Joshua Foust-Foreign Bias in Local Governance in Central Asia.mp4

Civil society is a great thing, but it's prone to abuse. When we in the West tent to think about how to build and support civil society, we often impose our ideas of what that means and how it is expressed onto a culture that may or may not be welcoming. This isn't just true in a high-profile case like Afghanistan; in other areas of Central Asia, for example, you can see this same thing happening as NGOs try to support what they think are good groups but which may not have any appeal in the host country. When the development of civil society is then elevated to an essential component of peace-building and conflict resolution, this clash between western ideals and local preferences becomes terribly damaging to any sort of peace process. By exploring one example, the arbakai in eastern Afghanistan, I'll highlight how mistaken concepts of culture can actually lead to an ostensibly peace-oriented program fomenting more violence.

Bio: Joshua Foust is a fellow at The American Security Project, where he studies national security strategy and post-conflict reconstruction. He is also editor of Registan.net, which is devoted to Central Asia, and is a columnist for PBS "Need to Know." His writing has been featured in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Reuters, and the Columbian Journalism Review.