T U E S D A Y MARCH 2, 2004
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD Volume CXXXIX, No. 23
An independent newspaper serving the Brown community since 1891
www.browndailyherald.com
Corruption in Afghanistan still a problem, former ambassador says
Merchants question value of Thayer Street improvements
BY PAT CLARK
BY JONATHAN HERMAN
Once security measures are established, Afghanistan’s future as a nation centers on the institution of an all-Afghan government, former ambassador to Afghanistan Robert Finn told an audience in Salomon 101 Monday evening. Finn — who was ambassador to Afghanistan between 2002 and 2003 — helped to orchestrate the loya jirga that wrote the new Afghan constitution for the post-Taliban government. According to Finn, the state of Afghanistan has improved greatly since the implementation of the constitution and changes in currency, and nationwide elections in June will continue that progress. The constitution specifies elections of a president and a parliament, and current Afghan president Hamid Karzai supports fair elections, Finn said. In order to make progress in security and development, a centralized political system with a strong, supported president is necessary, he said. Finn said the transition toward democracy, although slow and deliberate, is feasible in Afghanistan — the warlord system in the villages and provinces runs on consensus, a class system has not been formed and common men do not hesitate to “tell off” the president. But he said the command-economy legacy of the Soviet Union permeates parts of the Afghan government and the attitude that private investment is a government cash cow that must be overcome. “Corruption in government was endemic (immediately following the expulsion of the Taliban) and remains a serious problem,” Finn said. But government corruption is the least of Afghanistan’s current problems, he said, citing security, infrastructure, narcotics and an absence of basic public services as major problems that can be improved with a combination of greater international funding and organized Afghan government. According to Finn, international aid to Afghanistan amounts to merely $50 per
One year after its implementation in March 2003, the Thayer Street Improvement District has made moderate improvements but not lived up to its initial goals, according to many owners and managers of Thayer Street businesses. TSID is an initiative to revitalize Thayer Street run by the 10 largest property owners on the street, including the University. “It’s been a collaborative process. We want to involve the city, neighborhood and businesses. That’s why it has taken so long,” said Deborah Dinerman, Brown’s community and government relations liaison. TSID hired landscape architectural consulting firm Gates, Leighton and Associates to design Thayer’s new streetscape and intends to start construction next summer. Improvements include new lighting, attractive pavement, larger parking capacity, improved directional and regulatory signage and many other efforts to beautify the street, Dinerman said. But many business owners are skeptical of the prospects for real improvement on the street. “You have 40 different individual owners going in 40 different directions. There has been no cohesive effort to bring them together,” said Bryan Creighton, owner of Morrison Office Supplies. Tom Farnsworth of Tom’s Tracks said that he thinks Thayer Street “is beyond improvement.” Farnsworth called TSID’s efforts to improve the area “too little, too late.” “Anybody can do whatever they want. It’s a fodder of greedy landlords, too
Gabriella Doob / Herald
Robert Finn,the first post-Taliban ambassador to Afghanistan,spoke Monday night in Salomon 101 about current challenges facing the country. capita, while Bosnia received $1,400 per capita in aid after its civil war. Additionally, the Kabul government receives no tax revenue from provinces, and its only source of domestic funding is duty stations on the border. This lack of funding has slowed the development of infrastructure necessary to implement a centralized government, he said. In 2002, phone lines did not exist between the Afghan provinces and Kabul, and a trip between Kandahar and Kabul took up to 18 hours. Phone lines and a road that shortened the trip to a third of its previous length have improved government control and security. “It’s harder (for criminals) to stop a car that’s moving 60 miles per hour than it is to stop a car moving six miles per hour,” Finn
said. Besides the inadequate infrastructure, Finn said Afghans also suffer from an overloaded education system, a national army that is fractured along ethnic cleavages, poor health services that cause 15 percent of Afghan women to die during childbirth and a lack of economic development that has fed a drug culture. Rebuilding the national army and police force would offer jobs to a generation that has always been soldiers while helping to ease ethnic strains, Finn said. Currently, 7,000 soldiers have been trained and deployed into the Afghan provinces. But jobs must be created for those who do not want to be in the national army in
see THAYER, page 5
see AFGHANISTAN, page 5
Leader in environmental justice connects environmental issues, racial inequality BY BRIAN SCHMALZBACH
Robert Bullard, the Ware distinguished professor of sociology and director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, described himself in a lecture Monday as an environmental sociologist and unapologetic environmentalist who was the leading academic bringing environmental justice issues to the public eye in the 1980s and 1990s. Speaking to an enthusiastic crowd that packed Maxcy Hall’s Zimmer Lounge, Bullard recounted his battles for the environmental justice movement. He said environmental justice is neither affirmative action nor preferential treatment but rather
the belief that all communities are entitled to equal protection under the law. Much of Bullard’s work focuses on the southern United States because “the South is the most polluted region in the country and the most resistant to equal justice,” he said. Bullard became interested in challenging environmental discrimination using civil rights laws when his wife brought a lawsuit against a company that targeted African American communities Bullard called “zoned for garbage in Houston.” He said the environmental justice movement was born in 1982 in Warren County, N.C., when students lay down in front of garbage trucks
dumping illegally in a predominantly black community. Since then, the movement has spread rapidly to many areas of public policy, including transportation, housing and health care. Bullard said smart urban and suburban growth must address equity and race because “inequalities are built into the way we grow.” Bullard’s energetic but self-deprecating speech frequently elicited laughs from the audience. “Here I am,” he said, pointing to himself in a picture of President Bill Clinton signing an executive order that enforced see BULLARD, page 3
I N S I D E T U E S D AY, M A RC H 2 , 2 0 0 4 Primaries arrive with fanfare only for some students; others forget absentee ballots metro, page 3
Hope High School, facing new rounds of reforms, waits for improvements metro, page 3
Anthony Halperin ’06 says Gabriella Windsor ’04 is wrong about Brown column, page 7
Nick Neely / Herald
At Monday night’s Caribbean Heritage Week Convocation, Roger Bonair-Agard shared some of his poetry. Bonair-Agard is the national slam poetry champion and co-author of “Burning Down the House,” and he was the keynote speaker Monday night in Starr Auditorium.
TO D AY ’ S F O R E C A S T Polygamy is bad, but gay marriage isn’t, according to Ari Savitzky ’06 column, page 7
W. track beats expectations and Yale, earns third place in Heps at Cornell University sports, page 8
mostly sunny high 53 low 35