Crocker said the "Arab Spring" series of revolutions that swept the Middle East started in part because of economic frustration.
March 30, 2012 - During the U. S. State Department sponsored World Affairs Councils mission to Afghanistan, March 25-31, 2012. From left: U. S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker, Gen. John Allen, commander ISAF (International Security Assitance Force), Ken Furst, Massachusetts delegate, and Mimi Gregory, Florida delegate. Photo made at ISAF command headquarters in Kabul.
SPRINGFIELD – To understand Afghanistan, a group of visitors to the country that included Ken R. Furst of the World Affairs Council of Western Massachusetts needed to understand the marketplace, said Ryan C. Crocker, who was the U.S. Ambassador to the troubled country at the time.
So Crocker, who has now left government service and teaches at Yale University, told the group to dress in jeans and work shirts and join him for a walk through the local bazaar.
“Oh wow, you name it. It’s a bewildering array of stuff. From used auto parts to consumer goods to agricultural products,” Crocker said. “And if you look at where it comes from, it is from all over the world.”
Crocker also wanted the visitors to see the buying and selling, the haggling, the daily life of the people.
“For all the dissimilarities of history and culture, we are all pretty much alike,” Crocker said in a recent interview, speaking from New Haven campus. “Ultimately, when you get down to the basics, we are all pretty much alike. Afghans just want a better life for their children. And these people know how to do business.”
Crocker will speak at 6 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 12, at the Springfield Marriott, 2 Boland Way, in an event sponsored by the World Affairs Council of Western Massachusetts. The cost is $50 and people are asked to reserve their seats by Nov. 7. The World Affairs Council of Western Massachusetts can be reached at www.worldaffairscouncil.com or (413) 733-0110.
The title of Crocker’s talk will be “Lessons from a Long War: The US and the Strategic Challenges of the Middle East.” A career diplomat, he was the U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan from 2004 to 2007 and to Syria from 1998 to 2001 and Kuwait from 1994 to 1997 and Lebanon from 1990 to 1993. In January 2010 he became dean of Texas A&M’s George Bush School of Government and Public Service until President Barack Obama appointed him to the Afghanistan post in 2011. In August, he left Afghanistan for Yale, where he is a Kissinger Senior Fellow at the Johnson Center for the Study of American Diplomacy.
The World Affairs Council of Western Massachusetts has about 200 members and about 35 corporate members, Furst said. Members meet regularly to hear from diplomats and experts in the field. It’s affiliated with the national World Affairs Councils of America, which helps organize trips abroad and helps the local councils host groups from overseas.
“In a very general sense, the business world is very tied to foreign markets and foreign products,” said Furst, who is now president of Momentum Group, a Wilbraham-based sales consulting company.
“I don’t think anyone can ignore the obvious. We all buy products made overseas,” he said.
Crocker said the “Arab Spring” series of revolutions that swept the Middle East started in part because of economic frustration. A Tunisian fruit vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself on fire in 2010. The man had a college education, couldn’t get a good job and was being gouged by authorities.
“He saw absolutely no way forward for him and his family,” Crocker said.
That act helped lead to a Middle Eastern situation that is as complicated as Crocker said he’s ever seen it.
“This is Arab Spring, Act 1, Scene 1,” he said. “We are just beginning to get into the complexities. This is not over. Where it may go, who knows? It’s the biggest and most profound revolution to sweep the Arab world since the 1950s. The repercussions of those events are still with us today.”
The horrible violence we are seeing across the region is symptomatic of countries that just don’t have the social structures, such as courts and police forces, that we depend on in our society. A country that's been a under the thumb a strongman dictator just never develops those institutions, he said.
“When the top comes off, there isn’t a lot of institutional or social structure underneath,” he said.“ What makes us different is not because we are intrinsically better people. We have institutions to fall back on. They don’t. They are paying for it and we are paying for it.”
Crocker knew Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, who was killed along with three other Americans in an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in September.
“One of the finest diplomats of his generation. It’s a huge personal loss for me and a huge professional loss to the United States,” Crocker said.
That the attack occurred at all is also a very troubling sign.
“What that tells me is that al-Qaeda , which is our No. 1 strategic enemy, is gaining ground and not only in Libya but in Syria as well.”
In Afghanistan, he sees fragile progress. Ten years ago there were 900,000 boys in school. Now there are 8.5 million children in school, 40 percent of them girls. Life expectancy has jumped 16 years as medical care gets better.
“There was nothing. No communications, no telecommunications, no health care worth speaking of,” he said. “My only fear is that we decide we are done before we are done. Where we lead, the international community will follow.
“That leadership isn’t just military,” he said. “It’s health-care, education, agriculture and business.”