Your Turn Mr. Ross…
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced he plans to appoint US diplomat Christopher Ross as his new special envoy to Western Sahara. The previous envoy Peter van Walsum was seen as favoring Morocco after making comments that Western Saharan independence was “unrealistic.” It seems that Ban Ki-moon and ambassador of the United States to the UN, Zalmay Khalilzad, worked to find someone palatable to all three parties (the Polisario, Morocco and Algeria) to appoint as the new envoy.
Ross is noteable in that he actually speaks Arabic (having taught the language at both Columbia and Princeton) and has already served as a diplomat and ambassador in the region, with postings in both Morocco and Algeria. Wow, at least he is qualified, now let’s see if he can deliver.
The Middle East Times published a point-counter point between several former US ambassadors to Morocco and the AU ambassador to Western Sahara. Both are well worth checking out. I wish I had the optimism of the former, but tend to share the criticism and reservations of the latter. At the end of the day the status quo benefits Morocco and without any changes from the US, EU and/or UN it will be hard for Ross to achieve all that much. On the flip side, I don’t really think all that much pressure would be required for a great deal of progress.
For more insight on Ross, check out his article “Public Diplomacy Necessary for Policy Success.”
Ross is noteable in that he actually speaks Arabic…
That doens’t seem particularly notable amongst the US diplomatic corps in the middle-east. It obviously buys him a lot of brownie points with you, though, so what the hell… go, Ross!
Actually it is quite notable. I have met loads of US diplomatic folk in at least 6 Arab speaking countries. I think only one or two spoke passable Arabic.
Here is some hard data:
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/node/5220
Some of the diplomatic people may have studied Arabic for a year or two, but unfortunately because it is a difficult language, couldn’t really carry on a conversation yet. Not for lack of effort. Great people in general, but just couldn’t speak the language.
This is in stark contrast to a couple of the navy guys I met in Bahrain. They had great language skills, which they needed for their particular job. Great guys as well.
Also, I said he was notable in that he spoke arabic AND had a lot of experience in the region (in contrast to van Walsum).
Furthermore, language skills are often indicative of not just linguistic proficiency, but also a level of cultural understanding. That will be useful for him if he is going to act as an envoy/mediator.
What Nimr said. I’m going into similar lines of work w/ the U.S. government, though for me it’s proficiency in Mandarin that matters; the wide range of proficiency (or lack thereof) among people you meet who ‘speak’ a given language is very, very wide indeed.
Part of the problem, at a lower level, is our security clearance process, which makes it hard to get Americans w/ lots of family/visits abroad into government service. Thoroughness is always nice, but we’ve got a huge backlog and we’re not getting the people we need into government, so maybe it’s time for a re-balancing of priorities.