I have been living in Afghanistan for the last eight months and just stumbled across your excellent post on politicophobia – and look forward to exploring the rest of your blog.

I just have one comment regarding your position on the Shi’ite family law. My relatively limited interactions here and what I have observed – of course sadly restricted by the security rules of my organisation – let me to believe that the law was primarily pushed to win the support of Shi’ite clerics, despite the fact that Shi’ite populations tend to have more liberal views about women’s role than other groups in the country. Where I live Shi’ite women are the only one not wearing the burka. There are also reports that Shi’ite populations favour much more women’s education than other groups, and that while this community has been marginalised in the past, it has made great progress in terms of education and presence in professional jobs and government structures. Provinces like Bamyan and Daikundi have among the highest levels of school enrollment, including for girls and have been topping the charts in terms of university entrance exams too. I am told that the same phenomenon has been happening in Pakistan among Afghan refugee population.

I also came to believe that the new social norms resulting from three decades of conflict, especially the more conservative ones following the Mujahedin and Taliban periods, have create peer pressure that prevents more secular individuals to express their ideas or adopt a less conservative lifestyle. Of course Afghanistan is too complex to be understood -even a little- in such a short period, and I may be completely wrong but from my limited perspective, I believe that there are many more Afghans who do not see “foreign” values as such a threat to their culture but rather wish for a liberalisation of the political and social spheres in their country.

I always think about the effectiveness of aid and Afghan on going insecurity, does Afghanistan receive a ‘real’ aid at the moment? I have no answer for it,

As interesting as I find the debate around Dirk Niebel’s appointment, I am little bit surprised that very few look at it from a ‘rational’, political science and organizational studies perspective: There is a Western democracy and believe it or not they are actually appointing a politician as minister, based on party proportonality and political considerations rather than an ‘expert’ who actually knows about the subject area! This happens all the time-and it very often happens around issues of foreign or development policy, because, as much as we would like to see them as a priority, they are not topics to win votes and get appointments. His predecessor, the ‘red Heidi’, a high school teacher from Gross-Gerau in Hesse, was not exactly an international development heavy-weight. No news here. Niebel is not much different from most of his predecessors. Merging/closing down the BMZ…I can’t remember an incoming government that was not surrounded by such rumours. Despite any rational logic large parts of the BMZ are still based in Bonn-and they actually do relatively well in this little development biotope along the Rhein. Its resilience to be moved to Berlin, merged with the Foreign Office or simply be shut down is remarkable-less so if you think of basic organizational theory and bureaucratic principles. The BMZ is a survivor, by far the smallest ministry and seemingly immune to fundamental changes. Having a ministry for development that does not implement projects (this is done by gtz and similar agencies) and is separate from ‘official’ foreign policy is unique and seems old-fashioned-as much of the development ’scene’ in Bonn, the highly promoted and subsidised ‘international’ and UN city, seems. The Federal presence in Bonn has always been used in the promotion of the city and is at the core of the outdated ‘Bonn-Berlin contract’ that was signed when the government moved to Berlin in the 1990s. My paradoxical answer is that it is exactly its outdated-ness that mobilizes the political lobby time and again-and until know Bonn seems to have secured its places in the development scene of which the BMZ is likely to remain a part of for the next few years.

But Daniel also touches on another interesting point: The ‘neoliberalisation’ of aid policy. Here in the UK the conservative lobby is increasingly criticizing what they call ‘Fake Aid’ . The International Policy Network (www.policynetwork.net/uploaded/pdf/Fake_Aid.pdf) as well as the Adam Smith Institute (http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/international/dfid%E2%80%99s-fake-aid–200909044064/) are criticizing DFID spending ‘nearly £1bn on spurious “communications” activities since 2000′ among other points of critique. In this week’s ECONOMIST there is also an interesting article about UK’s foreign aid (‘Wrapped up against the cold’-now only availablee to subscribers…) and Andrew Mitchell, the Tory spokesman on aid is quoted that he want to have ‘a little more private-sector DNA, a bit more civil-service DNA and a little less NGO DNA’. My feeling is that Mr Niebel can definitely identify with more ‘private-sector DNA’, the traditional domain of the FDP.

So the aid policy pendulum may swing (again) in the ‘neoliberal’ direction, but the BMZ will remain a happy swinger’s club…figuratively speaking, of course!

Belatedly but with no less appreciation, let me thank you for your thoughtful and justifiably passionate comment on my original posting. Allow me to encourage you and other readers to check out a promising new program produced by BBC Radio 4. It is based on nine so-called ‘valedictory dispatches’ submitted by Her Majesty’s Ambassadors upon their departures from the countries where they had been serving the Crown. These dispatches have only recently been made public and can be downloaded from the BBC website. They illustrate rather beautifully, imaginably in perfect URP English, what the diplomatic service was and continues to be first of all: a parquet for initially gifted people struck by a quasi-schizophrenic trauma which makes them demand status and privilege for subordinating their lives to superstructures which, as we seem to agree, are seriously inefficient.

Yet inefficiency is only one side of the coin. The other side is this institution’s continuing leverage to derail and exacerbate political processes through exclusionary practice. It is this lack of control and accountability about which I am primarily concerned. Carne Ross’s book offers an excellent depiction of this crucial disconnect. I would therefore argue that although my own exposure to international diplomacy leads me to cast serious doubt on your apparent faith in individual moral compasses (given diplomats’ seemingly omnipresent sense of personal entitlement), what ultimately condemns the institution is its systemic ignorance of the ‘locations of politics’ in the present day.

Never before have conferences, gray corridors and red telephones been so challenged by alternative fora of political deliberation. International politics is no longer an affair between states. The spread of democracy (which has been caused by popular demand and not by allegedly well-meaning top-down supply administered by diplomats) is precisely the reason why any young woman or man joining the diplomatic service of her or his country today forgoes critical avenues of political change. Worse even, the more the institution of international diplomacy is challenged, the more its organizations will focus on their fight for survival. I fail to understand how this dynamic offers anything to a young university graduate that would be enticing enough to join the last long battle of an anachronistic behemoth.

Now I didn’t join the foreign service out of idealism, but mainly becaused I liked the workplace climate, the benefits and the status. But I do like to think of myself as a critical mind. I also have a moral compass that I like to consult. And I am quite certain that this job has given me more opportunities to influence important decisions in the way my compass tells me than I could have attained with any other career choice at my age, and given my set of skills and attitudes.

Of course multilateral diplomacy doesn’t work very well. Neither does democracy, for that matter. Or capitalism. But for now we are stuck with them for want of a better alternative. That shouldn’t keep good people from seeking positions of influence within those systems. Even a flawed system will tend to produce relatively better results if it is not left to crooks and morons.

I think the main source of my disagreement isn’t on the inherent disadavantages of diplomacy as such, but rather in the comparison you draw with other possible career choices:
- Journalist/ Book/ Movie – Granted, if you have the skill to really excel at any of these things, becoming a diplomat might be a waste of your talent and will demand more moral compromises. But as a mediocre journalist, author or director your chances of making a difference are pretty damn slim.
- Politics: If you are an idealist, politics will crush you. Except if you have exceptional charisma.
- NGOs: Too small to have an impact, Except if you are exceptionally patient. Or big and just as bad as government/multilateral bureaucracy.
- Business: Seriously?

As I am proud to have learned from you some time ago, in the end it all comes down to POWER. The structure you so decry is based on power, and if you want to change it you need power. The problem with power: “They” won’t just hand it to you for free. And as an idealist, you forgo some of the tools for wresting it from “them”. There are a few exceptions: Great artists, inventors, charismatic leaders. For those of us whose main assets are intellectual, the one niche we have cut out for ourselves relatively close to power is bureaucracy. In some areas such as diplomacy and public financial institutions “they” have entrusted us with some of their power because we have somehow convinced them that it is too hard for them.

If politics is “slowly drilling through thick boards with passion and perceptiveness” (Weber), diplomacy is as good a drill as any, and depending on your set of skills it might be the right drill for you. Just don’t expect the boards to be thinner at the UN than elsewhere. And don’t expect your fancy new diplomatic status to to be a power tool that does the drilling for you.

Let’s begin where we agree: that something is in need of being fixed. As you rightly point out, I believe that this ’something’ is located in the structure of global diplomacy. But when we speak of individual career decisions, we speak of agents and not of structures. Therefore, it seems to me that the central question at hand is whether or not large bureaucracies such as the State Department or the United Nations can be changed by well-meaning actors from inside.

For clarity’s sake, let me distinguish the two main types of entities in state-led international relations: bilateral and multilateral. I would argue that in general, bilateral agencies are more powerful but also more prone to abuse. Conversely, multilateral agencies are less (ab)usable while at the same time also being less influential, at least in the short term.

You are stating that that you are about to join a bilateral agency. My primary concern in this case is that your personal attitude, whether realistic or idealistic, ultimately won’t matter. Yes, I do believe that realists fare better in these bureaucracies, but not because they necessarily make better policies but because they are more willing to work with what’s there. And that’s precisely the problem: what is there is the structure that we both believe needs to change.

How, then, can this structure be changed? Like many others in the social sciences, I have had the opportunity to speak with officials working for US, UK and German governmental bodies as well as servants [NB: there is a reason why these people are officially called servants] of multilateral agencies. I did so during my three years inside the United Nations as well as while conducting field research. If anything, these conversations have strengthened my doubts that bureaucracies might enlist for the ‘right causes’–for simplicity let us assume that these matters are those which both of us find worthy of international support–as a result of internal decision-making. Quite the contrary, they tend to do so in response to external pressures.

Since you are getting ready to join the world’s most powerful bilateral agency, my primary concerns are that (i) your idealism will be asphyxiated within a few years, if not months; (ii) in turn, your sense of realism (including your entirely legitimate career aspirations) will prompt you to become part of compromises that serve to stabilize the overall structure rather than catalyzing the kind of radical reform that is needed; and (iii) you ultimately become a functional component of this influential but politically (ab)usable structure.

[Were you to join the UN instead, my concerns would of course be different. I would be less troubled by the possible evils in which you may become complicit. I would, however, be even more perturbed by the inevitable loss of talent.]

All of this would be merely theoretical banter if no workable alternatives existed. Yet there are many. Become a investigative journalist, for instance. Write a book. Make a movie. Run for state-level politics. Build your own non-governmental organization, one that fully espouses your values without compromise. Start a company; if it succeeds, donate a chunk of its profits to a charitable cause that fascinates you. Better even, start a company in a location marked by high unemployment and rampant poverty, whether in the US or abroad.

The most common objection to these suggestions is that the influence that one exerts in these roles is likely going to be smaller compared to a job in interstate diplomacy. I firmly believe that this is a misjudgment, at the core of which lies the all too uncomfortable admission that by joining one of the aforementioned systems, you sacrifice–or severely compromise at least–what is most precious: your moral compass.

Granted, they pay well for it. But so does the devil when he tempts your soul.