Egypt is now suffering the consequences of irrationally killing all its pigs last spring. The whole episode points to other major flaws in the system:
What started out as an impulsive response to the swine flu threat has turned into a social, environmental and political problem for the Arab world’s most populous nation.
It has exposed the failings of a government where the power is concentrated at the top, where decisions are often carried out with little consideration for their consequences and where follow-up is often nonexistent, according to social commentators and government officials….
“The state is troubled; as a result the system of decision making is disintegrating,” said Galal Amin, an economist, writer and social critic. “They are ill-considered decisions taken in a bit of a hurry, either because you’re trying to please the president or because you are a weak government that is anxious to please somebody.”
Meanwhile, my friend Nate tells a short story about the long suffering of of a Kurdish family from Halabja.
Finally, Sec. of State Clinton raised some (lofty) expectations for this administration’s foreign assistance and development approaches at Brookings on Friday. Until now, President Obama has been pillioried by the development community for his failure to appoint a USAID administrator:
Now, many of you have heard me describe our plans to integrate diplomacy and development as two of the three pillars in our foreign policy, along with defense. I’ve talked in different venues about the Obama Administration’s commitment to leading with diplomacy and engaging other nations. Next week, I will outline how we will approach development in tandem with our diplomacy – to be effective and efficient and enable the State Department, USAID, and the Millennium Challenge Corporation to pursue and execute 21st century foreign policy goals.
The foundation for our approach will be principles that will move us away from top-down assistance that too often fails to meet the needs of those we are attempting to help, or has only short-term effects. To solve the complex problems of poverty, hunger, health, climate change, where they intersect, we want to focus on those root causes, and look for approaches that really change, transform the environment in which people are making these decisions and in which governments are held accountable to a higher degree of performance and transparency. We will be looking for ways to not only explain our approach, but to highlight issues. I will be, for example, participating in an event with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, hosted by the UN and the United States Government, on food security.
Great post. I’ve also been following the pig debacle pretty closely, and it seems like the perfect example of mokh zay gazma. The article also speaks to the creative solutions Egyptians have found to work their way around the bureaucracy. The informal ways people have found to cope with poor social services, like using pigs to clean up garbage are one example of that. Of course when the government screws that up, there’s not much they can do.