Diplomacy in Liberia
This has been a difficult blog post to write because I couldn’t quite figure out what it should be. Usually I get an idea, a pretty simple one, and frame a story around it. At various times I thought I should break it down into several different postings, each with a primary subject (and to give all of you more surprises when they get post). But as I tried to break things down in my head that way, something got lost. It dawned on me that what was lost was the complexity, the contradictions, the frustrations and the occasional sense of hope that permeates my work in Liberia. All of the first three continue to plague me and the last comes all too rarely.
The only saving grace of this post is that you don’t have to just read through my convoluted thoughts, there are plenty of photos for you. So let’s get started.
I’ll start the story on Friday, even though at one point I’ll hop back to Wednesday. On Friday Finley and I headed over to the Temple of Justice (where the Supreme Court is located) to meet with the Judiciary working group, which used to be a group of Judiciary officials and donor/NGOs that met to work on judicial reform, but hadn’t met since before I arrived. This should have been good news and a logical step after the recent “retirement” of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (let’s just say he was not one for constructive engagement on judicial reforms, an unwilling partner, which led to USAID to decide to cancel a major justice-sector project just before I arrived) to help the new judiciary move forward.
When we arrived judiciary staff set up a screen and started talking about the need to complete an action plan for the next 90 days and started walking us through a very detailed 4-year work plan and a monitoring and evaluation plan. He kept mentioning the identify the key projects and to develop activities for those projects in preparation for “This weekend’s Cabinet Retreat where you and your ambassadors will be working with the cabinet to complete these 90-day plans.”
The UNMIL (United Nations Mission in Liberia) representative spoke out first. “What do you mean cabinet retreat? We don’t know anything about a cabinet retreat. I came here today because this morning the SRSG (Special Representative for the Secretary General) told me to come.” Our hosts assured us that our superiors knew about the retreat and went on.
After a little while, our host made mention of the fact that the retreat was intended to set up work objectives to implement Liberia’s second poverty reduction strategy, which is entitled Agenda for the Future (AfT). He also mentioned that the SRSG and the US Ambassador are co-leaders of Pillar 1 of the AfT - Security, Rule of Law and Peace and Reconciliation - and that we will be there supporting them this weekend.
This time, it was my turn. “Excuse me, but I met with my INL (International Narcotics and Law Enforcement - the State Department bureau that works on rule of law issues) this morning, and she didn’t say anything about her or USAID supporting the Ambassador at a retreat this weekend. We pretty much share everything and something like that would have been a topic of discussion. To be honest, I don’t even know if my ambassador knows about this retreat.” “Oh, I assure you, she knows, the invitations went out this morning.”
After about an hour I excused myself on the grounds that I could not give detailed technical advice on a strategy that I hadn’t had time to review and basically had nothing to contribute. I asked them to e-mail me the information they were showing to us and that when I returned to the embassy, I would inquire with my Ambassador whether she knew of this upcoming retreat.
When I go to the embassy, all hell had broken out. Yes indeed, the Ambassador had received a ministerial-level invitation to participate in a technical retreat less than 24 hours before the retreat was supposed to be held. So I spend the better part of Friday and Saturday at . . .
It was, well, like most of these events, especially ones run by developing countries, very chaotic. Based on the signs, they knew well in advance when the retreat was going to be, which begs the question, “Why didn’t they inform any of their international community participants in advance so we could prepare for it?”
It was held at the Baptist Seminary just outside of Monrovia proper.
It’s a fairly nice compound with beautiful grounds and lots of buildings that were used for working groups.
But then again, there were over 30 working groups so there was a whole series of tents set up for folks to work at. Each group was assigned a location and set to work on a particular issue.
Fortunately, the US mission is much larger than most, and we had a team that could cover 14 different groups. I was assigned to the Judicial Reform working group. It was only by chance that I had attended the meeting the previous day, because the invite was sent to Finley. Fortunately, I had a heads-up, and did receive and review the documents I received by e-mail after Thursday afternoon’s meeting. Still, things did not go so well.
For the most part, people did not have a good idea of what they were supposed to be doing. Apparently the retreat had been organized by the Ministry of Finance, and the purpose was to set out 90-day plans of action for the first year so that the President could hold each ministry and related authority accountable for what they said they would do. This sounds great, except for the fact that nobody really understood that that was the task. A few groups led by Ministry of Finance people were told that, but ours definitely wasn’t. My team, consisting mostly of Judiciary staff members, were focused on developing a 90 day plan that they would score 100% on because most of the work had already been done. I thought the tent was going to catch on fire when I suggested that they start thinking now about things that will take longer than 90 days to accomplish so that they can begin work on long-term projects and track them through each 90 day cycle. No, the goal was to focus on the next 90 days and to come out looking good. The UNMIL reps and I just looked at each other and shook our heads.
We managed to make some progress on the short term task, but by 3:30, when yet another argument flared up about whether a “project should be broken down into 3 or 4 activities” I took the opportunity to depart with several of my colleagues. I wasn’t about to go until the projected 6:30 end time. My group was so focused on minutia that they weren’t going to come up with some grand scheme to derail the judiciary.
On the trip back several of us talked about how our groups went. Some groups (health in particular) were very effective and were already done. The Ministry of Health (MoH) has a 10 year strategic plan, a 5 year interim plan and are half way through a 2 year work plan that is broken down by quarter. Apparently when their Ministry of Finance facilitator said that they’re going to work on a 90-day plan, one of the MOH guys pulled out the 2 year work plan, turned to the proper pages and said, “Here, this is what we plan to do for the next 90 days and you can hold us accountable for this. Just enter this information into your table!” Other groups, like mine, had no idea of the greater plan and instead of looking at it as a planning exercise, were focused on making themselves look good. And one of the Pillars hadn’t even broken out into work groups - they’d spent all day arguing over a few issues within the pillar.
This lack of capacity to approach problems in a coherent way, the sudden calling of meetings that really require technical meetings before hand and the sharing of information well in advance to encourage constructive contributions, the focus on looking good instead of solving problems is prevalent in Liberia, as it is in most developing countries. One troubling aspect of Friday’s meeting was that the Liberian co-chairs were not there - not the Minister of Justice, not the Chief Justice, not the Minister of Defense. Yet the US Ambassador was as was the SRSG. And in a country like Liberia, staff are not going to be making key decisions about what is going to be done when without the top dog there to say ok. So what really could have been accomplished then?
This is a complex society, with even more complex politics. Earlier in the week I attended an extractive industries policy seminar, held by a USAID implementing partner that is working with the Liberian legislature. They had hired a consultant to examine extractive industries (mining, timber, agricultural concessions and, more recently, oil) and to advise the legislature on how they can better implement their oversight role.
Simply put, the Liberian legislature is dysfunctional. It makes our House and Senate look like a well-oiled machine, a model for the democratic process. Most legislators are more concerned about how they can personally benefit or direct funding to their allies than they are about solving Liberia’s problems. This is a legislative body that, when informed that USAID would provide a one-week training to all the legislators on the legislative process and how to perform effectively (turnover was close to 80% at the last election), the legislative leadership said ok, but only if the training is done in Ghana and all the legislators are sent and everything (plus per diem) is paid for by the US. Apparently all expenses paid at a Monrovia resort wasn’t good enough for them. The training didn’t happen.
So following the half-day seminar, Louise (our Foreign Service National who works on the legislature) and I walked up the hill back to the embassy. I asked her what was the caliber of legislators that attended the seminar - because a lot of them spoke and I had formed impressions of them, and I wanted to know if my gut feelings were correct. “Are these the best there is, or what?” She responded that they represented a real mix. So I asked her to check my impressions of them and I walked through them one by one. They included a range of the big man who wants to be on center stage, but never gets anything done to the really sharp member who really isn’t living up to his potential and is slowly getting sucked into the quagmire of self-interested politics. Louise kept telling me that my first impressions were correct. Then I said, “And that woman sitting next to you, the Senator - she seemed very sharp, well informed, and had some constructive ideas about how to battle corruption. Of all of them, she impressed me the most.” Louise said, “Yes, she’s very effective, but you do know who she is don’t you?” “No.” “She’s Charles Taylor’s ex-wife.” So of all the legislators in attendance at this seminar, the most impressive one was a convicted war criminal’s former wife.
So back to the retreat. I was given the option of not going on Saturday. The USAID mission director told us to use our discretion and to not go if we wouldn’t be able to be constructive for the working group. When she asked me if I was going to go, I told her I would not because I could make the group be productive, but that the US Ambassador was a co-chair of the Pillar and I felt it appropriate that there would be a US presence in my working group. She said that was actually a very good reason to go, so Saturday morning off I went.
We got there a bit early and we were on Liberian time, which meant things weren’t going to start on time anyway. So I walked around a bit. Like I said, it was a nice campus. Unfortunately most views to the ocean were obscured, but I did get a few looks.
And there seemed to be a flock of white egrets that came around late morning each day (well, at least they did on both Friday and Saturday).
Day 2 went better than day 1. The discussions were more detailed and addressed issues more than just looking good for the first 90 days. We talked a bit about the next 90 days, and the next after that. We talked a bit about strategic planning, the need for the Judiciary to start thinking about its longer-term projects and to start on them now, how to structure the 90 day plans to track progress on the projects (and to make them look good). And we talked about the need to involve the whole judiciary in these discussions (like why was no one from the Judicial Institute there?) and the need to continue the Judicial working group consistently to discuss the whole work plan.
Still, all wasn’t ideal. Since the President was supposed to attend at the end of the day, more officials showed up and the occasional big boss would come in, argue with the staff, downplay everything that has been done, and then walk away full of himself (the pronoun, in most instances, is gender correct) having contributed nothing positive to the discussion.
As noon approached, members of the team were filling out their tables and getting ready to present first to the Pillar group, and then to the President later in the day.
By that point, my contributions were pretty much done. When it comes to polishing up a couple of days’ work, too many cooks don’t help (how's that for a mixed metaphor), so I stayed out of it all. It was impressive to see Liberians working together, understanding these fundamental tasks of administration and governance, trying to do the things a government must do to thrive in the world today. No, it wasn’t pretty, but the end was better than the beginning and that is progress.
When they called for the pillar sessions, most of the USAID folks called it a day and headed home.
So that is diplomacy in Liberia. Complexity, contradictions and frustrations abound. Occasionally a little ray of hope shines through. But nothing is easy and nothing is black or white. That’s what makes this work so hard.