NDI forgotten that the Taliban is active in at least 80% of the country?  It seems to me what they expect by election day can only follow government control over the country, not precede it.

Tom Friedman parrots Jack Santucci

Jack Santucci, October 16, 2009

Thomas Friedman, October 24, 2009

Tom swims in Jack's wake

Tom’s just restating Jack’s thoughts, but Tom gives Jack no credit.  Where’s the love, Tom?  Where’s the love?

Jack accepts it like a gentleman.