In Asia: Weekly Insight and Features from Asia

As President-elect Barack Obama prepares for his inauguration next week, we are asking what America’s role in Asia will be. We asked that question over the past year in a series of high-level, closed door meetings with the world’s top Asian and American policy experts. America’s Role in Asia: Asian and American Views is a volume of the concrete, candid recommendations that came out of those meetings. The American co-chairs of the project, Michael H. Armacost and Stapleton J. Roy, laid it out this way in their overview:

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One of the principal objectives of political transition in Afghanistan since the overthrow of the Taliban regime in 2001 has been the development of a legitimate government. In some notable respects Afghanistan has done much better than many might have hoped. The drafting of a new constitution and the holding of presidential and parliamentary elections were remarkable achievements for a country which had plumbed the depths of isolation during the period of Taliban rule.

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In recent years, the power of networked communication, and the increasingly sophisticated modes of transit along these networks, has changed the nature of open dialogue among Asia’s citizens.  It’s providing some of the most remote and isolated places in the region with a global voice. In Afghanistan, locally-produced blogs have become a place where journalists and activists can publish evidence of corruption and speak openly about issues of governance overlooked, because of political pressure, by radio and television. In 2008, the central bank of Bangladesh circulated guidelines to formalize mobile phone banking ” a practice of transferring money via mobile phone data networks ” because the volume of those transfers had become so great that they could no longer be ignored. In Malaysia, young people post homemade videos on the web covering topics ranging from political activism to skateboarding. I keep in touch with friends in Indonesia through Facebook.

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On January 12th, in Phnom Penh, The Asia Foundation and the Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace convened a discussion of America’s Role in Asia, newly-released recommendations on what America’s foreign policy should be in Asia when the new U.S. Administration takes office.

The fourth in a series of quadrennial reports that coincide with U.S. presidential elections, this marks the first time America’s Role in Asia (ARA) findings were ever publicly released and discussed in Cambodia.

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The Policy Advocacy Handbook for Improving Economic Governance published by The Asia Foundation’s Sri Lanka office is now available. This handbook provides private enterprises, government institutions, and other organizations in Sri Lanka with basic information on how to become effective advocates in establishing and safeguarding their rights. It was prepared by The Asia Foundation in Sri Lanka, through its Local Economic Governance Program, with financial support from the Australian Agency for International Development and the Department for International Development (UK). The handbook is largely adapted from a publication on policy advocacy for Small and Medium Enterprises in Indonesia, prepared by The Asia Foundation in Indonesia.

The military has no intention of returning power to an elected government It will take five years to produce a proper voters’ list with photographs Bangladeshis will vote as they always have, with no expectation for change The election will be meaningless as a deal has already been cut with the major political actors for a government of national unity Domestic election observers cannot be trusted to observe their own election without political bias.

Throughout the day on December 29, as Bangladesh went to the polls for the long anticipated and frequently doubted Ninth Parliamentary Election, these and other articles of conventional pessimism borne of the past two years flashed through my mind.

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The current security challenge in Afghanistan is part of a troubling era of instability that has plagued Afghanistan for three decades. In December 1979, the Soviet military invaded Afghanistan, triggering a brutal war that involved Pakistani, United States, Saudi Arabia, and other states that backed the Afghan mujahideen.

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Bangladeshis are rightly proud of their accomplishment on December 29, when huge numbers of voters participated in a historic election widely lauded as free and fair. As icing on the cake, sixteen senior election officials from neighboring South Asian countries were on hand to witness Bangladesh’s triumph.

On December 27, senior election officials from Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, and Nepal arrived in Dhaka to participate in a four-day election study and observation program hosted by The Asia Foundation, on behalf of the Bangladesh Election Commission. They were joined by two Members of Parliament from the United Kingdom, and a London town councilor from a predominantly Bangladeshi neighborhood.

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Last week, The Asia Foundation released State Building, Security, and Social Change in Afghanistan: Reflections on a Survey of the Afghan People, a collection of six essays that analyze in-depth the findings of the largest public opinion survey ever conducted in Afghanistan. The survey, Afghanistan in 2008: A Survey of the Afghan People, was preceded by similar surveys in 2004, 2006, and 2007. All essays in this analytical volume inform the Afghanistan policy debate currently under way. In doing so, they provide different perceptions on the complex governance environment of Afghanistan and offer policy advice with a long-term view.

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