Expats clearly distort the market in the countries they inhabit. The labor market for example, and the fancy restaurants. Distressingly often, the commercial sex workers. Chris Blattman has a nice post up on the phenomenon. He also links to a UN report on the macroeconomic consequences of peacekeeping missions. I haven’t read the report yet, but I plan to.
expats
Gone Kurtz on the Burma border
A piece on foreign mercenaries in Burma. I don’t even know what to say about this, except – read it, it’s important. Everyone who thinks they are doing good in a foreign country should read it.
Excerpts:
He is caught up in the fact that he was taken to the top echelons of the local KNLA unit. But, all foreign visitors are received by the highest ranking people. This is normal. He was allegedly awarded a political position. Once again, these are handed out like candy. He believes he was asked to be the US representative. The rebels are nice people and it is against their culture to disagree with anyone. If you asked, “Can I represent you in American?” they would definitely say “yes.” This would either be because they desperately need representation or because they don’t want to refuse a friend. But again, this great “honor” is bestowed on everyone.
and
One aid worker, who requested that he remain anonymous, said: “Oh man, that Bleming guy is a real piece of work. He’s walking around, giving out his business cards which he autographs for you, talking loudly in all the wrong places about going to Burma, blah blah. The Karen have issued all sorts of statements saying this guy is his own work, denying almost everything he says, etc. The KNLA and KNU have worked for years at cultivating a good public relations, this guy goes and sets that back decades. America just took ex KNLA combatants off the Homeland Security terrorist risk list for refugee resettlement, and this guy goes and makes them look like a bunch of well armed terrorists again.”
It is easy to point a finger at Thomas Bleming, or any of the foreigners showing up on the border to fight, and label them thrill seekers or, at the very least, slightly disturbed. But in the modern world of confused sides, things are never that simple.
Sympathetic article about Bleming in a Wyoming newspaper here.
Black Flag Cafe discussion of Bleming, including the great term “professional war tourist.”
Lesson: Question what you think you know, and then question it some more.
Two aid workers kidnapped in Somalia
Two UN contract workers kidnapped in Somalia. Murray Watson and Patrick Amukhuma were kidnapped in Somalia yesterday. Patrick is Kenyan, and Murray is British. Murray Watson is an ecologist with a long history of work in Africa. I am praying for a quick release, like last time an expat was kidnapped in Somalia.
One thing I find interesting about the media coverage on this is how few outlets have gotten their jobs right. They were contractors for an Indian company which held a subcontract with FAO to do aerial survey work. Not all that unusual if you’re used to how the system works, but hard for an unfamiliar reporter to grasp.
AFP: Fate of US aid worker a mystery two months on, say officials
AFP: Fate of US aid worker a mystery two months on, say officials My news about Cyd Mizell may have been premature. We can hope, at least.
Relevant article: BBC list of foreigner kidnappings in Afghanistan.
Trauma, kidnap and death (Iraq)
Trauma, kidnap and death: all in a day’s work for journalists in Iraq. I spent a week in Baghdad last year. It was minor, really – from the airport to our compound, from our compound to the green zone, from our compound to the airport again and put. I ate amazing meals prepared by the live-in cook (an IDP) and talked to the Iraq country team. It was the scariest thing I ever did, and it was nothing – absolutely nothing – compared to what the US military and the Iraqi people go through.
This article really resonated with me; the author struggled with the same feelings I did. Like you’re not allowed to be traumatized because your risk was so minor. Which it was. But…
I would, I think, have stayed in Iraq if I wasn’t a mother. We were doing good relief work there, and there was a vivid and immediate sense of why the work mattered. Time magazine has a nice article about the need for more humanitarian work in Iraq. Agron Ferati, who is quoted, is brave and brilliant and I worry about him all the time.
Business Life – Kabul’s war for talent
The Financial Times discusses recruiting for Kabul. FT often has excellent coverage on the nitty-gritty of relief and development work. This articles talks about the challenges of recruiting:
“Humanitarian-type people are attracted to the disaster circus, but we are beyond that here. It’s not a chronic crisis, but it’s not post-conflict either.”
I am not surprised by the staffing shortage. The world is full of altruistic adrenaline junkies who’ll go to a war zone if they can save people’s lives. It’s also full of warm fuzzy world savers who’ll spend 30 years teaching a village to grow their prickly pears more efficiently. What it’s not full of are people who want to do slow-speed capacity-building development work while also dodging bullets and kidnap attempts. The 50 people who do fit that profile probably all have jobs in Sri Lanka already.
I don’t really know what can be done to improve the staffing for development work in Afghanistan. Pay better, I suppose, but then you run afoul of donors and create an image of a bunch of mercenaries.
It could also point to a issue about the fit between the work being done and the context. Maybe we should move beyond the stereotypes, and trust in community knowledge. Maybe, if no one will go there, we’re doing something wrong and we need to re-think the kind of aid that’s being given.
U.S. Aid Worker Killed in Afghanistan – World – CBN News
U.S. Aid Worker Killed in Afghanistan. I’m sorry. It looks like Cyd Mizell and Muhammad Hadi were killed. There is a statement on the Asian Rural Life Development Foundation website.