A Holden Caulfield holiday thought

By Elmira Bayrasli | Published: December 23, 2010

“Hope” this week’s Economist tells us, “is one of the most overused words in public life, up there with “change.”  Given the recent events involving Wikileaks I will add “transparency” and “accountability.”  In the end, however, they all lead us to the same place, that David Brooks summed up in his column this week: conviction.

Bill Maher considers it here (thank you @lksriv), concluding that our religion is greed, our god materialism and, thereby, our spirit diseased.  Given the recent financial crisis that has destroyed the lives of millions, that is certainly persuasive.  But it’s not the entire picture.  And that’s precisely our problem.

We live in the “now.”  The instant.  CNN, Facebook, SMS, Twitter.  Our greed is in that in this uber-informed world, we hunger to be in the know.  That is a poor paraphrasing of National Geographic’s Elizabeth Lindsey eloquent quote at TEDWomen just a few weeks ago: “We live in a society bloated with data, but is starved for wisdom.”

Our fervent desire to find answers, whether to the world’s or our own personal challenges, conflicts us and has forced us to lose perspective.  Sure there are those who are inherently moved by materialism.  But most of us are not.  Most of us are just moved.  Some are moved by Goliath challenges such as hunger, disease, and poverty. Others by the everyday — children, friends, loved ones, music, art and dance.

Every Christmas I re-read J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. There’s something about Holden Caulfield’s adventure that, perhaps because I identify with it, gives me something to believe in. It is not hope or change, but people. My favorite excerpt, which, I think, says it all:

“Every time I came to the end of a block and stepped off the goddam curb, I had this feeling that I’d never get to the other side of the street. I thought I’d just go down, down, down, and nobody’d ever see me again. Boy, did it scare me. You can’t imagine. I started sweating like a bastard — my whole shirt and underwear and everything. Then I started doing something else. Every time I’d get to the end of a block I’d make believe I was talking to my brother Allie. I’d say to him, ‘Allie, don’t let me disappear. Allie, don’t let me disappear. Allie, don’t let me disappear. Please Allie.’ And then when I’d reach the other other side of the street without disappearing, I’d thank him.”

This holiday season, I thank you dear readers; thank you in more ways than you’ll ever know.

Merry, merry.

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Aid & transparency

By Elmira Bayrasli | Published: December 21, 2010

imagesDevelopment expert Owen Barder writes in today’s Guardian about the transparency of aid.  His piece a result of a USAID and EU Foreign Affairs Council announcement that they will “publish details of (their) aid programs.”  Everyone will get to see how aid money is spent.  You can read the entire, brilliant piece here.  I just wanted to excerpt this:

“Transparency of aid is at the heart of making aid work better. In every walk of life, complex systems need a feedback loop if they are to work properly, but that’s missing in aid.”

I also wanted to add (and continue my rant) that transparency of aid must also include improving the reporting and coverage of aid.  While publishing details of aid programs is important, it is vital to analyze those details and put them into context.  Data is just data until it is contextualized and made actionable. Putting out information and/or numbers is a great step.  But it’s just a step of visibility.  ”Visibility,” as Owen rightly says, “is not the same as transparency.”

Let’s hear it for aid transparency.  It seems even Bill Easterly is listening.

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Nick Kristof & a few do-gooders

By Elmira Bayrasli | Published: December 19, 2010

Nicholas Kristof is among today’s great writers.  I was instantly mesmerized when he transitioned from daily reporting in China to the New York Times op-ed page. Just consider this excellent piece “Cassandra Speaks” written in March 2003 on the eve of the Bush invasion of Iraq.  It thoughtfully questions the wisdom of the invasion, using history as evidence.  It’s commanding and persuasive — completely unlike anything he writes today.

Today, (literally), Kristof gives us articles like this one, “The Gifts of Hope.”  It is a column that asks us to consider supporting extremely worthwhile organizations such as Arzu, which “employs women in Afghanistan to make carpets for export,” First Book, that gets books into the neediest neighborhoods in America, and The Somaly Mam Foundation that “fights sex slavery in Cambodia” by selling products made by victims — all in lieu of giving our aunt “another Mariah Carey CD.”  It is a necessary and worthwhile message — all for it.

What I’m not for is the use of his column to promote organizations (the majority of which are Western) and individuals (the majority of whom are white kids from America).  He has strayed from being a columnist that analyzes, questions and considers the advances and challenges of the development and aid field based on evidence to becoming a spokesperson advancing, as Morehouse College professor Laura Seay points out, anecdotes for a few do-gooders.  That is dangerous.

A few weeks ago, AidWatchers blogger Laura Freschi asked: “How should journalists cover aid?”  She wrote:

Nick Kristof has one answer: Focus on the individuals in the story, leaving the aid bureaucracies just outside the frame. Make readers care about places and people they will probably never see by bringing them stories of hope and inspiration: the American woman who leaves behind her family to help rape survivors in the Congo; the orphan boy in Zimbabwe who dreams of and gets a bicycle.

Making people care about places and people they will probably never see is valid.  But is that really a challenge in today’s Facebook, Twitter, Oprah-obsessed world where everyone from Bono, Bill Gates and Angelina Jolie are crusading for the under privileged?  A quick scan the Web, any newsstand or bookshelf, you’ll find no shortage of stories of hope and inspiration.  What there is a shortage of is reportage that, as this Guardian piece notes, gets “behind the clichés of starving children and getting people to tell their own stories.”  The article notes:

“There are several things that development journalism is not, or should not be. One is an entirely uncritical publicity vehicle for any organization (sic) or institution… ‘A reporter’s job is to keep an open mind and question what they see and hear, whether that’s the work of governments, private enterprise, NGOs or individuals.’”

In other words, anyone covering development or aid needs to treat those issues with the same critical mind and pursuit of truth as any other subject — perhaps even more so.  Yes, because lives depend on it.  But they depend on it because of the information those of us with the resources and capability to take action need.  Foundations, philanthropists, NGOs and even aid and development agencies do not have the resources — nor are they, more importantly, in position to objectively assess the effects of their work.  Development is “complex, slow, non-prescriptive and uncertain.”

“It requires the reporter to appreciate and explore the interplay of diverse realms such as health, education, environment, governance, local and national economics and culture.”

That is why, as Philip Gourevitch noted in the New Yorker back in October (and Laura Freschi on AidWatchers):

…[H]umanitarianism is an industry. So we should examine it and hold it to account as such. To treat humanitarian or human-rights organizations with automatic deference, as if they were disinterested higher authorities rather than activists and lobbyists with political and institutional interests and biases, and with uneven histories of reliability or success, is to do ourselves, and them, a disservice.

It means that Nick Kristof needs to ask, as Gourevitch notes, “the questions for which they (the NGOs et al) may have no good answers.”  Sure that makes for less than idealistic, feel-good, fuzzy-warm writing.  But it is the firm foundation of good columns.

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The Mark Zuckerberg moral: Entrepreneurship or Terrorism?

By Elmira Bayrasli | Published: December 15, 2010

poy_cover_z_1215Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg is TIME magazine’s person of the year.  That has unleashed voluble outrage, particularly on Twitter.  “The world is off its rocker,” one Twitterer commented.  “Ridiculous,” noted another.  Among the 140 character crowd Wikileaks’s Julian Assange seemed to be the favorite.  (Definitely not mine.)

TIME notes that “person of the year” isn’t an honor.  It’s recognizing “the person who ‘for better or worse’ had done the most to change the news.”  Past “persons of the year” have included Churchill, Gandhi, Einstein, Hitler, Kenneth Starr and the Ayatollah Khomeini. (Sadly, there aren’t a lot of women).  The magazine’s current managing editor, Richard Stengel, notes (as VentureBeat reports) that Zuckerberg’s selection was based on the fact that his creation of Facebook is “both indispensible and a little scary.”

That’s an important characterization, which extends to Zuckerberg himself.

By all accounts — not just from the hyperbole of The Social Network — Facebook was created as a result of Zuckerberg’s ardent desire to prove himself; to go from being a nobody to a somebody.  Only Zuckerberg knows whether that was motivated by vanity or, worse, anger.  Given that he grew up in an upper middle class home in the United States and attended one of our country’s preeminent educational institutions, it manifested itself into the entrepreneurial sensation that, like it or not, has transformed our lives.  Many others aren’t as lucky.

In Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Sudan, Yemen and other parts of the developing world, young men without proper educational or job prospects are joining insurgencies or terrorist groups.  Rather than programming code, they’re programming detonators.  Rather than testing beta, they’re testing bombs.  They are young men (and at times women) with tremendous potential, yet little opportunity or options.  Poverty doesn’t leave you with much.

In 2006, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman explained why Israel was so ill prepared for its war with Lebanon.  He wrote:

“Young Israelis dream of being inventors, and their role models are the Israeli innovators who made it to the Nasdaq.  Hezbollah youth dream of being martyrs, and their role models are Islamic militants who made it to the Next World.”

One is driven by self-determination and opportunity, the other fatalism, or what Richard Boly, Director of the Office of eDiplomacy at the U.S. State Department, describes as entrepreneurship and terrorism.  Entrepreneurship and terrorism he says isn’t so uncommon.   “(They) are two sides of the same coin,” he noted at an event at the University of California this past April. Both are committed to a vision; both endure enormous risk.  “The difference is context.”

The context that allowed Mark Zuckerberg to create Facebook is something that we should celebrate, regardless of whether we think he deserves to be person of the year.  It is one that believes in initiative and supports new ideas.  More importantly, it is one that we should try — not to replicate or impose — but to organically stimulate in the troubled places I listed above.  Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Sudan, Yemen and other places have Mark Zuckerberg’s waiting in the wings.  The direction in which they fly affects us all.

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In defense of crying…

By Elmira Bayrasli | Published: December 11, 2010

I am a crier. Tell me a story, happy, sad, frightening or inspirational — the urge to release the tears that have welled up in my eyes is overwhelming. But I resist. I work hard not to cry. Strong women don’t cry. Strong women are like men. They control their emotions.

Last week Tony Porter talked about the socialization of men he grew up knowing: men are tough, strong, and courageous; men know no pain; men have no emotions. It’s what Porter calls the “man box.”

In the man box men do not cry. In the rare instances that they do, as Porter’s father did after all the women had cleared away following the burial of his teenage son years ago, he apologized. He apologized for his sobbing AND commended Porter for not doing so. Men do not cry. That is not allowed in the man box.

There’s definitely a need and benefit to controlling one’s emotions. The reasons are self-evident. But is there really a need to stigmatize crying — in either men or women?

Women strive and struggle. We strive and struggle to be everything a man can be. That includes striving and struggling to break free from the chains of female stereotypes about being the “second” sex. Must that then require us to chain ourselves to the man box that saps us from being human?

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Social innovators of the world unite!.. in Japan

By Elmira Bayrasli | Published: December 6, 2010

This is why the next social innovation conference needs to take place in Japan.

P1010204

It’s a pay phone shop — in Japan.  A pay phone shop was the last thing I would have expected to find in the East Asian island nation.  Isn’t it supposed to be the world’s technology capital?  Yet after attending a series of events focused on social innovation, it became clear why this shop exists.

Japan is a very social-order conscience society.  Buses and trains run on schedule. Double parking is non-existent.  Car horns are not used.  One does not eat on the street.  Plastics, paper and aluminum are properly recycled.  Meetings start and end on time.

It is a rigid social order that makes it difficult to imagine social innovation taking shape, however eager a handful of visionary Japanese are to unleash social innovation their country.  Social innovation by its very definition is non-conformist.  It thrives in spaces, through experimentation and iteration — and much trial and error.

Trial and error isn’t something the Japanese are open to.  Almost everyone I spoke to last week commented on Japan’s intolerance for failure and aversion to risk.  “This is a country where you graduate and work for a big firm,” said one participant at an event at Tokyo’s Rikkyo University.  “It is not common for a graduate to start something new.”

Part of that is because banks won’t make small business loans — a common problem in the developing world.  Another is that big firms such as Toyota, Mitsubishi and Sony have provided, until recently, Japanese twenty-somethings with stable jobs.  But as a global economic crisis and an aging problem grips the country, younger people are wondering what lies ahead.  There are fewer openings at firms as their parents, and even grandparents, who are living longer, are opting to stave off retirement.

Where does that leave Japan’s youth?

That is what a number of Japanese gathered around last week to discuss. Interestingly, few were entrepreneurs.  Most were from the country’s development agency, JICA and the big soga shoshas such as Daiwa Securities. Worried about the country’s aging problem and impending financial future, they believe social innovation and social entrepreneurship is a persuasive alternative.  That’s the good news.

The bad news is that they’re also convinced that in order to get social innovation to flourish as it has in the rest of the world, including as they pointed out in China, India and Bangladesh, it will take a lot of persuading a citizenry that is not used to free floating ideas and experimentation.  “The one thing that might change this is if the Japanese see more and more foreigners doing things in social innovation,” said one woman.  “Muhammad Yunus made the Japanese understand microfinance.”

Social innovation and social entrepreneurship in Japan faces more obstacles than opportunities. There is a question of space, which is short supply.  There is a question of funding, which is difficult in a society where investing is scarce — there are virtually no venture capital firms.  But there shouldn’t be a question of drive, motivation or inspiration. Without those three things, social innovation or entrepreneurship simply wouldn’t exist.

So may be a good place to start to unlock Japan’s social innovation logjam is by bringing together recognized social innovators to inspire them.  Who’s in?

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What I learned about Wikileaks on Twitter

By Elmira Bayrasli | Published: December 3, 2010

As a former State Department “official,” foreign policy hound, Turcophile, Middle East watcher and news junkie, I can’t take my eyes off of Wikileaks.  Trouble is, my eyes are jetlagged weary (as I write this it’s 3:30 AM in Tokyo) and focused on social innovation as I attend and speak at several social innovation events in Japan.  Thankfully, I have Twitter.  Through Twitter I’m able to sort through what matters and what doesn’t.  Thought I’d share what I learned this week about Wikileaks via Twitter:

1)   @abuaardvark — aka Marc Lynch, is a writer for Foreign Policy focused on the Middle East.  This initial reaction just hours after Wikileaks released the State Department cables captures his always incisive and measured analysis.  Lynch doesn’t get caught up in mass rhetoric.  He identifies what the best journalists and writers do — what’s important and what does it mean going forward.  In this case Lynch asks: What’s the Arab reaction?  And what impact will Wikileaks have on Arab domestic and foreign policy?  In the long run, that is what is going to matter most.  Read this man’s thread on Twitter.  You will learn, think and laugh.  Yes, *total Twitter crush*.

2)   @scott_gilmore is the executive director of Peace Dividend Trust, a wonderful organization making peace operations more effective.  He’s been on the Canadian media circuit as a result of this blog post and ensuing piece in the Canadian Globe and Mail.  Gilmore, a former diplomat, reminds us that the transparency and accountability that everyone is using to explain (and for some reason justify) Wikileaks is already made possible through something called democracy.  We, the people, hold our elected officials accountable at the ballot box, through courts and legislative bodies — not rogue hackers on the Internet.  And if it’s not clear, “Diplomacy isn’t Facebook.”  Diplomats, like journalists, keep secrets to protect sources, which include human rights workers and innocent citizens — in order to get to the truth. Watch his interview on the CBC here.

3)   @aagave — aka Andrew Rosen is a digital media entrepreneur (and a dear friend).  His piece in the Huffington Post nicely summarizes what Wikileaks has turned out to be: a showdown between Julian Assange, “The elusive digital anarchist” and Hillary Clinton, “The godmother of 21st century statecraft.”  It may seem, Rosen says, that Assange and Clinton are on opposite sides (and they are), they share a lot in common.  Wikileaks isn’t about property or law.  It’s about power in the new “networked world.”  “Assange and Clinton are aware that cyberspace is creating a networked world, one where the state may matter less and less.”  Now, that’s scary — and why Wikileaks matters.

4)   @girlinterruptin — aka Sylvia McLain is a Tennessee girl and scientist based in the UK (and the funniest gal around – go drinking with her).  She brings up an excellent point in this provocative piece that the State Department needs to wake up to the 21st century and protect its secrets accordingly.  She reminds us of Ollie North and the merits of whistle blowing — and rightly concludes that Wikileaks is not whistle blowing.  That’s what makes Assange deplorable.  Had the Australian cared to go through the cables, Roger Cohen points out that he did not, he would have realized that the State Department violated nothing — no law was broken.  Saying that France’s Sarkozy is “thin skinned,” Egypt’s Mubarak doesn’t like anyone and Turkey’s Erdogan is a “megalomaniac” may not be nice, (all true, but not nice) — but it is not a breach of our laws or Constitution.  And that’s the point: there is no justice in Wikileaks.  There is only chaos and “collateral damage.”

5)   @evgenymorozov is also a writer for Foreign Policy, focused on the Internet.  He’s got a fascinating book coming out next month called Net Delusion: The Dark Side of the Internet.  His Wikileak concern: Amazon shut down its servers to the Wikileak site, possibly in response to Senator Joseph Lieberman’s call to shut down other sites and essentially curb Internet freedom.  What Assange did was patently wrong.  Yet, following his lead by shutting down websites is even worse.  Protections come from the presence of civil liberties, not the absence.  We imperil our society and the very foundation of our democracy when we choose knee-jerk reactions that play well in the media over our Constitution and laws.  Believe in the system people.

A last point that I didn’t learn but that was confirmed to me this week: my friend @mosharrafzaidi is truly a writer and thinker extraordinaire.  Quick, sharp, insightful and funny – he made Wikileaks abundantly enlightening and engaging for me.  Thank you.

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The SNL foreign aid revolution

By Elmira Bayrasli | Published: November 14, 2010

Like so many highly trained comedians these days, Kenan Thompson has choices. He could be working in a Manhattan office tower… oh wait, he does. This clip from last night’s Saturday Night Live captures what’s wrong with the rampant idealism put forward in D.I.Y. foreign aid.

I’m all for idealism, within reason. Can we make the world a better place? Absolutely. But only when we start recognizing realities. One reality is that aid and development are more than one person’s good intentions or just positive thinking. Others are outlined in these two superb responses to the D.I.Y. piece. “Don’t Try This Abroad” and “Why Kristof’s Endorsement of ‘D.I.Y. Aid’ is Poorly Informed“

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Pakistan postcard part four: Smell

By Elmira Bayrasli | Published: November 7, 2010

Part four of my five-part postcard of impressions of my Pakistan visit… smell….

Smell

It brought tears to my eyes.  As soon as the astringent yet sugary scent that wafted through the Marriott Karachi hit my nose, my stomach tightened: someone was cooking onions.

I hate onions.  There’s no real explanation for it.  I just do.  And that’s a very big problem for me wherever I go.  The powerful bulb, worshiped by the ancient Egyptians, is the key ingredient in just about every dish everywhere.  That has made ordering in a restaurant tiresome – for both my fellow diners and me.  “Please, no onions,” has become my predictably Pavlovian platitude.  That was no exception in Pakistan.

One cannot escape the scent of onions in the south Asian country.  It, far more than curry, is the basis of Pakistan’s rich and meat-heavy cuisine.  That is why Nishan Channa, a 25-year old MBA student at Karachi’s Institute of Business Administration (IBA), has launched an onion business.

“I’m sorry that you don’t like onions,” Channa said to me as we sat on the maroon, beige and navy striped couches of the Marriott Karachi.  “But you can generate lots of things from onions,” he said with a smile, earnestly trying to convince me to change my mind.

Channa is attempting to generate a business that utilizes “100 percent” of an onion’s resources, producing “zero wastage.”  His idea: first, sell fried onions, a staple in Pakistani kitchens, to local restaurants and hotels.  He’s already started with Karachi’s popular BBQ Tonite, an Olive Garden-esque eatery.  Then, use the peels as biomass fuel to produce electricity and whatever waste that is leftover as cattle feed.

It’s an idea that many others outside of Pakistan have already run with.  That Channa is, in present-day Pakistan, fascinated me.  Agriculture is no longer the country’s main economic driver.  Following the global trend, Pakistan has largely become a service-based economy.  Given nearly 60 percent of the population is illiterate, that strikes me as a problem – perhaps the cause of Pakistan’s problems… But I’ll leave the economists to analyze that.  I’m more interested by Channa’s interest, not in gadgets or, (forgive the cliché), guns, but in onions – and using them to solve the country’s severe energy and economic crisis (see previous posts).

In today’s uber-connected-Social Network-reality TV-obsessed world, young minds are eager, more than ever, to claim their 15 minutes.  Ideas seem to be born not for utility but out of vanity, or worse yet, anger. Channa’s desire to be Pakistan’s Mr. Onion is a welcome contrast to that.  It is a clear signal that practical, perhaps even old-fashioned, solutions to solve Pakistan’s problems exist.  And they do so at the hands of Pakistanis themselves.

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Pakistan postcard part three: Taste

By Elmira Bayrasli | Published: November 3, 2010

Part three of my five-part postcard of impressions of my Pakistan visit… taste….

Taste

“I’d like a glass of wine,” I said to the waiter as he handed me a menu in the garishly lit hotel restaurant in Karachi.  It was my first night in the country.  Jetlagged, I was looking forward to red wine and pizza before heading to bed.  “Oh, I’m sorry madam, we don’t serve alcohol in the restaurant,” he apologized.  “May I suggest you go to your room and call room service?  We are allowed to serve you alcohol in your room.”  No alcohol, because it’s an “Islamic” republic.IMG_0235

Until that point, it hadn’t sunk in that I was in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.  Having traveled to Muslim countries before, where mosques do not negate martinis, it didn’t occur to me that the south Asian country was actually… Muslim.  After all, it was a country where generals dominated, not mullahs.  It was a country where a female prime minister once reigned and where a whole cadre of women worked, some leading their own enterprises.  Those that I saw were not covered.  Some women I saw on the street were in modest Islamic dress with head covering, (no burqa sightings), as were the majority of Pakistani men who wore a taqiyah, an Islamic yarmulke, and sported the traditional Islamic beard.  Everyone interacted without any overt segregation, even if those men, and much to my shock Western appearing ones as well, avoided the touch and glance of women.

I silently gasped when a clean-shaven government official clad in a suit and tie refused the hand of my female colleague.  “He shook yours because you’re not Pakistani,” she said.  “But I’m a Muslim,” I replied.  “Don’t tell him that.”

I didn’t have to tell another Pakistani man I came across that I was a woman, Muslim or otherwise.  His sexism spoke volumes.  I didn’t want to see his behavior as such.  While I’m an ardent advocate for women’s empowerment, I’m not in favor of blaming or being critical of men.  Men are a vital part of ensuring women’s rights.

Yet, it was hard not to feel that this older gentleman, a former Pakistani government official, made it clear that he was not in favor of my rights: my right to speak and my right to be involved in the entrepreneurship project that I had been invited to Pakistan to participate in.  “You know,” he stuttered, “I remember a woman from New York who was a real go-getter –- you know the type: blustery, rude, always had something to say.  I didn’t like her at all.”

While it may very well be that he didn’t like me and not my gender, I couldn’t help but see his behavior as nothing more than discrimination.  I was cut off mid-sentence during several meetings and cut out of several discussions all together.  “How do you deal with this?” I asked one of my female colleagues.  “Oh this is Pakistan.  It is an Islamic country.  That is how men treat women here.”

It is tempting to reduce Pakistani men as Neanderthals and blame it on Islam, just as it is to reduce the country, as Cambridge professor Priyamvada Gopal once noted, “to generals, jets and jihadis.”

Not all Pakistani men treat women in such a way.  I’ve written about several of them in this Portfolio.com piece, Shamoon Sultan and Monis Rahman.  I’ve become friends with others such as Creative Chaos CEO Shakir Husain and writer Mosharraf Zaidi.  Both couldn’t be more mainstream — that is, “progressive minded.”  “I’d be happy to meet with you,” Shakir said as we were arranging our first get-together at his Karachi-based outsourcing office.  “But it can only be an hour.  At noon I have to go pick up my son from daycare.”

There is a generational difference between all of these men and my New York-hating government official.  Shamoon, Monis, Shakir and Mosharraf are all under 40, which, given Pakistan’s increasing Islamization over the past 20 years, should have made them more chauvinistic.  While there is no doubt that a large part of Pakistan’s society is insufferably sexist, it is not true that Islam has turned every man — in Pakistan or elsewhere — into a misogynist.  The fear of letting go of traditions and the inability to open one’s mind to change is the root of not only the country’s anti-woman scourge but one of the reasons for its fragile and failing state.  That is what left me with a most bitter taste.

The beer I was left no choice to order that first night in Karachi did too.  When I called for room service I was told, “Oh sorry madam, we don’t have any wine.”  I let out a sigh.  “I know you would prefer wine,” said the gentleman on the other end of the phone.  “Wine is a lady’s drink,” he paused. “I prefer it too.”

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