http://blogs.state.gov/index.php/site/index/ en U.S. Department of State 2009-11-20T23:01:01+00:00 About the Author: Gregory L. Garland serves as Media and Outreach Coordinator for the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of African Affairs.

For two days this month (March 16-17), I participated in meetings of the Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia (CGPCS), comprised of 28 countries. On the first day, I headed the U.S. delegation to the Public Diplomacy Working Group, chaired by Egypt and gathered to coordinate public information efforts. The following day, I joined the broader Plenary Session, which heard reports from all four working groups. (The other three deal with operational coordination, legal questions, and outreach to the shipping industry.)

I’m new to multilateral diplomacy. My career has so far featured press conferences, civil society events, and much public speaking, but this week I started with the basics of multilateral procedure. Take, for example, the seemingly minor act of requesting an intervention (aka, comment). A colleague from the U.S. Coast Guard had to explain to me to turn the country name plate on its side to call the chair’s attention.

We were in Cairo because of Egypt's chairing the Public Diplomacy Working Group and as well as being host for the CGPCS. Working from 9:00 AM to 8:30 PM on both days, we broke for coffee and lunch, but continued with our own discussions deep into the night. As is the case with such international gatherings, the breaks really served as opportunities to speak directly with members of other delegations. At the end of the long days, even Cairo’s famous souvenir stores were closed.

A contact group is generally loosely structured and frequently governed by consensus. This flexibility and procedural informality make it a favored mechanism for crisis response, but it also encourages the very ambiguity and vagueness that produce extended discussions. One of these debates concerned the mandate of the Public Diplomacy Working Group. Some delegations urged the working group to act as a venue to address the "root causes" of Somali piracy – the economic and political conditions in Somalia itself. A number of delegations differed, noting this would go beyond the working group's mandate to coordinate public diplomacy. Furthermore, they pointed out that a separate Contact Group on Somalia already exists to deal with such on-shore issues. In fact, representatives of the UN Political Office for Somalia, based in Nairobi, attended the meeting and helpfully explained their own mandate. By late in the day, the Public Diplomacy Working Group had found compromise language that went into the recommendations presented the next day to the Plenary.

Nonetheless, there was a general appreciation for the contributions of many countries to the naval forces patrolling the seas off Somalia under UN Security Council Resolution 1851. On Tuesday, our own American head of delegation underscored the significant reduction in piracy over the past year. The most direct victim of piracy, the shipping industry, has responded fully on all fronts; several industry representatives actually attended the sessions as observers. The shippers’ application of higher standards of security and best practices are long-term solutions that pro-actively hinder piracy

Where was Somalia in all this? The new national unity government was represented by its resident Cairo ambassador, who linked piracy to conditions on land. A Somali civil society activist living in Nairobi was the first speaker on Monday and occupied the Somalia chair for the rest of the day. Yet, overall, it was the 28 different countries of the CGPCS who dominated. At best, this was mostly a gathering of non-Somalis talking about Somalia.

Throughout the discussions, I continued to marvel at this multilateral process as only a newcomer can. One arrangement in particular kept gnawing at me. The UN’s standard practice of seating member states in alphabetical order places the U.S. and U.K. side by side. Perhaps in the days of the U.S.S.R., it was less conspicuous, but the spectacle of the two largest delegations (other than the host Egyptians) seated together couldn’t help but to draw the attention of the rest of the large room. Americans and Britons easily conversed in their mutual native tongue throughout the proceedings and during breaks. The many delegations directly across the table were thus treated to a constant vision of Anglo-American camaraderie, which others might interpret more negatively. It took extra effort for us to reach out to those who were sitting further away, but we certainly did so, especially during breaks in the meetings.

What has become of the Cairo meeting? Probably most important is the inclusion of an ever-growing number of countries in the coordinating process. With Egypt in the lead, the interests of states in the region became clear, though most have not contributed units to the patrols off the Somali coast that have captured so much of the world's attention. Egypt itself is a major regional power, a leading Muslim nation, and both Arab and African. Moreover, it is a major victim of piracy as Suez Canal revenues decline with the re-routing of shipping around the Cape of Good Hope. The Public Diplomacy Working Group ended up by taking these interests and perspectives into account. With more work, we may agree on a way to speak with one voice. That would be no mean accomplishment either in multilateral politics or in the rough neighborhood where the Middle East meets the Horn of Africa.

Editor's Note: Read more about multilateral diplomacy and the Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia.]]> http://blogs.state.gov/index.php/entires/somali_piracy_multilateral/ 2009-03-30T15:58:40+00:00 About the Author: Gregory L. Garland serves as Media and Outreach Coordinator for the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of African Affairs.

It’s far too easy for us in the U.S. Department of State to miss out on one of the most important trends in international relations: the expanding role of sub-national governments – states, counties, and cities. That’s because the core of State’s mission, and its bureaucratic culture, is to manage official relationships between national governments. Yet it is precisely in those places far beyond Washington, DC, that private American citizens and their local officials are piecing together hundreds of links connecting them to communities around the world.

One of those places is Mobile, Alabama. Mobile justifiably takes great pride in a heritage going back three centuries. Its Mardi Gras, though not as famous as the one in New Orleans, dates to colonial French rule. Most Americans have at some time heard the famous battle cry of Admiral David Farragut at the Battle of Mobile Bay in 1864, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” Few texts mention another chapter of Mobile’s history, the arrival of the last recorded slave ship from Africa to North America, the Clotilde, in 1860, just before the start of the Civil War.

One hundred and ten survivors of the Middle Passage voyage from what is now Benin met their fate on the selling block and entered into slavery. At the end of the Civil War, a few dozen returned to build homes near where they had landed, some with the idea of returning to Africa where they had lived most of their lives. The first two generations continued to speak their African language and maintained their communal traditions, starting schools, a bank, a church, and a cemetery. Their settlement became the heart of segregated Mobile’s black community. Whereas elsewhere in the South, memories of Africa faded with new generations born in America, they lingered longer in Africatown than anywhere else. People living today still remember some of the original settlers, the last of whom died in 1935.

Alabamans deserve credit for keeping this story alive. Two decades ago, Alabama Governor Guy Hunt (who recently died) signed into law legislation launching the Alabama-Benin Forum – a tribute to Africatown and an attempt to reach out to the Republic of Benin. Community political leaders everywhere understand that economic development is usually the best justification for a state or local government to look overseas. Alabama is no different, and has framed the Africatown story in terms of foreign trade. The Port of Mobile has always functioned as the state’s window on the world, whether to Africa (for slaves), Central America (for bananas), or currently to Germany (for steel and automobiles). Yet, restoring the full appreciation of the legacy of Africatown involves more than a question of tourism or foreign trade potential. Recovering the past -- good and bad -- is essential to a community’s healing, something we have learned from the experiences of South Africa, Germany, and the American South, among other places.

Under the leadership of Robert Battle, a group of Mobilians have organized to commemorate their legacy in the form of the Africatown Museum. It’s still a work in progress. In the shadow of the massive Cochrane-Africatown Bridge, Battle and his volunteers have assembled the core of a museum in a double-wide trailer, hoping eventually to replace it with something more permanent. It sits in the old heart of Africatown, now a park-like open space looking down onto the harbor. Outside, stands the church established by the founders with the cemetery by its side. Inside, Battle has collected the memorabilia of 150 years, from photographs of the original slave ship to more recent items belonging to the vital community the survivors spawned. The community's rich legacy includes such Major League baseball stars as Hank Aaron and former Miracle Mets star Cleon Jones, who is an active board member of the museum.

The heirs to Africatown, however, understand that extending a hand to Africa means more than dollars and cents. They feel in their bones what the rest of us can start to sense at a distance: here in Mobile, newly-freed Africans succeeded in building a community of their own that drew upon their own African knowledge. That community helped to define the diverse city that Mobile has become. That’s why Benin deserves a special place in Alabama. It would be fitting if the flag of Benin were to join the pantheon of flags cherished by Mobilians of different heritages.

These Mobilians are true citizen diplomats. While they appreciate attention from the Department of State (such as they got from me in my visit in late January), they don’t need us to move ahead. Through their own efforts, they have re-established the link with Africa and are intent on passing that knowledge to their children. On the other hand, we in old-fashioned diplomacy very much could benefit from Africatown and all it represents. Ultimately, the power of Africatown lies in its democratic essence, private citizens in a part of our own country who by looking inward, discovered a past and a future overseas.]]> http://blogs.state.gov/index.php/entires/africatown_citizen_diplomacy/ 2009-02-27T17:52:36+00:00