by Alex Evans | Feb 7, 2008 | Conflict and security, UK
Rowan Williams has just been on The World At One to say that in his view, sharia law will become inevitable in parts of the UK. The interview is in advance of a speech he’s giving this evening, in which he’ll call for Muslims to be able to choose, in some circumstances (such as divorce proceedings) whether UK or sharia law would apply. Muslims, he continues, should not have to choose between cultural and state loyalty. You can listen to the full interview here.
As ever, when you actually listen to what he says, he comes across as thoughtful, considered and nuanced; he points, for instance, to the fact that Orthodox Jewish courts already exist in the UK. But I can’t help wondering whether this is a pretty bad error of judgement in communication terms. Even the BBC’s own coverage of the story on BBC News Online loses most of the nuances; I’ve listened to the whole interview, and I’m not sure that I fully understand where Williams is going with this.
The risk here is that what would have been fine as an article in Prospect, say, or the London Review of Books, ignites a firestorm by dint of appearing first on a broadcast medium, followed by immediate pickup on the internet. Just wait for the reactions from the US right wing blogosphere to roll in as they gleefully take this as confirmation of all their predictions about dhimmitude. It’s the “unavoidable” bit that’ll really drive the story. They’re going to have a hard few days’ work in the Lambeth Palace press office…
Update: the reactions are now rolling in. Here’s the conservative blog Man in a Shed:
Lets be clear this will in effect create two states with two systems of law occupying the same land. That is not a recipe for healing communal strife – its the recipe for civil war. We need to be a common people who are ruled, protected and equal under a common law regardless of race or creed. Those who don’t like our laws should enter politics to change them by consent or leave. This system of setting up parallel courts was the precursor to Irish partition and the decades of war that followed.
by Alex Evans | Feb 7, 2008 | Cooperation and coherence, Economics and development, UK
While we’re on the subject of Sue Cameron’s awesome Whitehall gossip network, note also her piece yesterday about DFID (or ‘Difid’ as she enchantingly calls it) – which bears all the hallmarks of hostile briefing from King Charles Street.
Could the horror engulfing Kenya change the balance of power in Whitehall? I am told that questions are being asked at the highest levels about Britain’s “limp-wristed” response to the Kenyan crisis. Senior Foreign Office people blame their colleagues at the Department for International Development for not realising that Kenya was, as one put it, “about to blow”. Difid is now the major arm of British policy in Africa because it has all the money for development.
Yet I am told its people are unwilling to discuss abuses of aid – which are widespread – and have little idea about good governance and how to bring it about. Now there are inquiries as to why pressure was not brought to bear on the Kenyan government. Why was aid not restricted? Why were Kenyan politicians – such as vice-president Stephen Kalonzo, now in London – not banned from visiting? We have spinelessly allowed him in even though Kenya has just declared Sir Edward Clay, our former high commissioner to Kenya, persona non grata. The outspoken Sir Edward once attacked “the massive looting and grand corruption” of Kenya. He accused Kenyan officials of behaving “like gluttons” and “vomiting on the shoes” of donors. His successor Adam Wood, a Difid man, has been more emollient. But change may be coming. Two months ago Mark Malloch Brown, Africa minister, said: “We have a development policy for Africa; is it time that the UK also has a foreign policy for Africa?” David Miliband, foreign secretary, shares this view. Difid’s ascendancy, which owes much to Gordon Brown’s influence, may be ending.
Now I’m not saying donors have their approach a hundred per cent right in Kenya. I’m unconvinced, for example, by arguments that Kenya was a suitable country for direct budget support; and I think donors have a lot of work to do to set out a clearer theory of how they work in developing countries that, like Kenya or Nigeria, could go either way – lift-off or basket case – especially given that such work has more to do with the quality of influence and political engagement than with the amount of aid spent.
But if it is indeed the case that DFID staff are “unwilling to discuss abuses of aid”, as the article charges, then it’s a bit of a stretch to see how bringing the debate to the diary column of the Financial Times is likely to coax DFID into a franker discussion. What kind of idiot thinks that this sort of approach will lead to policy coherence between the two departments?
The great majority of officials at FCO and DFID understand that their ability to work together is of paramount importance to their closely overlapping – if still distinct – missions. But in each department there are still a fair few old-fashioned turf warriors who know exactly which buttons to push in the other department to guarantee a rise.
Each time they press those buttons – especially in public – it makes life a bit harder for those officials who understand the need for the two departments to cohere with one another, by confirming the old stereotypes as to why you can’t trust DFID / FCO [delete as applicable].
Briefing stuff like this to the FT might be fun, but it does nothing to advance either department’s mission. The handful of turf warriors at each end of St James’s Park need to grow up.
by Charlie Edwards | Feb 7, 2008 | Influence and networks, Middle East and North Africa
Gary Anderson from George Washington University has a good piece in the Washington Post. Al-Qaeda is losing. As he argues:
The conventional wisdom is that al-Qaeda is making a comeback from its rout in Afghanistan. Many point to its success in killing Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan and to its support of Islamic insurgents there as evidence. Not so. Al-Qaeda is waning. Its decline has less to do with our success than with the institutional limitations of the al-Qaeda organization. Simply stated, to know al-Qaeda closely is not to love it.
Everyplace where al-Qaeda has gained some measure of control over a civilian population, it has quickly worn out its welcome. This happened in Kabul and in Anbar province in western Iraq. It may well happen in Pakistan as a reaction to the killing of Bhutto.
No one likes to be brutalized and dominated by foreigners. The weakness of al-Qaeda is that everywhere it goes its people are strangers. This is no way to build a worldwide caliphate.
Why, then, are we supposedly losing the information war in the Muslim world, and why has there not been more of an outcry among Muslims over this slaughter of innocents? A big part of the reason is that we spend too much time wanting to be liked rather than turning Muslim anger on our enemies.
We preach some values that are viewed as alien and threatening to the traditional order of things. Our popular culture is seen as decadent at best and downright threatening at worst in traditional cultures. Our message isn’t selling. We can’t change what we are, nor would we want to. No matter how much the government may disapprove, the government’s official propaganda will be overwhelmed by the deluge, both positive and negative, from the popular media. We need to accept this fact and move on, rather than waste more millions on strategic communications “charm campaigns.”
What we can do is to expose our Islamic extremist enemies for what they are. The people of Afghanistan and Anbar found this out the hard way and threw the rascals out. But when al-Qaeda kills scores of innocents, we report it as a statistic without context. We may see weeping relatives and bloodstained bodies from a distance, on video or in photographs, but they are depersonalized, and people quickly become desensitized to anonymous images. Ironically, Stalin was right: One death is a tragedy; millions are a statistic. We need to help Muslims understand how these people really treat other Muslims.
The original Islamic movement spread its doctrine by a combination of military action and compassion. Charity was a key tenet. This is largely why Hamas and Hezbollah gain a degree of popular support in the areas they control. That ingredient is missing in the al-Qaeda/Taliban approach to the world. To them, winning hearts and minds means, “Agree with us or else.” That is largely the reason that the U.S. government dropped its early “for us or against us” approach. It has taken us some time, but we seem to be recovering from that approach.
by Alex Evans | Feb 7, 2008 | Influence and networks, UK
Following up on the unhappy tales of life inside the Brown bunker, Sue Cameron now gives an insight into life inside Fortress Cameron. And, she reports, there’s not necessarily that much to choose between them…
Depressing news for democracy. It seems there is little to choose between the leadership style of Gordon Brown and David Cameron. “Fortress Brown”, says one Tory insider glumly, “is matched by Fortress Cameron.” Both men rely on small cliques and few outsiders – even cabinet or shadow cabinet members.
Mr Cameron’s inner circle meets at 9am every morning. Present are the powerful Steve Hilton, the Tory brand manager, Ed Llewellyn, Mr Cameron’s old-Etonian chief of staff, and Andy Coulson, ex-News of the World editor. Mr Coulson agreed to be Mr Cameron’s spin doctor only if he could attend any meetings he chose. How wise. (I bet Stephen Carter, Mr Brown’s new communications guru, was not quite as savvy.)
Frontbenchers who go to the morning meetings are William Hague, foreign affairs, George Osborne, shadow chancellor, Michael Gove, schools, and David Davies, home affairs and one of the few who dares to dissent.
Usually, I am told, the Tory leader dominates discussions – not least with the shadow cabinet where he employs the simple wheeze of doing most of the talking himself. Margaret Thatcher, say insiders, allowed far more debate. Mr Cameron hates one-to-one meetings.
by Charlie Edwards | Feb 6, 2008 | Conflict and security, South Asia, UK
I hope someone in Whitehall is working on a comms strategy. We are in for a bumpy ride.
