September 2014

■ INSIDE:

A World of News and Perspective

■ VOLUME 21, NUMBER 9 MIDDLE EAST

Other Crises Sideline Syria’s Slow-Moving Humanitarian Wreck Remember Syria? That infernal tomb for, by one count, more than 190,000 people? A litany of global crises may have pushed the Syrian civil war onto the Beltway backburner, but the country’s humanitarian meltdown is still raging uncontrollably. PAGE 6

DIPLOMACY

Africa Comes to D.C., But Will American Engagement Follow?

Last month, nearly 50 African heads of state descended on Washington, D.C., for a summit that aimed to cast the continent in a new light, challenge old stereotypes and produce more than just sunny diplomatic platitudes. PAGE 11

culture

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SOUTHEAST ASIA

MALAYSIA MOURNS Awang Adek Hussin, a veteran politician, had barely eased into his new job as ambassador when he heard that Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 had crashed following the disappearance of Flight 370 — back-to-back tragedies that have prompted deep soul-searching and mourning in this once-confident nation. PAGE 13

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PEOPLE OF WORLD INFLUENCE SPOUSES

Mideast Punditry And Pessimism

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When Numa Mulina arrived in D.C. earlier Approvedclear-eyed __________________________________________________________ Aaron David Miller’s but this year, she experienced a series of firsts: Changes ___________________________________________________________ generally pessimistic views on the Middle East may It was the first time her family had seen ___________________________________________________________________ not be uplifting, but they reflect the realism of snow, it was her husband’s first ambassasomeone who understands the limits of the region, dor posting and it was her first time leaving Papua New Guinea behind. PAGE 37 and America’s power to shape it. PAGE 4 ADVERTISEMENT

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The Washington Diplomat

September 2014

CONTENTS ThE WashINgTON DIPLOmaT

September 2014

Central American children

Islamic traditions

[ news ] 4

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PEOPLE OF WORLD INFLUENCE

SYRIA ON BACKBURNER Syria may have faded from the front pages of American news outlets, but the country’s humanitarian catastrophe shows no signs of slowing down.

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CENTRAL AMERICAN QUANDARY Central America has become the new center of gravity in the polarized debate over immigration, but there are no easy fixes to a problem that has deep-seated roots on both sides of the border.

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Partisan sniping in Congress has kept the United States from filling key ambassador posts around the world.

COVER: Photo taken at the Embassy of Malaysia by Lawrence Ruggeri.

Growing numbers of Washington-area Muslims are calling for educational opportunities that preserve and accommodate their religious traditions.

the national Capital Planning Commission is moving to deter embassies from setting up shop in D.C.’s residential neighborhoods.

DIPLOMATIC SPOUSES When numa Mulina arrived in D.C. earlier this year, it was a cold awakening as she left Papua new Guinea for the first time.

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CIVIL WAR ICONS the national Portrait Gallery showcases the two generals who embody the differences and divisions that nearly split America apart 150 years ago.

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FEMININE SURPRISE “femininity Beyond Archetypes” pulls no punches as Colombian photographer natalia Arias challenges our preconceived notions of what it means to be a woman.

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‘DIRTY DANCING’ Songstress Jennlee Shallow of trinidad and tobago brings her rags-to-riches story to D.C. for the theatrical production of the hit film “Dirty Dancing.”

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DINING Cleveland Park’s ripple has found a sweet spot with its sustainable, locally sourced and award-winning approach.

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FILM REVIEWS Writer-director Philippe Garrel’s “Jealousy” feels very french, although American audiences can also relate to its melancholic story of love, infidelity and artists struggling to make a living.

EXERCISING ENVOYS 46

CINEMA LISTING

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EVENTS LISTING

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DIPLOMATIC SPOTLIGHT

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APPOINTMENTS

‘NEWS FOR ALL’

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WORLD HOLIDAYS

the newseum tells the story of how ethnic minorities discovered the power of the press in “one nation With news for All.”

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CLASSIFIEDS

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REAL ESTATE CLASSIFIEDS

[ culture ] 36

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UNWELCOME MAT

finding time to exercise can be tough, but many ambassadors say the pros of fitting a workout into their hard-working schedules outweigh the cons.

TEA PARTY TARGET

AMBASSADOR BACKLOG

ISLAMIC TRADITIONS

[ luxury living ]

tea party republicans have made shutting down the exportImport Bank a cause célèbre despite the fact that American businesses say it helps them compete in a globalized world.

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MONEY MATTERS Software engineers may be able to read computer code, but can they read a bank statement? A new test aims to measure basic financial literacy around the world.

COVER PROFILE: MALAYSIA Veteran politician Awang Adek hussin had barely eased into his new position as Malaysia’s ambassador when the impossible happened: A second Malaysia Airlines jet had fallen out of the sky.

MEDICAL

[ education ]

AFRICA’S MOMENT TO SHINE nearly 50 African heads of state came to D.C. last month for an unprecedented summit that sought to cast the continent in a new light — despite the specter of old problems.

Civil War icons

More than two decades after it revolutionized surgery and helped millions of patients recover more quickly, minimally invasive surgery is still being underused at U.S. hospitals despite its proven benefits.

Aaron David Miller offers a cold, clear-eyed dose of reality when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Middle east in general — a pessimism born of experience.

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P.o. Box 1345 • Silver Spring, Md 20915-1345 • Phone: (301) 933-3552 • Fax: (301) 949-0065 • e-mail: news@washdiplomat.com • web: www.washdiplomat.com Publisher/Editor-in-Chief Victor Shiblie Director of Operations fuad Shiblie Managing Editor Anna Gawel News Editor larry luxner Contributing Writers Sarah Alaoui, Martin Austermuhle, Michael Coleman, Carolyn Cosmos, rachel hunt, Miranda katz, Stephanie kanowitz, Vanessa h. larson, Sean lyngaas, ky n. nguyen, Gail Scott, Gina Shaw, Gary tischler, lisa troshinsky Photographer lawrence ruggeri Account Manager rod Carrasco, Chris Smith Graphic Designer Cari henderson The Washington Diplomat is published monthly by the Washington Diplomat, Inc. the newspaper is distributed free of charge at several locations throughout the Washington, D.C. area. We do offer subscriptions for home delivery. Subscription rates are $25 for 12 issues and $45 for 24 issues. Call fuad Shiblie for past issues. If your organization employs many people from the international community you may qualify for free bulk delivery. to see if you qualify you must contact fuad Shiblie.

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September 2014

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PEOPLE OF WORLD INFLUENCE

Aaron David Miller

Mideast Expert Offers Cold Dose Of Reality on Region’s Problems

by Michael Coleman

A

nyone seeking an optimistic outlook on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — or the state of the Middle East in general — should probably steer clear of Aaron David Miller. A former State Department specialist in the Middle East who has advised six different secretaries of state, Miller now reports to work as a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center, where he regularly pens columns on global affairs for Foreign Policy magazine.

Miller’s clear-eyed but generally pessimistic views on the Middle East might not be encouraging, but they inject the debate with some much-needed realism.

That realism is born of experience.

Miller first joined the State Department in 1978 and served as an advisor on ArabIsraeli negotiations until 2003, when he retired from government. Miller has also authored four books, the latest a 2008 tome titled “The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace.” Miller’s fifth book, an analysis of the declining power of the U.S. presidency, is due later this year.

In a Diplomat interview, Miller said Syria, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Lebanon and to some degree Iran are all in chaos and there’s not much prospect for improvement. He also noted that since 1950, only 22 countries in the world have maintained functioning democracies, a longstanding goal of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.

“I don’t believe there are comprehensive conflict-ending solutions,” Miller said.

“There is no country in the Arab world right now that can claim democratic status.

It’s going to be a very long road, a very long movie. Iraq and Syria are literally melting down as we speak and are likely to emerge as profoundly more decentralized polities than they were under Saddam Hussein or any of the Assads.

“I’m not arguing for the return of the dictators, to be sure, but the future here is going to be marked by increasing weakness of the Arab state and dysfunctional governance.”

At the same time, Miller said the United States can’t fully withdraw from the region because its interests are too vested.

“We are stuck in a region we cannot leave because we have allies, interests and adversaries, but at the same time we can’t transform it or fix it or find conflict-ending solutions to any of these problems,” he lamented. “My strong tendency is to look for what I call transactions not transformations.The best America could do is to come up with proximate solutions to insoluble problems and that’s how I tend to look at this region. Certainly since leaving the State Department in 2003 I’ve seen nothing that would indicate any kind of comprehensive

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or definitive endgames to any of these problems.”

That includes one of the most frustrating problems in the region for the last 66 years: the quest for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

The former State Department official quoted famed German philosopher Karl Marx in describing what he envisions could lead to a major breakthrough in the Middle East peace process.

“Marx said men make history but rarely as they please,” Miller told us.“It’s the interaction between leaders and circumstance.

The reality is the only time there have been breakthroughs in this region, you had two ingredients: You had a positive or negative shock which changed the calculation of the local players, and you had leaders who were masters of their political houses, not prisoners of them. We’ve had plenty of violence but we haven’t had the kind of shocks that have precipitated

“

We are stuck in a region we cannot leave because we have allies, interests and adversaries, but at the same time we can’t transform it or fix it or find conflict-ending solutions to any of these problems.

”

— Aaron David Miller vice president for new initiatives at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

breaks in the Israeli-Arab conflicts.”

In the latest shock, Israel pounded the Gaza Strip while Hamas lobbed thousands of rockets at Israel in weeks of fighting that have killed more than 2,000 Palestinians, many of them civilians, and 67 Israelis, all but three of them soldiers.As of press time, several intermittent ceasefires had collapsed and the specter of renewed fighting

Photo: Woodrow Wilson Center

loomed large.

This is not the first time Hamas and Israel have come to blows since the Palestinian faction took control of the Gaza Strip in 2007. Previous rounds of fighting in 2008 and 2012 took a heavy toll on the tiny, densely inhabited coastal enclave of 1.8 million people but failed to dislodge Hamas from power or ease a crippling blockade that Israel imposed when Hamas took power.

Hamas, though, hopes this most recent clash will finally lift the blockade that strictly controls the movement of goods and people in and out of the economically shattered territory — a blockade that Israel says is necessary to prevent weapons smuggling.

Miller thinks Hamas isn’t exactly in a good position to bargain. “It is badly isolated in the Arab world; in particular, both dependent on and squeezed by Egypt.

More than that, it must find a way to justify, explain and compensate Gazans for the painful reality that its rockets courted such death and devastation. It has raised high expectations — ending the blockade and

siege — that it alone cannot meet,” he wrote in a recent FP article on the violence.

At the same time, Miller notes that in an asymmetric conflict, Hamas “won something merely by not being destroyed outright. Its military leadership remains intact; it was able to launch rockets into Israel right up until the cease-fire … and it rattled Israel’s nerves and security by launching several tunnel-infiltration operations during the confrontations.”

Israel’s priority now is to keep Hamas from rebuilding its arsenal of rockets and underground tunnels to prevent future attacks. Israeli leaders have called for the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip as a precursor to any permanent ceasefire — a “lasting quiet” as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it in July.

Palestinian leaders, both in Gaza and the West Bank, have said demilitarization is a nonstarter — a demand reserved for the end of comprehensive peace negotiations, not the beginning of temporary truce talks. But Miller said the notion of demilitarization in Gaza has been miscon-

The Washington Diplomat

September 2014

strued.

“The Israelis talk about demilitarization but they really don’t mean a forcible effort to take Hamas’s high-trajectory weapons away or dismantle the 15,000-to-20,000-man army they have,” Miller told us.“I don’t think Hamas has any plans for demilitarizing. When they talk about demilitarization, they don’t talk even about decommissioning. They talk about stanching the resupply of weapons to Hamas, or not adding to the stockpile.

“Demilitarization would be a transformative result and Hamas is not going to willingly commit suicide,” Miller added. “Demilitarization to them would mean simply that they would emerge as a relatively dysfunctional political party with no capacity to govern.”

Military resistance is, in fact, Hamas’s raison d’être. An offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas was formed in 1987 — with tacit encouragement from Israelis to undercut secular Palestinian liberation groups — to oppose the Israeli occupation. Today, Miller says Hamas has “won the hearts and minds game” against the moderate but seemingly ineffectual leadership of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who has failed to rein in Israeli settlement expansion or secure a lasting peace deal.

Abbas could be strengthened, however, if his Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority winds up securing Gaza border crossings as part of any ceasefire settlement, or if the Palestinians join more U.N. bodies this September, namely the International Criminal Court, which could in theory prosecute Israel for war crimes (though it’s unlikely Abbas would jeopardize U.S. assistance with such a provocative legal maneuver).

Miller says Abbas’s future success depends on the now defunct peace talks, which collapsed earlier this year in the face of mutual recriminations and, some say, the announcement of new Israeli settlements. But the divisive issue of settlements — which are now home to more than half a million Jews in the West Bank and East Jerusalem on land Palestinians hope to claim as their own

A Palestinian man searches through the rubble of his home, which was destroyed by Israeli strikes in southern Gaza Strip. Weeks of fighting between Israel and Hamas have killed over 2,000 Palestinians and 67 Israelis.

Credit: UN Photo / Shareef Sarhan

— is not to blame for the current impasse, according to Miller, who says the real problem is that the two sides are simply too far apart on the core issues:The maximum Netanyahu is willing to offer doesn’t line up with the minimum Palestinians are willing to accept.

“In order to dismantle Israeli settlements in the West Bank you’d need two things: You’d need a [Israeli] leader with extraordinary courage and will, a leader who is prepared to risk, and you’d need a deal that would provide the Israeli state with the legitimacy and the authority to begin to confront the problems and challenges of dismantling the settlers,” Miller said.

“Even if 80 percent of the settlers agreed to relocate you’d still face the incredible nationwrenching challenge of how to deal with the remaining 10 percent or 20 percent willing to use violence to challenge the legitimacy of the state,” Miller continued. “For any polity that would be a huge crisis, but you’d need at a minimum an Israeli

leader willing to define that challenge, describe it as a legitimate one and explain why it is central to the American interest. You don’t have one of those.”

While Miller is pessimistic about the chances of a diplomatic breakthrough any time soon, he doubts the alternative that some have floated — a one-state solution in which Israel would assimilate Palestinians under one flag — will ever come to pass.

“A one-state solution never made much sense to me,” Miller told us.“It’s an outcome, not a solution.

No one is pushing it in a real way and the Israelis are clearly resisting it. The idea that Israel and the West Bank and Gaza would somehow all live in the confines of a unitary state in a happy harmonious manner? The answer is no — that could never occur.”

But some prominent experts — including Secretary of State John Kerry — say that in the absence of a comprehensive peace deal, a one-

state solution could become the de facto solution, leaving Israel with an impossible dilemma: Create an apartheid-like state where Palestinians are second-class citizens,or absorb millions of Palestinians to preserve Israel’s democracy, at the price of diluting its Jewish character. Miller doesn’t buy the dire warnings and says no amount of outside pressure or cajoling will affect the domestic political calculus each side faces.

That’s especially true in Israel, which boasts a thriving, rancorous democracy — a rarity in a region where the idea of democracy can be both malleable and dangerous.

Former President George W. Bush trumpeted the spread of democracy in the Middle East, but didn’t always like the results — such as when the Palestinian Authority and Fatah, its dominant political faction, got trounced by Hamas in parliamentary elections in 2006.

Miller said Bush should have seen the rise of Islamic-centric parties coming.

“The Bush administration should have understood that when free and fair elections are held anywhere in the Arab world, the Islamists are going to do very well,” he said. “Just look around: Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt under [Mohamed] Morsi.

That’s essentially reality.

“There should have been candidacy requirements in that [Hamas] election,” he added. “You can’t have a democratic election in a society when one side is promoting fair and free elections and the other side is promoting violence. That is not how democracy is supposed to work. On one hand we have the vote and the other hand we have the gun — that should never have been tolerated.”

Hamas, though, campaigned largely against corruption in the West Bank, not necessarily violence against Israel. Fatah refused to recognize the results — backed by the U.S., Israel and Egypt. But Miller defends America’s right to criticize the vote that ushered Hamas into power even as it calls for democracy.

See Miller, page 52

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International Affairs

Middle East

Syria’s Slow-Motion Humanitarian Disaster Falls Off Media Radar

by Sean Lyngaas

R

emember Syria? That infernal tomb for, by one count, more than 190,000 people? The government that U.S. President Barack Obama warned would cross a “red line” of heinousness should it use chemical weapons on its citizens, and did so anyway?

A consumer of mainstream American news might be forgiven for forgetting Bashar al-Assad’s Syria. The IsraelHamas conflict, the downing of the Malaysian Airlines plane over rebel-held Ukraine, and the startling conquests of the Islamic State (of Iraq and Syria) have, for the most part, pushed the Syrian civil war and its begotten humanitarian crisis to the back pages and wee hours of American media attention.

But the humanitarian needs of Syria, especially its children, are at least as acute, if not more, than they were six or 12 months ago. More than 6 million Syrian children are in urgent need of humanitarian aid, a number that has jumped by a third over the last year, according to a July report from UNICEF. In all, nearly half of Syria’s population — 10.8 million — needs assistance.Another 3 million have fled, the majority of them women and children, in a mass exodus that has overwhelmed neighbors such as Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan and Turkey.

Despite the country’s role in destabilizing the region, a faithful follower of U.S. news networks can’t help but notice the tapering off of Syrian stories in recent weeks and months. Data for that dip in coverage are hard to come by; they are the kind of statistics that might appear in an academic paper a couple of years from now.

Some argue that the country’s civil war never really commanded the front pages to begin with, at least not in a way that reflected the scale of the disaster. There are myriad reasons why Syria’s tragedy hasn’t gripped the public as other crises have: The war was a slow-moving catastrophe, as opposed to the immediacy of a natural disaster. With hard-core Islamist militants committing atrocities alongside the regime in Damascus, it became hard to distinguish enemy from ally. And even when aid money did flow, for practical and political reasons, it didn’t always reach the people in need.

Syria also became increasingly difficult terrain for reporters. Practical constraints and questionable judgments account for the shift in media coverage, according to Bill Gentile, a journalism professor at American University. Syria has been lethal ground for accomplished foreign correspondents like Anthony Shadid and Marie Colvin who were, respectively, reporting for the New York Times and Sunday Times when killed. That danger has kept already short-staffed news outlets from sending traditional and freelance correspondents to Syria, Gentile wrote in an email.

Another possible reason for shortchanging Syria’s plight is the “collective — and, I believe, inaccurate — perception by management of mainstream U.S. media that the U.S. audience can pay attention to only a limited number of crises at one time,” wrote Gentile, a longtime correspondent in Central America and the Caribbean who spent time in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province.

While media attention can have a direct or indirect

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Photo: © UNICEF/NYHQ2013-1390/Noorani

“

The longer this goes on, the higher the number of people needing assistance is and the less interested the public is.

— Bernice Romero

”

senior director of humanitarian policy and advocacy at Save the Children

effect on public giving to a humanitarian cause, the attentions of aid workers are, in theory, independent of publicity. And after months of frustrated efforts to get aid to Syria’s most ravaged outposts, more relief has gotten through in recent weeks.

The Battle Over Aid Of the 10.8 million Syrians in need of urgent humanitarian assistance, some 4.6 million are in “hard-to-reach areas” areas, while 241,000 are in “besieged areas,” according U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s July report to the Security Council.

Kate Phillips-Barrasso, director of policy and advocacy at the International Rescue Committee, says the sheer disruptiveness of Syria’s violence, rather than any lack of attention, explains the desperate refugee situation.

“It’s not just getting aid inside Syria, but there are some areas that are just almost impossible to reach,” she said.

The often-uncertain sovereignty of Syria’s warzones has made getting aid like medical supplies and food to the far corners of the country especially difficult.The kidnapping of aid workers has also discouraged truck drivers from delivering relief, U.N. Undersecretary-General for

Ahmed pushes his daughter Safa, 6, to school in a wheelchair, in Jordan’s Zaatari refugee camp near the Syrian border on Nov. 26, 2013. Two of Safa’s sisters are nearby. After the family’s home in the Syrian city of Aleppo was destroyed, Safa, her parents, grandmother and five siblings fled to rural Damascus, where an attack that left Safa gravely injured — she lost her right leg and suffered burns and shrapnel wounds.

She and her family now live in Zaatari, where Safa attends school in the mornings, goes to a child-friendly space in the afternoons and also regularly receives physiotherapy.

Humanitarian Affairs Valerie Amos said last fall.

Critics of President Assad also accuse him of using aid as a weapon to punish his opponents into submission.

The government has tried to control the flow of international assistance by demanding approval of all U.N. deliveries, funneling aid to Assad’s supporters to bolster his regime while starving rebel-held areas.

A U.N. resolution passed in February was meant to loosen the chokehold on humanitarian relief by demilitarizing schools and hospitals, although official aid still had to go through Damascus. More than three months after its passage,Amos admitted the resolution did not get the job done.

That U.N. relief efforts were only able to reach about 7 percent of people in besieged areas was a “stark reminder of the reality on the ground: active conflict, bureaucratic hurdles and conditions imposed by the parties on aid delivery, which have resulted in a decline in vital help for the most vulnerable people,” Amos said at a June press conference.

But a turning point came on July 14 when the U.N. Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 2165, which authorized humanitarian aid to be brought across the Syrian border through four crossings in Turkey, Iraq and Jordan — with or without Assad’s permission.

Bernice Romero, senior director of humanitarian policy and advocacy at Save the Children, says U.N. statements calling for the passage of aid into Syria have grown stronger and more specific over the last year or so.

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September 2014

A “presidential statement” from the Security Council last October was ambiguous in that some relief groups saw it as sanctioning cross-border aid while others did not, Romero said.The latest resolution, in contrast with the one passed in February,“took it to another level of specificity by naming particular border crossings and particular areas,” she added.

Phillips-Barrasso agreed that Resolution 2165 had more teeth. It “laid out a mechanism for the United Nations to start providing cross-border assistance … which we hope will really get to those hard-to-reach areas,” she said.

In a matter of weeks since the resolution passed, the U.N. World Food Program has claimed “significant progress” in distributing food aid to Syrians, reaching 3.7 million people in July. More than 300,000 of those people are in “hard-to-reach areas,” the group said, double the number of people reached using “cross-line convoys” in June.

It may have taken years after fighting erupted in Syria, but the Security Council was able to overcome its geopolitical divisions to clear a path for aid — in part because this latest resolution doesn’t threaten any military or economic retribution if Assad doesn’t comply (a nod to Russia and China). It also promised to vet aid deliveries to prevent weapons from being smuggled to the rebels.

But the fact that Russia agreed to the resolution over Assad’s objections — after years of blocking similar calls for humanitarian access — may also be a sign of just how desperate the situation in Syria has become.

Children Bear the Brunt Earlier this year, UNICEF called Syria “one of the most dangerous places on earth to be a child.”

The U.N. agency for children’s rights categorizes conflicts as Level 1, 2 or 3, with Level 3 being the most dire.“For the first time in my career in an affiliation with UNICEF, we have multiple Level 3s,” said U.S. Fund for UNICEF President Caryl Stern.Those four “Level 3s” are the Central African Republic, Iraq, South Sudan and Syria.

As of March, the Syrian war had cast out about 1.5 million children to Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq,Turkey and North Africa, according to UNICEF, which also says that well over 10,000 children have died since the conflict began.

But it’s not just lives, and limbs, that have been lost. An entire generation of psychologically traumatized children is growing up without health care, education or the trappings of the middle-class life to which many had become accustomed. Before the war, Syria had made positive development gains, with primary-school enrollment and literacy levels topping 90 percent. Today, children are

to dodging bullets and bombs. In its plea for donations, the eyegrabbing commercial asks how the world would have reacted if London had slipped into the kind of chaos that now engulfs Syria.

‘No End in Sight’

Credit: UN Photo / Mark Garten

A boy peeks out of a tent provided by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) at a camp for Syrian refugees in Turkey. Nearly 3 million refugees have fled Syria, overwhelming neighboring countries such as Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan and Turkey.

increasingly working to support their families, young girls are marrying earlier and boys have been recruited to fight.

Stern brings back stories for anyone who will listen from the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan, which teems with over 80,000 people, mostly from Syria’s Daraa Governate.

On a visit to Zaatari, Stern heard from a lawyer who had represented anti-Assad demonstrators. When an explosion left the lawyer’s daughter with a severe head injury, Stern said, he carried her on his back for four days to a hospital in Jordan.

“So it went from one day he was a lawyer in a beautiful home with a wife and kids who were going to school, to living on the street in Amman with a daughter with a cracked skull,” Stern said.

That dispossession is a psychological blow to the many Syrian refugees who were middle-class before the conflict, she added.

At a private fundraising event in D.C. last June, UNICEF Ambassador Téa Leoni told Washingtonians that the people she met in the Zaatari refugee camp during a recent visit were not so different from them. “One man reminded me that his kids had as many iPads as I do,” the actress said, noting that of all her humanitarian travels, Syria was the “most devastating and most difficult to talk about.”

Save the Children tried to help Westerners relate to the plight of these refugees in a video earlier this year that depicts the life of a young English girl as it devolves from blowing out birthday candles

UNICEF’s fundraising goal for humanitarian needs inside Syria in 2014 is $194 million, Stern said. It had raised $53 million as of her interview with The Diplomat in late July, leaving her disappointed but intent on rallying more support.

More broadly, the group is seeking $770 million to cover all of its Syria funding for the year, although only 37 percent has been met so far. Likewise, the United Nations has raised $679 million for its 2014 Syria Humanitarian Response Plan, only about 30 percent of its $2.27 billion target.

Some governments have been relatively generous, aid workers say.

The single-largest donor has been the United States, which announced a new tranche of $378 million in aid on July 30, bringing its contributions to about $2.4 billion over the course of the conflict.

But private donations may be a bigger challenge.

Romero said private aid for Save the Children’s Syria work has been “very low.” Corporations and individuals are typically more willing to give money to victims of a natural disaster than a politicized conflict, she reckons.

The U.S. Fund for UNICEF’s Stern has drawn the same conclusion.

“Refugee situations are a lot harder to fundraise for.And they’re even harder when they’re an ocean away; and they’re even harder when they’re culturally less well known, when there are conceptions of the countries and terrorism that make it difficult,” she said.

The seeming interminability of the 3.5-year conflict is another possible hindrance to fundraising. Syria is a bottomless well of humanitarian needs, but the shock value of its citizens’ suffering may have diminished over time.“The longer this goes on, the higher the number of people needing assistance is and the less interested the public is,” Romero said.

Observers of the conflict often point out that there is no humanitarian solution to the fighting, only a political one. But until that elusive goal is reached, the tireless and solemn effort to save lives goes on.

“There is no end in sight, no end in sight for this conflict, which is such a hard thing to say out loud because it’s so upsetting,” PhillipsBarrasso said.

Sean Lyngaas (@snlyngaas) is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

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International Relations

Immigration

Central American Diplomats Urge Compassion in Child Migration Crisis

by Larry Luxner

C

entral America is suddenly grabbing headlines again — decades after the civil wars, hurricanes, earthquakes and other disasters that killed hundreds of thousands of people and decimated the economies of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.

These days, the big story is the influx of more than 57,000 unaccompanied minors who have crossed into the United States from Mexico during the first nine months of this fiscal year, double from the previous year.The total is likely to hit 90,000 by fall and possibly 150,000 next year. It’s so serious that President Obama — who’s already dealing with the latest IsraeliPalestinian flare-up, pro-Russia separatists battling the Ukrainian government, the imminent collapse of Iraq and the grinding war in Syria — made time to meet with three Central American leaders in July to discuss the humanitarian crisis on the southwestern border.

“I can recall no time since the Central American wars of the 1980s when so much U.S. media attention has been paid to this region,” Cynthia Arnson, director of the Latin American Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, said during a July 24 discussion attended by 250 people crammed into the center’s sixth-floor auditorium and two overflow rooms. “These children come from an extremely violent region, where they probably perceive that the risk of traveling to the U.S. is preferable to remaining at home. Poverty levels have gone down, but 45 percent of Salvadorans, 55 percent of Guatemalans and 67 percent of Hondurans are still poor.There is no magic bullet to address these problems, which have taken decades, if not centuries, to develop.”

Julio Ligorria Carballido, Guatemala’s envoy to the United States, agrees.

“You cannot blame this crisis on any one thing. If you speak with ambassadors from the Northern Triangle countries or Mexico, everyone will tell you we all have a shared responsibility,” the ambassador told us. “But everyone has a lot to gain by resolving this.”

Partisan Prism Until recently, the immigration debate focused largely on Mexico, even though the number of people coming to the United States from that country dropped following the 2008 economic crisis.

Meanwhile, in Central America, a major drug corridor, a surge of minors began making the dangerous trek north to escape brutal gangs, endemic poverty, sex trafficking and some of the highest murder rates in the world.

Page 8

Over the summer, after news broke of U.S. detention centers crammed with children and mothers, the Obama administration asked Congress for $3.7 billion in emergency spending to hire more immigration judges, improve care for detained kids, crack down on smugglers and deter illegal immigration. Senate Democrats introduced a $2.7 billion package, while in the House, Republicans pared down a similar bill to $659 million.

The Senate effort went nowhere and House Republicans abandoned their own bill after failing to corral support from tea party conservatives egged on by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). But just before the start of a five-week summer recess, House Republicans managed to pass a $694 million border bill, along with a second bill to rein in Obama’s deportation powers, though neither has any chance of becoming law.

Republicans say their legislation addresses the root causes of the current crisis. Specifically, they cite a 2008 law (passed by George W. Bush at the tail-end of his presidency) that aims to curb human trafficking by requiring full hearings for minors from noncontiguous neighboring countries; in contrast, minors from Mexico and Canada can be turned back at the

Endemic poverty, rampant gang violence and rumors of legalization have driven a surge of minors from Central American nations such as Guatemala, above, to the U.S. border.

“

Photo: dijana928 / iStock

You cannot blame this crisis on any one thing.

If you speak with ambassadors from the Northern Triangle countries or Mexico, everyone will tell you we all have a shared responsibility…. But everyone has a lot to gain by resolving this.

”

— Julio Ligorria, ambassador of Guatemala to the United States border. With the system overwhelmed, however, children from Central America often wait a year or longer to see a judge.

In the meantime, most are sent to live with relatives and given an order to appear in court — an order that can be easily ignored, Republicans contend (Obama is now trying to expand family detention and fast track deportations to stop that practice).

In 2012, Obama also enacted the Deferred Action for Child Arrivals program, which provides two-year work permits for young undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children before

2007 (so-called “Dreamers”). Both policies, Republicans say, have fueled rumors in Central America that kids have permission to come to the States.

The $694 House-passed bill would change the 2008 anti-trafficking law to send minors from Central America back home without hearings, while the second bill would freeze and ultimately dismantle Obama’s deferred deportation program.

Democrats declared both measures dead on arrival in the Senate, while the president vowed to veto the “partisan message bills” and pledged to use his executive authority to act alone on the issue.

Democrats are also still fuming because GOP leaders in the House refused to take up a bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill passed by the Senate last year. Sitting comfortably in gerrymandered districts where popular sentiment runs against immigration reform, House Republicans have avoided addressing the status of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States, preferring a piecemeal approach that prioritizes enforcement. That reticence, however, could ultimately boost Democrats’ election prospects, as Hispanics and other minorities increasingly turn against the white male-dominated GOP. Republicans counter that they don’t trust the president to enforce the rules and insist that before any reward is given to immigrants who have broken the law, the border must first be secured ($35 million, for example, was added in the House spending bill to beef up the border with National Guard troops).

The Heritage Foundation, a well-known

The Washington Diplomat

See Immigration, page 10 September 2014

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September 2014

The Washington Diplomat Page 9

from page 8

immigration and well-funded conservative think tank, unequivocally places blame for the latest influx on the 44th president.

“Rather than use discretion as it is intended — to better administer the U.S. immigration system — the Obama administration has used its discretion to lessen enforcement of U.S. immigration laws, which creates an incentive for illegal immigration,” wrote Heritage research associate David Inserra in a July 15 briefing paper.

While only Congress can grant large groups of immigrants permission to stay in the U.S., the president can focus limited government resources on deporting certain individuals (criminals, for instance) over others (Dreamers).

But Inserra argues this creates a powerful magnet for more illegal immigrants, “since children and their families have hope that they might receive some sort of amnesty, or at least not be deported, if they make it into the U.S.” He added that the White House must “stop its anti-enforcement policies that are encouraging the increase in illegal immigration, thus making it more difficult and costly to secure U.S. borders.”

Yet some security measures may already be working. The White House says the number of Central American migrants crossing the U.S. border this summer has dropped significantly; the New York Times reported that greater policing by Mexico and a U.S.-funded ad blitz to debunk rumors that immigrants will be given amnesty may have contributed to the decrease. But the numbers are still high and the issue is sure to remain a political hot potato ahead of the November elections.

‘hELP Us’ Rubén Zamora, El Salvador’s ambassador to the United Nations, doesn’t think lax border enforce-

Photo: AlfreDo SrUr / WorlD BAnk

A young girl stands in front of drying corn in her family’s farm on the honduran town of Yarula. like its Central American neighbors, honduras struggles with poverty and high crime, including some of the highest murder rates in the world.

ment is behind the current crisis.

“The argument that the U.S. Border Patrol is inefficient is absolutely wrong.The Border Patrol is the most efficient thing I’ve ever seen in the U.S.,” said Zamora, who was El Salvador’s ambassador in Washington for a year before being reassigned to New York this summer. Ironically, 30 years ago, Zamora — then a member of a center-left group that assumed power in a coup — wasn’t even allowed into the United States.

“They know when the people are coming.

There are 40 TV screens along one section of the Rio Grande alone, and as soon as there’s movement, all of them move into focus and can detect immediately what’s coming,” Zamora said at a

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recent Inter-American Dialogue event. “When I was ambassador here, I asked the immigration people how they measured that migration from El Salvador was on the increase, and they said it was because they were catching more and more people every day.”

Guatemala’s Ligorria agrees that the problem isn’t border security — it’s the lack of security back home. Earlier this summer, his country’s foreign minister became the first, and so far the only, foreign minister to visit the border during a trip to McAllen,Texas.

“We have to look at the violence in Central America, the hunger, misery, poverty and lack of education,” the ambassador said. “These are struc-

tural problems of our society that resulted 30 years ago from the Cold War. Help us to manage the crisis, but if you really want to solve the problem, you can invest in our countries. Promote real U.S. investments in Central America and take advantage of the lower wages.And increase cooperation to solve narco-violence and our other social problems.”

Honduran Foreign Minister Mireya Agüero de Corrales, who recently visited Washington, said the United States has an obligation to protect the welfare of all children trying to cross the border while helping her country fight the poverty, gangs and drug-fueled violence that force these minors to flee in the first place.

“This problem is all-encompassing, and it ties into the tragedy of our country being a transit point for drug traffickers and organized crime,” Agüero said during the Wilson Center discussion, where she was joined by the foreign ministers of El Salvador and Guatemala.

Agüero estimated that 80 percent of the cocaine shipped or flown from South America to the United States passes through Honduras. The Virginia-size nation of 8 million is already plagued with the world’s highest homicide rate: 79 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2013.

“Our data show that 70 percent of the homicides in Honduras are related to drug trafficking,” she said.“We need to work together to break this vicious cycle. How much as governments can we actually do to attract investments and create jobs?

The first thing is to focus on containing violence in order to create a much safer environment, so that there is trust in state institutions, which have also been undermined by organized crime. We accept that fact, and we’re working on it.”

shaRINg BLamE They have a lot of work to do. Honduras ranks 16th out of 17 countries in the Social Inclusion

See iMMigrAtion, page 52

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DIPLOmaCy

Washington, D.C.

Behind Fanfare of Africa Summit Lie Questions About Messaging

by Sean lyngaas

f

or a few days in early August, the promise of a resurgent continent arrested the world’s most powerful city. Traffic ground to a halt and hotels were at capacity as nearly 50 African heads of state descended on Washington, D.C., each with his or her own agenda but all visiting under the banner of a changing stereotype. What has historically been the world’s most downtrodden continent is now one of its most hopeful.

The 21st century will be Africa’s century, optimists say. The demographics and economics seem to point that way. A 2013 study from the Boston Consulting Group found that of the 30 countries making the greatest progress in improving their citizens’ well being, eight are in sub-Sahara Africa. The African Development Bank expects the continent to grow 4.8 percent in 2014 and 5 to 6 percent in 2015,“levels which have not been seen since the global economic crisis of 2009.”

In setting the stage for the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, the first event of its kind, U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice drew contrasting images of an old and new Africa, to the extent that such a kaleidoscope of cultures and languages can be grouped as one.

“

I do tend to question a little bit the utility of big summitry in a place that is so diverse….

You can’t capture Africa in any single narrative.

”

— JenniFer Cooke director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies

“Let me begin by underscoring … that today’s Africa is not at all the same place it was when I served as assistant secretary of state during the Clinton administration,” Rice said during a July 30 speech previewing the summit. She went on to recount how, less than 20 years ago, “Sierra Leone was locked in a decade-long civil war, with rebels hacking off limbs and abducting U.N. peacekeepers.”

Rice was a prominent member of September 2014

Photo: StAte DePArtMent

President obama, center, address leaders from across the African continent who came to D.C. for a three-day U.S.-Africa leaders Summit, the largest event any U.S. president has held with African heads of state and government.

President Bill Clinton’s administration in the mid-1990s when horrific violence plagued countries like Sierra Leone and Rwanda. U.S. inaction in the face of the Rwandan genocide seemed to scar her to the point of vowing humanitarian intervention the next time she was in a similar position, according to Samantha Power, a onetime journalist who would eventually succeed Rice as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Aside from turning the page on a history of violence, Rice’s July 30 speech at the U.S. Institute of Peace sought to cast America’s relations with Africa as, in her words, “fundamentally different” than that of the rest of the world.

“We don’t see Africa as a pipeline to extract vital resources, nor as a funnel for charity,” she said in a thinly veiled shot at China, which has flooded the continent with investment in return for natural resources, often without conditions on respect for human rights.

China’s no-strings investments, however, mean that “we have some catching up to do,” former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at the summit.

U.S. business leaders do increasingly see investment, rather than aid, as a means of growing African economies, and the summit reflected that shift in strategy. The White House on Aug. 6 announced $12 billion in new commitments, mostly from

private firms, for a program to improve access to electricity across Africa. General Electric by itself plans to invest $2 billion across Africa by 2018. At the summit, U.S. firms secured deals for more than $14 billion in Africa’s banking, clean energy and aviation sectors, among others.

While Obama and African leaders tried to cast the continent in a new light during the summit, Africa’s economic potential remains clouded by rampant poverty, governance problems and endemic graft.

Africa may be home to six of the world’s 10 fastest-growing economies, but 10 of the world’s poorest countries are African. In fact, sub-Sahara Africa is the only developing region that saw the number of people living in extreme poverty rise, with half the population today living on $1.25 or less a day. Two out of every three sub-Saharan Africans lack electricity. The continent also lags far behind Latin America and Asia in building up its middle class, and most African nations consistently sit at the bottom of transparency and ease of doing business rankings.At the summit,Vice President Joe Biden warned leaders that corruption is “a cancer” that directly threatens “each of your nations’ stability.”

Africa’s weak health care system also cast a pall over the summit as the Ebola virus that has ravaged West Africa kept the presidents of Liberia and Sierra Leone at home. Even the organization of the summit

itself came under fire, as some observers wondered if the administration was trying to squeeze in too many events with no overarching focus.

LOgIsTICaL ChaLLENgEs INEvITaBLE Despite all of the business deals announced at the Aug. 4-6 summit — and nearly 100 side events — some companies felt left out as the logistical challenges of coordinating meetings between dozens of corporate executives and African delegations became apparent.

Jennifer Cooke, Africa Program director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that aside from the U.S.-Africa Business Forum on Aug. 5,“there were not that many structured opportunities” for private firms to meet with African delegations.

That arrangement is fine for large firms already present in Africa but challenging for smaller ones trying to set up shop there, she said. Some companies that got word of the Department of Commerce-hosted business forum were scrambling to get on the guest list, she added.

It wasn’t just American businessmen and women who were jostling for face time but African leaders themselves. Heads of state

Continued on next page The Washington Diplomat Page 11

Continued from previous page invited to the summit were likely irked to learn that their several thousand-mile trips to Washington, D.C., would not include a bilateral meeting with Obama. Some countries sent deputies or foreign ministers instead of heads of state.

There simply wasn’t time for bilateral meetings with such a large number of leaders attending, U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes told reporters on a conference call,“so the simplest thing is for [President Obama] to devote his time to engaging broadly with all the leaders.That way we’re not singling out individuals at the expense of the other leaders.”

Discerning a Theme The summit’s countless formal and informal meetings involving African officials, civil society groups, corporations and even the pop star Akon raise the question of messaging: Did the Obama administration relay a concise narrative for the summit’s goals, or was that even the point?

Rhodes and Rice have harped on the theme of empowering the next generation of Africa’s leaders, and for good reason. Africa has the youngest and fastest-growing population in the world: In less than three generations, 41 percent of the world’s youth will be African, and by 2050, over a quarter of the world’s labor force will be African, according to the White House.

“I think the president’s messaging is right on in terms of focusing on an emerging generation of African leaders that are going to drive economic growth” and be involved in improving democratic governance, said Tara Sonenshine, a former undersecretary of state for public diplomacy who is now an adjunct faculty member at the George Washington University.

The administration’s Young African Leaders Initiative will bring about 500 young Africans to the United States every year for coursework and mentoring. Obama made a point of mentioning these youth at a press conference, saying he looked forward to “seeing all the great things that you do when you go back home.”

The important theme of African youth notwithstanding, the divergent paths of the continent’s countries defy any neat categorization.

Fighting involving al-Qaeda-inspired militants and Tuareg separatists has plagued Mali while, further south, Ghana’s economic growth has turned heads, despite its recent fiscal troubles.

Photo: State Department

From left, Secretary of State John Kerry poses for a photo with U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, Bloomberg CEO Mike Bloomberg and Vice President Joe Biden before delivering remarks at the U.S-Africa Business Forum Leaders Forum session “Game Plan: Shaping the Future of a Fast-Growing Continent.”

“I do tend to question a little bit the utility of big summitry in a place that is so diverse,” Cooke said, arguing that “you can’t capture Africa in any single narrative.” The unprecedentedly large gathering could set a standard for continental summits that are diffuse and broad in scope, she added.

Not on the Agenda The issue of human rights was conspicuously absent from the official agenda set by the Obama administration, and rights groups were left to hold their own sessions separately.

“I understand the important focus of the summit on issues around trade, investment and security … but we cannot miss the fact that all of these are not going to be sustainable unless they are anchored in building institutions for rule of law, for governance, for respect for human rights,” said Daniel Bekele, executive director of the Africa division of Human Rights Watch.

The week of the summit, a few dozen protesters were on Pennsylvania Avenue, near the White House, shouting slogans decrying the administration’s welcoming of South Sudan President Salva

Kiir. Despite presiding over months of ethnic violence in South Sudan earlier this year, Kiir enjoyed a photo op with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on the sidelines of the summit.

But Obama’s supporters point out that if the White House were to disinvite Kiir, it would also have to rescind invites to a number of African leaders with far more checkered human rights records.

Current and former Obama administration officials also argue that raising human rights issues in private with African leaders is more effective than a public scolding.“Every meeting I’ve ever been to on Africa, there’s always been a reminder about human rights, about instability, conflict, corruption,” Sonenshine said.

But Bekele worries that it has become standard practice for governments to discuss human rights in private.

“While it is true that private engagement is useful … at the same time, public engagement of this issue is also significantly important,” he said.“We are talking about issues that affect the lives of millions and millions of people in the region and this is not something to be left for … secret discussion between diplomats and government officials.”

For her part, Rice touched generally on human rights in her remarks at the U.S. Institute of Peace:“Leaders must lead, especially on difficult issues. And protecting the human rights of all their people, regardless of religion, gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation, is a government’s first duty,” she said.

But for groups like Human Rights Watch and, for example, the editorial board of the Washington Post, which hit out against Obama on the issue, administration officials should have been more pointed and public with objections to the human rights records of some of their summit guests.

At least one head of state was questioned in public on the issue during his trip to Washington, D.C. At an Aug. 1 speech at the National Press Club, when asked how he could improve civil liberties in his country, Republic of Congo President Denis Sassou Nguesso replied that, “we are … in a sense, a mecca for the press.

There isn’t any freer press than the press in the Congo.”

Hyperbole aside (the Republic of Congo is ranked 82nd for press freedom by Reporters Without Borders), human rights groups might have appreciated that the question was asked and Nguesso put aside the summit platitudes to give a somewhat detailed answer.

Sean Lyngaas (@snlyngaas) is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

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September 2014

COVER PROFILE

Ambassador Awang Adek Hussin

Malaysia Picks Up Pieces After Back-to-Back Plane Tragedies

by Larry Luxner

T

he night Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished from radar screens an hour after takeoff from Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing, politician Awang Adek Hussin was in between jobs, having recently been voted out of office by the opposition in his home state of Kelantan.

Awang had barely eased into his new position as Malaysia’s envoy to the United States when a second Malaysia Airlines jet fell out of the sky — this one shot down over eastern Ukraine — a little over four months after the first tragedy.

“I was on Capitol Hill,” the ambassador recalled. “We had just finished meeting [Rep.] Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) and were walking down the hall, on our way to the office of [Rep.] Ami Bera (D-Calif.). Then my minister counselor, Hairul Reaza, got a text on his phone and said, ‘Oh my God, another crash.’ I was stunned. My mind suddenly flashed back to the first plane. I remember thinking, how could this happen to us again?”

Half a year after Flight 370 went down, not a trace of the Boeing 777-200ER has been found. Nor have the remains of the 239 passengers and crew onboard — despite a multinational search effort that quickly became the largest and most expensive in history.

It’s also aviation’s most enduring riddle ever, as teams from 26 countries immediately began scouring an enormous swath of Asia and the Indian Ocean looking for signs of the elusive jet without success.

That search was still underway on July 17, when an anti-aircraft missile — presumably fired by pro-Russia rebels fighting the Ukrainian central government in Kiev — blew up Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, killing all 298 people aboard and further escalating tensions between Russia and the West.

“You can say it’s bad luck, but it’s difficult to think of two major incidents happening like this,” Awang told The Washington Diplomat in his only interview to local media since the downing of that second Boeing 777 aircraft. “The first one was a mystery; the second was totally man-made. It’s obvious that in that sense, it’s not related to the first. But this has been a very tough and challenging time for Malaysia.”

That’s an understatement. The twin disasters plunged this Southeast Asian nation of 30 million into mourning like nothing else in Malaysia’s 57 years as an independent country.After China, Malaysia

September 2014

Photo: Lawrence Ruggeri of ruggeriphoto.com

“

‘Oh my God, another crash.’ I was stunned.

My mind suddenly flashed back to the first plane.

I remember thinking, how could this happen to us again?

”

— Awang Adek Hussin ambassador of Malaysia to the United States

lost the greatest number of citizens, 38 passengers and 12 crew, on Flight 370. Most of the crash victims of Flight 17, which was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, were Dutch, though 43 Malaysians (including 15 crew and two infants) were also on board the doomed aircraft.

Among the dead was Puan Sri Siti Amirah, the 83-year-old step-grandmother of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak who was on her way to celebrate Hari Raya, the end of the Muslim fast month of Ramadan.

“It was a very sad day for Malaysia and also for the Netherlands,”Awang said.“The day I went to the Dutch Embassy to sign their book of condolences, Defense Secretary [Chuck] Hagel was there too.”

Yet the disaster also boosted the public image of Najib, who scored points at home and abroad for persuading rebel leader Alexander Borodai to turn over most of the bodies of those on board Flight 17, as well as the voice and flight data recorders, to Ukrainian authorities. Najib personally reached Borodai via cell phone, establish-

ing a rapport with the scruffy premier of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and eventually getting what he wanted — without offering payments or formal diplomatic recognition of any kind in return, according to Awang.

“Were any promises made? Not that I know of,” the ambassador told us. “I agree with the way our prime minister handled it. He said many times that he would do whatever he could for the families, and bringing home the remains was of uppermost importance to him. He was willing to set aside some diplomatic concerns that others might have had. In this type of arrangement, many things could have gone wrong, and he’d be blamed terribly if it didn’t go through.”

Despite the anger among his countrymen, Najib refrained from publicly blaming the rebels — or Russia — for shooting down the airliner. Instead, he used back channels and what he himself called “quiet diplomacy” to secure the return of the black boxes and human remains; more recently, a deal was brokered to allow

Malaysian personnel to investigate the crash site alongside the Dutch-led team already there.

“There’s no question in my mind the risk was worth it,” Awang said of Najib’s quiet diplomacy. “The whole country rallied around him. We had a special parliamentary session, and for the first time in many years, even opposition leaders supported him, saying they’d have done the same thing. This was very uplifting to me, given the partisanship we have in my country,” the envoy said.

Although Malaysia took an apolitical, neutral stance that helped seal a deal with pro-Russia rebels, Awang expressed little doubt about what happened that day.

“The rebels say they didn’t do it, but they can’t hang onto this forever,” he said.

“So if they were going to give up [the remains], they might as well have given them to us [instead of Ukrainian authorities]. Malaysia has the right; it was our plane.”

Awang, 59, is new to the world of diplomacy. A native of Bachok — a beach town about 20 miles from Malaysia’s border with Thailand — he has an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Awang and his wife, Latifah, who earned a master’s degree in chemistry from West Virginia University, have five children, all of them back in Malaysia.

“I had just lost the last election by 201 votes out of 80,000 in my constituency in Bachok, when one day I got a call from the

Continued on next page The Washington Diplomat Page 13

In January 2015, Malaysia will assume the chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a powerful trading bloc whose prime minister asking me to take this job,” said 10 member states are home to 600 million people Awang, who had been the deputy minister of and boast a combined GDP of about $2.2 trillion. finance. “I told him, ‘I’m not a diplomat.’ He Malaysia, whose annual per-capita GDP stands at laughed and said,‘That’s precisely why I’m asking around $10,500, is considered by the World Bank you.’ He wanted somebody with a finance backto be an upper-middle-income country that has ground. He said this is our most important diplorecorded 25 years of steady growth. matic assignment, and so many of the issues here This year’s two aviation disasters, however, are are trade, investment and finance issues.” sure to put a dent in Malaysia’s vibrant economy, in Ernest Bower, senior adviser and Southeast Asia part because of a dramatic drop in Chinese tourexpert at Washington’s Center for Strategic and ism, though Bower said it “won’t be significant International Studies (CSIS), said Awang is wellenough to rock Malaysia’s GDP,” which now suited for the ambassador’s job, thanks mainly to exceeds $300 billion. his 17 years as a top official of Malaysia’s Central But the disappearance of Flight 370 did rock Bank, which he rates among the best in Asia. confidence in Malaysia’s prestige around the “He’s a very capable guy, a technocrat, and he’s world, as Najib’s government faced widespread very comfortable dealing with Americans and accusations of incompetence for delaying the with businesspeople,” the CSIS scholar told us. release of vital information about the plane’s “He’s learning the ropes when it comes to diploroute. macy and bilateral relations, but his instincts are In the hours immediately after air traffic convery good. He’s seasoned, he’s calm, he’s very trollers lost contact with the jet, conflicting open and he’s been spending a lot of time early on reports theories began popping and in his term reaching out to the administration, NOTE: Although every effort is made to assure yourand ad conspiracy is free of mistakes in spelling Photo: oSCe / eVGenIY MAloletkA up all over the internet.

Fishermen had sighted the members of Congress and staffers, trying to it is ultimately up to the customer to make the final proof.

NOTE: Although every happen effort is made to assure your ad isinvestigators free of mistakes spelling andFlight 17 crashcontent survey theinMalaysia airlines site in eastern Ukraine on aug. 5. plane’s wreckage off the coast of Vietnam. Flight understand how things in Washington, so international content it is in ultimately up tostory the customer to make the final proof.

370 had secretly landed on an island near Borneo. that he could be effective telling Malaysia’s The first two faxed changes will be made at no cost to the advertiser, subsequent changes region. consider the sweeping trade pact until after the The two Iranians who had boarded the plane in going forward.” will be billed at a rate of $75 per faxed alteration.

Signedwith adsstolen are considered approved.

Kuala Lumpur passports were really Marc vice president of policy for the polarizing midterm elections in November.

Thattwo storyfaxed is onechanges of economic Growth The first willprogress. be made at no cost to Mealy, the advertiser, subsequent changes terrorists.

The jet had been hijacked and its pasUS-ASEAN Business Council in D.C., says Malaysia Obama has had more flexibility to push his sois expected to reach or exceed 5 percent this year will be billed at a rate of $75 per faxed alteration. Signed ads are considered approved.

Please this ad Mark taken any changes to your to Diego Garcia, sitead. of a U.S. naval which check is capitalizing on carefully.

China’s sengers in Malaysia, which now ranks sixth in the World is a prime player in the talks. “Ambassador Awang called Asia pivot, is one of Malaysia’s most knowledgeable diplo- increasingly assertive behavior in the region to base in the Indian Ocean.

Bank’sPlease Doing Business 2014 report, from 12th Mark check this ad up carefully. any changes to your ad.

These rumors were changes quickly dispelled, but the alliances countries like place the year before.The country’s telecommuni- mats in terms of economic policy,” he told us.

If thebolster ad is America’s correct sign and with fax to: (301) 949-0065 needs mystery — and frustration for the families — concations and highway infrastructure is among the “With Malaysia representing one of the more com- Malaysia.

If the ad is developed correct sign andand fax the to: Kuala (301)Lumpur 949-0065 needs economies changes in the Trans-Pacific tinues. mercially significant Awang said Diplomat it’s difficult to imagine most in Asia, The Washington (301)bilateral 933-3552 Based on information initially provided by miliskyline is dominated by the 1,483-foot Petronas Partnership negotiations, U.S. engagement with defense and security ties “getting much better” — The Washington Diplomat (301) 933-3552Malaysia’s embassy in Washington will be at a pre- especially since “aggressive Chinese tactics in the tary radar, the search focused on a vast area Towers.

Approved __________________________________________________________ South China Sea have forced Malaysia to think extending from the southern Indian Ocean up The U.S. is Malaysia’s single biggest foreign mium in the rest of the year.”

Indeed, passage of the TPP is one of the primary about enhancing relations with the United States.” into the Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan. In the investor — led by corporate giants like Dell, Changes ___________________________________________________________ Approved __________________________________________________________ Meanwhile, Malaysia is trying to be a regional weeks that followed, however, various satellite and Motorola, Coca-Cola, Intel and MetLife. That’s why goals of the White House — and was high on the ___________________________________________________________________ Changes one ___________________________________________________________ of Malaysia’s top priorities is to see quick rati- agenda of President Obama’s three-day visit to leader in its own right.“Malaysia is very respected transponder data pointed to remote tracts of the fication of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a Kuala Lumpur in April. The administration hopes by many countries, especially smaller ones. They Indian Ocean off the coast of western Australia, ___________________________________________________________________ regional free trade agreement now being negoti- the TPP will encourage economic and political see Malaysia as a success.We are a leader in Islamic hundreds of miles away from initial search sites.

Malaysia’s bungled response cost searchers ated by 12 countries throughout the Asia-Pacific reforms in Asia, but Congress is unlikely to even finance,”Awang noted.

Continued from previous page

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September 2014

valuable time and incensed relatives of the victims.

In mid-April, around the time the batteries on the plane’s black boxes had finally given out, angry relatives held airline workers hostage for 11 hours at a Beijing hotel in an attempt to pry more information from the government.

The maelstrom cast an unflattering light on Malaysia and a political system riddled with nepotism and corruption. But the ambassador takes a kinder view and points out that his country had never before handled a crisis of this magnitude.

“When you handle such a crisis for the first time, there are no standard operating procedures on how to respond,” Awang said. “The government’s main concern at that time was to make sure the information was released to the victims’ families first.They were concerned about information getting out before that. I’m not defending these actions, but the circumstances must be understood.”

The ambassador conceded that his prime minister faced a firestorm of criticism over the way the incident played out.

“I supposed we never thought of something like that happening to us,” Awang told The Diplomat. “But I think after the first disaster, the country was much better prepared. Even the prime minister himself went to the airport within one hour of hearing about [the shooting down of] Flight 17.”

Bower agrees that the impact of the two disasters offset each other, in that Flight 370’s disappearance hurt Najib’s credibility in managing the response to disasters, while the downing of Flight 17 dramatically restored it.

And despite Najib’s delicate balancing act negotiating with pro-Russia forces in Ukraine, Bower predicted that the obliteration of the jet, as well as deliberate attempts by rebels to destroy evidence at the crash site, would have a “big impact” on Kuala Lumpur’s relations with Moscow.

“The Malaysians have squadrons of Russian fighter jets and other equipment, and there was a deal pending for Malaysia to buy anti-aircraft mis-

Malaysia at a Glance independence: aug. 31, 1957 location: Southeastern Asia, peninsula bordering thailand and northern one-third of the island of Borneo, bordering Indonesia, Brunei, and the South China Sea, south of Vietnam Capital: kuala lumpur Population: 30 million (July 2014 estimate) life expectancy: 74.5 years religions: Muslim (official) 61.3 percent, Buddhist 19.8 percent, Christian 9.2 percent, Hindu 6.3 percent, Confucianism, taoism, other traditional Chinese religions 1.3 percent, other 0.4 percent, none 0.8 percent (2010 estimate) gDP (purchasing power parity): $525 billion (2013 estimate) gDP per-capita: $17,500 (2013 estimate) gDP growth: 4.7 percent (2013 estimate) unemployment: 3.1 percent (2013 estimate) Population below poverty line: 3.8 percent (2009 estimate) exports: Semiconductors and electronic equipment, palm oil, petroleum and liquefied natural gas, wood and wood products, palm oil, rubber, textiles, chemicals, solar panels imports: electronics, machinery, petroleum products, plastics, vehicles, iron and steel products, chemicals Source: CIA World factbook

siles. I don’t think Malaysians will tolerate their government going ahead with those contracts,” said Bower.

He added that if the evidence shows that proRussia rebels did blow Flight 17 out of the sky,“the Malaysians would also take a very active role — supported by the U.S. and Australia — for convictions and indictments of the perpetrators through international law and the United Nations.”

Awang declined to point an accusing finger at

Moscow itself, saying only that “we are on record that we want to see whoever is responsible for bringing down our plane to be brought to justice and dealt with accordingly. We want to see the evidence. That’s why the black boxes were so important to us.”

He added:“I cannot say certain things, but I can convey the public statement by our prime minister that we want those responsible for this to be punished in accordance with international law.”

In the meantime, Kuala Lumpur is cleaning house. In early August, the government’s state investment fund announced it would pay the equivalent of $436 million to take Malaysia Airlines private, paving the way for a “complete overhaul” of the troubled carrier.

“The airline had been losing money even before these two disasters,” Awang said. “The government had to bail it out.To be fair, I’ve been told that their flights are still full. People understand that these disasters are not something that happens regularly.”

But that still leaves the enduring question of what brought down Flight 370.To this day, it’s not known if a mechanical failure, terrorism or pilot sabotage was the culprit. Investigators believe the plane flew into the Indian Ocean on autopilot until it ran out of fuel, though nothing is certain.

Australian officials are now leading a bathymetric survey of the 23,000-square-mile search area — an area slightly smaller than West Virginia — about 1,100 miles off Australia’s west coast. The $48 million effort to methodically scour the ocean floor begins this month and will take up to one year to complete.

“We remain fully committed to conducting a thorough undersea search of the likely impact zone in the Indian Ocean,” said Warren Truss, Australia’s deputy prime minister, in a July 23 press statement. “Australia owes it to the families of all of those on board Flight 370, the traveling public and indeed the wider world to solve this mystery.”

But it’s also possible the effort could take years, or even decades. Perhaps, Awang suggested, no one will ever know what caused Flight 370 to vanish without a trace.

“I have no idea. It’s difficult for me to rationalize how or why,” the ambassador said with a sigh. “I don’t want to speculate, because there’s no basis for speculation.”

Larry Luxner is news editor of The Washington Diplomat.

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Politics

United States

Ex-Im Chief, U.S. Businesses, Try to Save Beleaguered Bank

by Larry Luxner

W

hat do the World War II-era Burma Road, the 30,000-milelong Pan-American Highway linking Alaska to Argentina, a $120 million aluminum smelter in Ghana, and a $3 billion liquefied natural gas project in Papua New Guinea have in common?

All were largely financed by the Export-Import Bank of the United States, a federal entity that since 1934 has supported $550 billion worth of U.S. exports to developing markets worldwide. The export credit agency, which enjoyed bipartisan support for decades, provides financing so that U.S. companies can sell their goods abroad, in an effort to boost jobs at home.

But critics on Capitol Hill call the Ex-Im Bank a form of “crony capitalism” that helps big business at the expense of smaller companies. Tea party Republicans have made shutting down the bank their cause célèbre and are fighting a bipartisan bill that would renew the bank’s charter for another seven years.

If it doesn’t pass, the Ex-Im Bank will cease operations after Sept. 30 — which is just fine with incoming House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), a moderate Republican who surprised the business community by coming out against the bank when he took the leadership position in June.

“One of the biggest problems with government is they go and take hard-earned money so others do things the private sector can do,” the second-most powerful House Republican told Chris Wallace of Fox News.

“That’s what the Ex-Im Bank does.”

McCarthy seems to have joined ranks with Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, who denounces the bank as corporate welfare: “If you’re a politically connected bank or company that benefits from Ex-Im, no doubt you would like it to continue.After all, it’s a sweetheart deal for you. Taxpayers shoulder the risk and you get the reward,” Hensarling testified at a recent hearing.“Ex-Im effectively taxes you while subsidizing your foreign competitors.”

Added Tim Phillips of Americans for Prosperity, one of several prominent outside conservative groups hoping to kill the bank: “This is an entity that rewards having buddies and friends in high places, and that’s what it is about.”

But Fred Hochberg, chairman and president of the Washington-based bank since 2009, says that’s not at all what it’s about (and quite a few Republicans agree with him).

“There’s a lot of misinformation about the Ex-Im Bank,” he told us. “We support jobs and provide financing when the private sector is unable to step in.We help ensure that American companies can go head-to-head with their competition — all at no cost to taxpayers. But there’s still a core of people who are opposed to us.”

One of the opposition’s main arguments is that the private sector can pick up the slack, but bank supporters say that’s wrong: The Export-Import Bank exists

Page 16

Fred Hochberg has been chairman and president of the Export-Import Bank of the United States since 2009.

“

Photo: Export-Import Bank / Matt Mendelsohn Photography

There’s a lot of misinformation about the Ex-Im Bank…. We support jobs and provide financing when the private sector is unable to step in. We help ensure that American companies can go headto-head with their competition — all at no cost to taxpayers.

— Fred Hochberg

”

chairman and president of the Export-Import Bank of the United States

specifically to fill the gaps that private commercial banks can’t or won’t fill, usually because such financing requires too much research and risk for a profit return that’s too low. This is especially the case in emerging markets, “where export/import credit is hard to come by or insufficient for some of the large-scale projects taking place,” the Brookings Institution wrote in a recent primer on the issue.

Meanwhile, other nations such as China and Canada readily support their own export-credit agencies, putting American firms at a disadvantage if they were to lose theirs. The Ex-Im Bank says it focuses on “markets where U.S. companies are competing against foreign rivals that receive subsidies from their own governments.”

“For many years, the bank has been referred to as the

lender of last resort. The local bank may not be familiar with exports, foreign trade or letters of credit. We fill that gap,” Hochberg explained. “There are 59 other export credit agencies around the world that are trying to compete.The Chinese have three banks that support their exporters. Some only have one. Japan has two.

Other countries are very much invested in supporting jobs at home, and I haven’t seen any indication they’re reducing their activities. If anything, they’re redoubling their efforts.”

In addition, Ex-Im advocates say the bank gives taxpayers plenty of bang for their buck (last year the bank actually returned an extra $1 billion back to the government and its default rate is .2 percent, better than most private banks). Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), co-sponsors of the Senate bill to keep the bank going, said in a recent joint statement that the Ex-Im Bank has supported nearly 1.2 million privatesector U.S. jobs since 2009, including 205,000 jobs in fiscal 2013 — and that the bank is a self-financing entity that operates at no cost to taxpayers.

The two senators also sought to debunk claims that the bank favors big businesses over small ones, noting that in 2013, it financed a record 3,413 small businesses, which amounted to almost 90 percent of the bank’s transactions.

“In the past five years, the bank financed more small businesses than the prior eight years combined,” said their statement.“Constituents in our home states of West Virginia and Illinois have told us that, without Ex-Im Bank services, their small businesses would have no opportunity to participate in lucrative export markets.”

Hochberg pointed out that both parties have traditionally backed the bank during its 80-year existence, re-authorizing it 15 times, usually just with a voice vote.

In 2012, though, tea party conservatives began ques-

The Washington Diplomat

September 2014

tioning the bank’s usefulness. Nevertheless, after some reforms were included, the House voted 334-93 to keep the bank going for another three years; in the Senate, the vote was 78 for and 20 opposed. At that time, lawmakers also boosted Ex-Im’s lending cap to $140 billion — where it’ll likely stay in the event the bank survives, even though the White House requested that it be raised to $160 billion.

“We did have broad bipartisan support in the past, and we have bipartisan support now, but the challenge is greater now,” Hochberg said. “It’s a more vocal debate, and it’s frankly spread overseas.

I just came back from a trip to Singapore, Indonesia, China and the U.K., and the subject came up at every stop.”

Hochberg, in fact, spoke to The Washington Diplomat by phone from Phoenix, one of 29 cities where the chairman and his top aides are giving speeches this summer extolling the bank’s virtues to small-business owners. Other stops on the Ex-Im road show: Houston, Los Angeles, Memphis, Chicago, Dallas, Miami, St. Louis and Portland, Ore. Larger companies are also emphasizing the local, trickle-down benefits of the bank. During a State Department-sponsored trip for D.C.-based ambassadors to Seattle in late June, top Boeing officials told the foreign diplomats that the Ex-Im Bank plays a vital role in helping Boeing maintain market share against European rival Airbus — which, in turn, is crucial for U.S. small businesses.

“We cannot lose the Ex-Im Bank. I don’t understand why we’re even having this debate. Tens of thousands of jobs could be lost as a result of this,” warned Raymond Conner, president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes. “In my 37 years at Boeing, I’ve never seen such a fierce marketplace.

I urge you all to communicate to your congressmen and senators that [the bank] is critical for our competitiveness. It supports American companies and American jobs, and it makes money.”

But one of the biggest complaints about the Ex-Im Bank is that its chief beneficiaries are selfsufficient corporate giants like Boeing, General Electric and Caterpillar.The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a libertarian group opposed to the bank, cited the example of airline lending to show that Ex-Im favors some businesses while hurting others.

“The Export-Import Bank has given financing to more than 20 foreign airlines, many of them state-owned or state-supported, to buy Boeing jets.

Air India, Korean Air, Ireland-based Ryanair and 14 other airlines each received more than $1 billion in financing during the period 2000-2013. Emirates Airlines saves as much as $20 million per plane purchased with Ex-Im financing,” wrote CEI fellow Ryan Young, noting that this direct assistance has angered other airlines, such as Delta.“Ex-Im’s loan guarantees allow those airlines to secure extremely favorable interest rates, saving them a great deal of money. The quid pro quo, of course, is that the airlines buy planes from Boeing instead of Airbus or Embraer.”

Young also sought to refute claims that Ex-Im loans go primarily to small businesses.“Ex-Im touts that the vast majority of its lending activities go to smaller businesses.This is true by number of loans — in 2013, 2,160 out of 2,775 businesses receiving Ex-Im financing were small businesses, a little more than 78 percent. But Ex-Im’s claim is completely off the mark by the more important metric of dollar value of loans. More than 80 percent of Ex-Im financing, measured in dollars, goes to big firms.”

Yet Hochberg points out that all of these loans ripple throughout the economy and “our critics don’t take into account the supply chain. I talk to companies large and small; they all have a very robust supply chain. Sometimes they’re invisible, but the exports of those companies are vital to firms, and that gets lost in the debate.”

That’s why both small business owners and powerful groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers have been lobbying to keep the September 2014

Photo: SS/l

Space Systems/loral (SS/l) workers assemble the ABS-2 satellite at a manufacturing facility in Palo Alto, Calif. the Export-Import Bank approved $461 million in credit to finance the export of three american-made satellites to hong kong.

bank in business — in effect, pitting them against Republicans who are normally viewed as friendly to their interests.

Democrats have been eager to pounce on the rift between establishment Republicans and tea partiers. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) told the Hill newspaper that business groups should take a closer look at which candidates they support.

“I’ve said this to [Chamber of Commerce President] Tom Donohue and to others, in many ways mainstream Democrats are closer to you than many Republicans, because the tea party has pulled them so far to the right that they are doing what’s harmful to businesses.”

Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington state — home to more than 81,000 Boeing employees — told the Hill that while she and her fellow Democrats are happy to entertain more reforms to the bank on top of those implemented from the 2012 bill, “we don’t want it to be an excuse for them not to support the Ex-Im Bank. The bank now operates with a great deal of transparency.”

That remains a subject of fierce debate, however.

In June, the Wall Street Journal reported that the bank had suspended or removed four officials as part of an internal investigation into allegations of improper gifts and kickbacks. One of them, Johnny Gutierrez, was reportedly placed on leave for taking bribes in exchange for attempting to help a Florida company get federal financing to export construction equipment to Latin America.

Asked about that, Hochberg — who ran a family business for 20 years before joining Ex-Im Bank — said he has “zero tolerance” for corruption.

“We have a highly ethical culture and a whole set of procedures to detect fraud,” he told us.

“There were four employees cited in that article.

In each case, [the allegations] were brought to the attention of the ethics officer. That’s how these things came to light. You’re never going to have zero incidents. Last week I called an all-hands meeting to discuss that very issue.”

William E. Brock III, a former Republican senator from Tennessee, U.S. trade representative and President Ronald Reagan’s secretary of labor, argued that the bank’s flaws are a reason to improve it, not get rid of it. That’s what Reagan himself did when he supported an extension of the Export-Import Bank despite opposition from fellow Republicans.

“The bank is particularly important today, when tight credit allocation by banks — still cautious after the recession, has left many companies, especially small and medium-size ones, unable to find financing to sell their products abroad,” Brock wrote in a July 28 opinion piece for the New York Times. “These companies face tough competition from companies in other countries. Many of these foreign businesses receive credit financing from

their own export-import banks, at levels unseen in the United States. Those foreign export-import banks aren’t going away; if anything, they will grow more important as the global economy continues to integrate.”

Brock added that while opponents say the bank supports just 2 percent of U.S. exports, “that 2 percent amounts to $37.4 billion of American products made by American workers in American plants. That translates into tens of thousands of jobs from every state in the country.”

For example, last year, the Ex-Im board approved a $4.9 billion direct loan to Sadara Chemical Co. for the export of U.S. goods and services required

to build a petrochemical complex in Saudi Arabia’s Jubail Industrial City II.The financing will support 18,400 American jobs, 2,000 of which will come directly or indirectly from small businesses in 13 states.To date, this is Ex-Im’s largest single transaction.

Hochberg says that’s still only a fraction of what other governments are subsidizing.

In 2013, China provided $46 billion in mediumand long-term official credit support through three entities: China Export-Import Bank, China Development Bank and Sinosure. By contrast, America’s Ex-Im Bank offered only $15 billion.

Sinosure’s chairman told Hochberg during a visit to Shanghai that his entity offered $300 billion in short-term trade credit insurance last year, compared to only $5 billion for Ex-Im. Another model the United States might emulate is its neighbor to the north, Hochberg suggested.

“Canada has one of the most robust export credit agencies out there. It’s far larger than ours, and far more ambitious in their goals,” he said.

“They and the Chinese are exceedingly aggressive.

Canada takes a very broad view that if it’s in Canada’s interest, there’s less conflict about whether the private or public sectors should be involved. They do what they need to support the Canadian economy.”

But if the tea party gets its way, Hochberg may be jobless come Oct. 1, along with his 400 employees. That’s partly why he taking the threat to disband Ex-Im so seriously.

“As soon as President Obama was elected in 2012 — even though we had been re-authorized only six months earlier — we began working with members of Congress on the next authorization,” he told us.“This would be very devastating [if the bank’s charter isn’t renewed], but I’m confident we’ll come to a solution.”

Larry Luxner is news editor of The Washington Diplomat.

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Diplomacy

Washington, D.C.

Senate Partisan Gridlock Leaves America Without Ambassadors

by Miranda Katz

L

ast month, as U.S. senators kicked back on the first day of their month-long summer recess, there was no break from the relentless spate of crises around the world.

But as a result of the Senate’s failure to confirm dozens of diplomatic nominees, many American embassies abroad carried on without ambassadors, hardly inspiring confidence that Washington is ready to tackle the foreign policy challenges of the day.

This backlog in confirmations is the result of longstanding partisan battles that came to a head last November, when Senate Democrats triggered the “nuclear option” and eliminated filibusters for presidential nominees in the hopes that it would speed up a politicized confirmation process. However, the move to streamline judicial nominees seems to have had the reverse effect on diplomatic ones: In retaliation, Senate Republicans have, with some exceptions, failed to provide the unanimous consent that is required to confirm ambassadorial nominees in bulk. Republicans say the Democrats have only themselves to blame for the impasse, as they were the ones who detonated the nuclear option.

The standoff has left over 40 presidential nominees — more than half of whom are noncontroversial career diplomats — twiddling their thumbs as they wait for the go-ahead to assume their posts. The Senate did confirm Ambassador John Tefft to Russia in its final legislative session before recess; earlier it had also approved envoys to critical Mideast nations such as Iraq, Qatar and Kuwait, as well as Egypt. Everyone else, it seems, will simply have to wait — that includes envoys to important allies such as Turkey, France and South Korea.

Some have already been waiting for nearly a year — even after making it out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with overwhelming bipartisan support. And the wait may not be over: When lawmakers return from summer recess this month, they only have a brief legislative window and an already packed schedule before the November elections.

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, was one of the first to speak out about the logjam. On July 31, during that final session before the recess, he called for his colleagues to put partisan animosity aside in the interest of American diplomacy.

“Our career Foreign Service officers serve Democratic and Republican presidents, and they should not — they must not — be treated as political pawns,” Menendez said on the Senate floor.“[T]he Senate standoff that has left so many career Foreign Service nominees in political and personal limbo is damaging our credibility, undermining our national security, and it must end now.”

The Senate pushed through Tefft’s nomination, but ignored Menendez’s pleas to take up another two-dozen nominees.Weeks before leaving, though, the chamber did confirm a string of appointments to key countries. But Menendez emphasized that nominees should not only be confirmed in a crisis, as was the case with Tefft, who will take up his post in Russia in a period of renewed tensions

Page 18

Photo: State Department

“

At home, we understand it is just politics. But overseas, rightly or wrongly, a country without a U.S. ambassador for an extended period can interpret an extensive gap as an indication that their relationship with the United States is not a priority.

”

— P.J. Crowley

former U.S. assistant secretary of state for public affairs

over Ukraine.

In other instances of crisis confirmation, Michael Lawson became ambassador to the International Civil Aviation Organization only after the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. In the wake of young immigrants from Central America flooding the U.S. border, James D. Nealon was approved to serve in Honduras. And a raft of ambassadors to Africa — just ahead of a huge gathering of African leaders in D.C. — was confirmed before the summer break, including envoys to Cameroon, Mauritania, Niger, Algeria and Djibouti, all countries vital to the fight against Islamist terrorists.

“Confirmation by crisis is not a strategy and not in the national security interest of the United States,” Menendez said. “No nation can listen to us if we are not present to speak.”

A rare moment of unity on the Hill: Secretary of State John Kerry, third from right, poses with Senate and House leaders at the dedication of a bust of Winston Churchill at the U.S. Capitol last year. Over the summer, Kerry repeatedly warned that a quarter of U.S. ambassadorships abroad remain vacant due to partisan bickering and obstructionism in the Senate.

Of course, an American mission abroad is not entirely incapacitated in the absence of an ambassador: The embassies are staffed with mid- to senior-level employees and, until an ambassador arrives, they are headed by chargé d’affaires.

However, a chargé is not ranked as highly as an ambassador, nor is he or she appointed by the president; as a result, this second-in-command might find it difficult to engage with foreign governments at the highest levels.

“A chargé d’affaires is certainly recognized by the governments abroad, as well as the U.S., as having the authority to represent the United States, but it isn’t the same position,” said Edward Gnehm Jr., a former U.S. ambassador to Jordan, Australia and Kuwait who is now a professor at the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs.

“In some countries, we may have some very important interests, some very important issues at play and at stake.

The ambassador is going to be able to get in at the highest levels of government … a chargé may not be able to,” Gnehm told The Diplomat. “They will be shunted to deputies. Now, that’s not always true, but it is a real possibility.”

To be fair, not all of the pending nominees are respected career professionals like Gnehm — many are political appointees who were chosen for their sheer ability to raise campaign money. Like his predecessors, President Obama has tapped a slew of political bundlers to serve in plum postings such as France and Britain. Not all have stellar credentials — one is a soap opera producer who is being sent to Hungry, at a time when the country is expe-

The Washington Diplomat

September 2014

riencing a rise in far-right nationalism, and another is being sent to Argentina but doesn’t speak Spanish.Obama’s proposed ambassador to Norway, businessman and fundraiser George Tsunis, famously fumbled at his confirmation hearing, where he appeared clueless about Norway’s political system after being grilled by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

Of course, not all businessmen lack international experience, and political appointees have their advantages in that many are close to the president and can be good managers.

But whether political or professional, an ambassador remains an important symbol of recognition, and not having one can be viewed as a diplomatic slight.

Secretary of State John Kerry has warned that the U.S. is “going without our strongest voice on the ground every day in more than 25 percent of the world” — at a time when crises are piling up and perceptions matter.

“Make no mistake: Vacancies in so many world capitals send a dangerous message to allies and adversaries alike about America’s engagement,” Kerry warned in a July 8 Politico op-ed.“This perception makes it much more difficult to do the nonpartisan work at the heart of U.S. foreign policy — defending the security of our nation, promoting our values and helping our businesses compete to create American jobs back home.”

The lengthy wait times have only reinforced the impression that some countries just aren’t important enough to warrant an ambassador.

Former Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs P.J. Crowley explained that while countries understand there can be gaps between one ambassador’s departure and another’s confirmation, they are less understanding of gaps that last for months on end.

“At home, we understand it is just politics. But overseas, rightly or wrongly, a country without a U.S. ambassador for an extended period can inter-

The 111th Senate poses for a group photo. The upper chamber is responsible for confirming the appointments of all federal judges, military officers and ambassadors, among others.

pret an extensive gap as an indication that their relationship with the United States is not a priority,” Crowley told The Diplomat. “It creates an unforced error that the new ambassador, once confirmed, has to work to overcome.”

Even in countries where the U.S. has strong ties, Gnehm said, such a long wait can be interpreted as a snub.

“Countries get very angry and very incensed.

They’re actually very sensitive,” he said. “Even in countries where our relationships are very good and there are really no major problems, they take umbrage with the fact that we don’t have an ambassador there.”

The inefficient process can also make the U.S.

appear weak, suggesting its political parties are so at odds that they cannot complete the simple task of a voice vote that would confirm dozens of nominees at once.

“All of a sudden, people see that America is polarized,” Crowley said. “[The bottleneck] is not solving problems. It is doing the opposite. That carries reputational risk that can have broader policy implications if not reversed.”

Indeed, it seems the backlog is costing Americans, and not just in lost prestige. Gnehm pointed out that between a career diplomat’s nomination and confirmation, he or she must still be paid, regardless of the wait. Furthermore, the failure of the Senate to confirm a Foreign Service

Director General, who is responsible for personnel for the entire State Department, is likely to lead to further inefficiencies within the department itself.

“This is a gross misuse of assets and resources,” said Gnehm, who served as Director General of the Foreign Service in the late 1990s.“Why would you cripple an entire department for partisan politics, particularly when you’ve got U.S. national interests at stake?”

Politically motivated delays, of course, are nothing new. Senators often put holds on nominees, even for completely unrelated policy reasons — a time-honored tradition employed by both sides of the aisle. But Menendez says he’s never seen anything like this before.

“Never, to my knowledge, has this body, as a political strategy, obstructed — en masse — the appointments of noncontroversial career Foreign Service officers who have worked for both Democratic and Republican administrations,” he said in June.

Crowley agrees the blocking is rather unprecedented.“There is an old saying that when it comes to national security, politics should stop at the water’s edge,” he said. “The truth is politics has never stopped at the water’s edge, but there has to be recognition when our politics goes so far that it damages our relations with key countries and allies around the world. We are at that point.”

Miranda Katz is an editorial assistant for The Washington Diplomat.

Follow The Diplomat Connect at www.washdiplomat.com.

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MEDICAL

Surgery

Doctors Not Making Maximum Use of Minimally Invasive Surgery

by Gina Shaw

O

n June 22, 1988, in a small surgery center across the street from what was then known as Kennestone Hospital in Marietta, Georgia, a general surgeon named Dr. Barry McKernan was about to do something he’d done hundreds, if not thousands, of times before: remove a gall bladder.

But he and his obstetrician-gynecologist colleague, Dr.William Saye, were going to perform the surgery in a way that had never been done in the United States.

Instead of making a large, open incision in the abdomen, McKernan and Saye would make a few tiny incisions, called “keyhole” incisions, and use a small video camera known as a laparoscope to guide their instruments in removing the gall bladder.

The two doctors’ colleagues had laughed when they said they planned to attempt this procedure. The patient, a minister’s wife, had dutifully sought the second opinion McKernan urged her to get; the other surgeon told her it would never work. McKernan told her the other doctor was probably right. But she told them Photo: Stefano Lunardi / iStock to go ahead and try the revolutionary new procedure anyway. McKernan had to buy the instruments himself, University, demonstrating that the use of minimally inva- U.S. obstetric and gynecology residency programs in since the hospital didn’t have them and wasn’t prepared sive surgery still varies widely, over a decade after 2006, only 69 percent had formal laparoscopy training.”

McKernan and Saye’s first operation, is somewhat surEven more recently, a survey of surgery residency to purchase them for this maverick.

The procedure went smoothly, although the two doc- prising. In a study published online in July in the journal program directors published in the American Journal of tors had to make a small additional incision when the BMJ, researchers looked at four laparoscopic proce- Surgery in 2011 found that less than half (47 percent) gallstones proved bigger than they’d expected. And the dures: appendectomy, hysterectomy, colon removal had dedicated rotations in minimally invasive surgery, next morning, when McKernan checked on his patient (colectomy) and lung lobectomy, and consulted the ranging from two to 11 months. “Minimally invasive surgery training for surgical residents in her room across the street at needs to increase opportunities so that Kennestone Hospital, she sat cross-legged on her bed with just a few steri-strips on Residents and fellows learn in an apprenticeship they are able to perform laparoscopic procedures with confidence,” the authors her incisions. Her roommate, who’d had model, yet for many, the surgeons they learn from may concluded. a traditional “open” gall bladder removal More and more options are opening the previous day, looked and felt like lack advanced skills in minimally invasive surgery. up for minimally invasive surgery. she’d been run over by a truck.

Surgeons at the Cleveland Clinic are now It was the beginning of the minimally — Johns Hopkins report on hospital underutilization of minimally invasive surgery operating on some brain tumors by makinvasive surgery revolution in the United ing an internal incision through the nose, States. Within a year, surgeons who had laughed at McKernan and Saye were beating a path to Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s national rather than opening the skull and potentially disrupting Marietta to learn from them.“Bill and Barry changed the database for hospitalizations for these procedures dur- the frontal lobes, a less risky procedure that requires only four to six weeks of recovery instead of three to six world,” said Dr.William Mayfield, chief surgical officer for ing 2010.

They found that urban hospitals were far more likely months. Orthopaedic surgeons can now do hip replacethe WellStar health system, which today encompasses five hospitals northwest of Atlanta, including the hospi- than rural hospitals to perform most minimally invasive ments with minimally invasive techniques. Less invasive procedures — more than four times as likely as rural options are also available for spine surgery to treat tal where that first patient recovered. hospitals to perform laparoscopic appendectomies and degenerative disc disease.

Minimally invasive surgery, now available for an With seemingly no end in sight to the possibilities for increasing number of procedures that used to require colectomies and 15 times more likely to perform minimally invasive hysterectomies. In general, larger hospi- less-invasive surgery, training opportunities will certainlarge, open incisions, has many benefits. As the preachtals and teaching hospitals were more likely to perform ly need to be expanded.At the same time, there will also er’s wife (and her roommate) soon discovered, it’s easier on the patient, offering less pain, less blood loss and minimally invasive surgeries, although this varied some- be some surgeries that for the foreseeable future — shorter recovery times. There’s less scarring. People get what by the type of surgery. And 35 percent of all the either because of the type of operation or because of out of the hospital much sooner — which means low- hospitals performed no minimally invasive hysterecto- the patient’s own specific needs — will need to be performed with more “open” techniques. Either way, ered hospitalization costs — and can return to their mies at all.

Training — or the lack of it — may be one of the access to the most appropriate surgical procedure for normal daily activities much more quickly. Study after primary reasons for the gaps in availability of minimally your medical condition shouldn’t depend on where you study has shown that minimally invasive procedures of various types — hysterectomies, heart surgeries, cancer invasive surgeries, the authors suggest. “Residents and live or what hospital you happen to visit. surgeries and many others — are less likely to result in fellows learn in an apprenticeship model, yet for many, the surgeons they learn from may lack advanced skills in Gina Shaw is the medical writer for The complications and death than more invasive surgeries.

Which is why a new report from Johns Hopkins minimally invasive surgery,” they write. “In a survey of Washington Diplomat.

“

Page 20

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The Washington Diplomat

September 2014

EDUCATION MONEY MATTERS ■ A special section of the washington diplomat

■ september 2014

In Some Countries, Financial Literacy Skills Don’t Add Up

by Carolyn Cosmos

W

hen it comes to helping students compete in a fast-changing world,

SteM (science, technology, engineering

and math) studies have become the

watchword in 21st-century education. While these academic disciplines are key to getting ahead, oldfashioned money skills are still just as important. a software engineer may be able to read computer code, for example, but success also depends on whether he can read a checkbook. in the first large-scale study of its kind, the organization for economic Cooperation and Development (oeCD) measured financial literacy among 15-year-old students in 18 countries as part of its PiSa (Programme for international Student assessment) global education rankings. the study, “Students and Money - Financial Literacy Skills for the 21st Century,” surveyed knowledge of money management such as understanding credit card and bank statements and paying the mortgage. it dovetailed with PiSa’s mission to help students apply what they learn in the classroom to the real world.

Continued on next page

Photo: iStoCK

EDUCATION September 2014

The Washington Diplomat Page21

Photo: Hervé Cortinat / OECD

Continued from previous page

Queen Máxima of the Netherlands, the U.N. secretary-general’s special advocate for inclusive finance for development, speaks at the launch of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s PISA financial literacy assessment of students around the world.

In all, 29,000 students took the two-hour paper test on financial acumen, mathematics and reading, which asked about everyday dilemmas that many young people encounter: For example, if you go to the movies, will you have enough money to get home? If you buy a car, will you have enough left over for insurance and gas?

What are the long-term costs of a college loan?

The results were released in Paris in July and weren’t terribly encouraging.

Around one in seven students in the OECD countries was not able to make even simple decisions about everyday spending, while only one in 10 could solve complex financial tasks (such as grasping the implications of income tax brackets) — despite the growing demand of such skills in a globalized economy.

“Developing financial literacy skills and knowledge is critical now that individuals are becoming increasingly responsible at an ever earlier age for financial risks affecting their future,” said OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría, noting that almost 60 percent of 15-year-olds surveyed already have a bank account. Today’s teenagers also need to make wise investments early on to cope with skyrocketing higher education costs, weak job markets and shrink-

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COMPLIMENTARY CONSULTATION

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September 2014

ing welfare systems. participated in the financial literacy segGurría was joined at the report launch ment.

by Queen Máxima of the Netherlands, who PISA’s proclamations confer legitimacy, applauded the countries that participated or shame, on national school systems, in the financial literacy project and said the affect policies at the highest levels of govresults should be a “wake-up call” to gov- ernment and influence thousands of classernments around the world. rooms around the world. In a study of 37 Gurría noted that more than 50 coun- countries that had taken part in PISA testtries have a national strategy for financial ing, 30 reported it led to changes in their education (compared to only 10 in 2008). nation’s education practices.

“Some governments have started developBut that far-reaching impact has come ing strategies and policies so under scrutiny — most recentthat people have the skills ly by a group of academics they need throughout their from the universities of lives,” he said. “More need to London, Oxford, Cambridge, move this up the policy agenStanford, Columbia and the da so that citizens are preState University of New York. pared for an ever-more comIn May, The Guardian newsplicated financial world.” paper in London published a Some countries are more letter by the group that castiprepared than others, accordgated PISA for, among other ing to PISA. The Shanghaithings: creating an obsession China school system had the with national horserace rankPhoto: oeCD / MarCo iLLuMinati highest financial literacy ings; focusing too much on score, while the Flemish andreas Schleicher “gainful employment” and community of Belgium, “short-term fixes”; promoting Estonia, Australia, New Zealand, Czech scripted lessons; reducing teacher autonoRepublic, Poland and Latvia scored above my; ginning up the use of standardized average. But the U.S. ranking was barely tests; and “dangerously narrowing our colaverage and not far from the slightly lower lective imagination regarding what educascores of Russia, France, Slovenia, Spain and tion is and ought to be about.”

Croatia. Rounding out the bottom were But Andreas Schleicher, a German statisIsrael, Slovakia, Italy and Colombia in last tician and researcher who was the brainplace. child behind PISA, says the program forces Since 2000, PISA has been offering countries to confront and improve their exams to 15-year-olds every three years in weaknesses. reading, math, science, problem solving In an OECD essay last year titled “are the and, starting with the latest testing round Chinese cheating in PISA or are we cheatin 2012, money management. Nearly 70 education systems around the world took Continued on next page part in the 2012 testing and 18 of them

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Angel Gurría, secretary-general of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, speaks in Paris at the launch of the report “Students and Money - Financial Literacy Skills for the 21st Century.”

Continued from previous page

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ing ourselves?,” Schleicher defended the international rankings (and tried to debunk claims that China cheats to get to the top of those rankings).

“International comparisons are never easy and they are never perfect” — but they work, he wrote. “In mathematics, countries like Brazil, Turkey, Mexico or Tunisia rose from the bottom; Italy, Portugal and the Russian Federation have advanced to the average of the industrialized world or close to it; Germany and Poland rose from average to good, and Shanghai and Singapore have moved from good to great,” he pointed out.

Kim Dockery “Indeed, of the 65 participating countries, 45 saw improvement in at least one subject area. These countries didn’t change their culture, or the composition of their population, nor did they fire their teachers. They changed their education policies and practices.”

Kim Dockery, the new chief academic officer for Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia, told us that her school district has benefited from participating in PISA, praising the analysis and advice in the reports as “some of the richest information” she’d seen as an educator.

She noted that at Chantilly High School, PISA helped administrators and teachers develop new strategies that in the space of

a single year bumped up test scores in reading and math. Dockery told us they were particularly proud of creating “deeper levels of critical thinking and reading.”

PISA proponents say that’s because the tests are nuanced and not limited to numbers or simple yes-or-no questions, emphasizing real-life problem-solving skills with a mix of open-ended and multiplechoice questions.

For example, one PISA problem shown on a computer screen involves a little round robot that bumps into things, an animation that repeats itself over and over again. Test takers are asked to predict what the robot will likely do next by observing its behavior.

PISA also considers socio-economic factors, such as gender gaps and different levels of wealth. For example, the financial literacy report found that financial competency was worse in students with parents who had lower levels of education, lower household earnings or immigrant status. Thus, PISA advocates say the tests take into account individual circumstances while still providing a general overview of how countries stack up against one another.

In her Fairfax district, Dockery said teachers and administrators can create PISA-type analyses of their own, comparing one school to another or measuring achievements against a U.S. national yardstick.

She noted though that PISA scores don’t dictate curriculum in Fairfax schools —

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EDUCATION

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September 2014

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“Developing financial literacy skills and knowledge is critical now that individuals are becoming increasingly responsible at an ever earlier age for financial risks affecting their future.”

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state assessments are more important — but they are a valuable part of developing, planning and assessing a school’s “portfolio.”

Dockery is involved in a similar process taking place at the state level.

A recently passed Virginia law called for the creation of a “learning innovation” committee to explore school testing reform. Although it’s too soon to predict what the committee will do, Dockery, who serves on the committee, said the PISA program will almost certainly be “part of the conversation.”

Dockery cited another Fairfax County Public Schools initiative called Portrait of a Graduate that tries to identify what students need to be prepared for the future. The program mirrors the PISA approach that stresses real-world skills — whether it’s landing the perfect job or coping with a job loss. The Fairfax County task force pulled together a group of about 75 business leaders, parents and others in the community to create a picture of an “ideal” local graduate in

2027, Dockery said.

“The group wanted that graduate to be a self manager, creative, someone who can think for himself or herself,” Dockery explained. And they wanted students to be prepared for “good jobs we don’t know about, jobs that don’t exist yet.”

That’s exactly what OECD SecretaryGeneral Gurría hopes the PISA financial literacy study will do.

“Financial literacy empowers citizens by supporting their successful participation in modern societies while strengthening their financial wellbeing,” he said at the Paris report launch. “Yet until today, very limited national data and certainly no comparable international evidence were available on the financial literacy of students about to finish compulsory schooling.These latest PISA results are therefore filling a major gap in our knowledge about financial literacy.”

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[ religion ]

Keeping the Faith Area Muslims Seek Varied Educational Alternatives

Photo: Ayesha Ahmad

Basil Eldadah, husband of camp director Mona Eldadah, leads prayers for students at Camp Ramadan, a summer day camp for children ages 3 to 15.

I

by Vanessa H. Larson

n late July, on the first day of Eid al-Fitr — the Muslim holiday that marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan — hundreds of men, women and children, dressed in their finest traditional South Asian, Middle Eastern or West African clothing, gathered for prayers in the ballroom of the Universities at Shady Grove. The campus was just one of three separate locations where the Gaithersburgbased Islamic Center of Maryland held prayer services that morning to accommodate a congregation that on major religious holidays swells to far greater than the mosque’s capacity.

Though exact numbers are hard to come by, the Muslim population of the greater Washington area is believed to have

Page 26

EDUCATION

grown significantly in recent years. Maryland’s Montgomery County and Northern Virginia are home to the largest communities, topped by Loudoun County, Va., where the 2010 Religious Congregations & Membership Study estimated that more than 5 percent of residents are Muslim.

As the Muslim community in and around the nation’s capital grows larger and more diverse, families are finding an increasingly broad range of educational options for their children — even as raising kids who belong to a religious and cultural minority still has its challenges.

One of the newest initiatives is Camp Ramadan, a summer day camp for kids ages 3 to 15 that was started in 2013 by the Next Wave Muslim Initiative, a group of Washington-area Muslim Americans who got together to create what Tannaz Haddadi, one of the founders, calls “niche programming” that is “suitable for

The Washington Diplomat

September 2014

“We’re not asking for special rights for the Muslim community.

We basically want equal rights.”

— Zainab Chaudry outreach manager at the Maryland chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations

Photos: Ayesha Ahmad

Children at Camp Ramadan, which was started in 2013 by a group of Washington-area Muslim Americans, learn traditional Islamic crafts such as paper marbling, papermaking and calligraphy.

our children, family-friendly and English-speaking.”

Camp director Mona Eldadah, an Iranian-American mother of four who herself grew up in Montgomery County, says Camp Ramadan gives kids a meaningful way to spend the long Ramadan days, when observant Muslims abstain from food and drink from sunrise to sunset.

The camp, which is held at the Washington Waldorf School in Bethesda, Md., introduces kids to traditional Islamic arts and crafts, such as Arabic calligraphy and bookbinding, that are seldom taught in the United States.The classes are led by Josh Berer, an American artisan who has studied extensively in the Middle East. At this year’s camp, kids learned how to make handmade paper and the basic techniques of paper marbling, swirling different colors of paint atop a base of water

to produce delicate, no-two-alike works of art.

Meanwhile, instructor Alexa Abdelatey led the youngest children (ages 3 to 6) in activities that revolved around the theme of animals that are important in Islam — for example, making “spiders” and “spider webs” out of pipe cleaners, paper plates and string, in reference to a well-known Islamic tradition about a spider web that protected the Prophet Muhammad while he hid from his enemies in a cave.

Abdelatey, an American who grew up in the Washington area and converted to Islam “following a very powerful spiritual experience” some years after marrying her Egyptian husband, says she feels it’s important for kids to “have a camp experience that acknowledges what’s unique and special about a community — a Muslim camp environment.”

Taking part in community service is another essential component of Camp Ramadan; as Eldadah puts it,“Caring for the needy … is in fact a religious duty” in the eyes of many Muslims.This year, campers prepared food to take to Stepping Stones Shelter in Rockville, Md., along with soliciting canned food donations from neighborhood residents and

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Page 28

assisting a rehabilitation hospital in Baltimore.

Spaces for the weeklong 2014 camp filled up quickly and “we had to turn people away,” said Haddadi. Indeed, Camp Ramadan has been successful enough that the Next Wave Muslim Initiative is considering expanding it in 2015.

During the school year, some area Muslim families turn to Islamic schools, of which there are at least half a dozen in the greater Washington area, most of them located in Virginia and Maryland. By and large, these schools follow the curriculum of their local school districts while also offering Arabic language classes, Koranic study and recitation, and instruction in religious beliefs. Some go up through 12th grade, while others end after middle or primary school, and most are accredited.

For parents such as Dilshad Fakroddin, a Rockville mother of three, Islamic schools offer not only religious education but also an environment where their culture and values are passed on to their children.

“Religion and spirituality are paramount in our lives…. Providing [our children] with a foundation rooted in religion and community has been a positive experience in many ways,” she said.“Just beginning the day with recitation of our holy book … is a huge blessing in and of itself.”

Karen Keyworth, co-founder and direcPhoto: ayeSha ahMaD tor of the Michigan-based Islamic Schools League of America (ISLA), says these Paper marbling involves swirling different schools also serve a role in fostering a colors of paint atop a base of water to “sense of normalcy” for kids who feel like produce delicate, distinct works of art. they don’t fit in with the dominant culture — for example, girls who wear a hijab, or headscarf.

“It provides [children] a place where they don’t have to be on guard, where they don’t have to constantly be the ambassador for their religion, which is a huge burden,” she said.“They can just go and be like everybody else.”

A few non-Islamic private schools in the area are also perceived as

EDUCATION The Washington Diplomat

September 2014

being particularly welcoming to students from a Muslim background. Camp Ramadan’s Eldadah and Abdelatey both send their children to the Washington Waldorf School, which appeals to them because of its emphasis on spirituality and reverence. The Muslim student population is now sizeable enough that, for the first time in its history, the school closed on the first day of Eid al-Adha in October 2013 in observance of the holiday.

“It was the first time in Montgomery County, [which] hasn’t done this. The public schools haven’t taken off for Eid. I felt, ‘Wow!’ They really recognize the presence of Muslims and how important it is for them to be a valued part of the school,” said Eldadah.

The school says it was simply the reasonable thing to do to accommodate a diverse student body.“We take [off] the major Christian holidays, the major Jewish holidays, and so it just made sense to us that of course we would do the same [with Muslim holidays]. We just try to be universal in our approach,” said Waldorf enrollment director Lezlie Lawson.

For financial and geographical reasons, however, the majority of kids from D.C.-area Muslim families attend public schools, and some feel the school systems have done too little to accommodate them despite their growing numbers. Currently, none of the Washington-area school districts close for the two major Islamic holidays — an issue that came to the fore in Montgomery County last year after a coalition of local Muslim leaders launched “Equality for Eid,” an as-yet-unsuccessful campaign to petition the school board to recognize the holidays.

“I remember growing up, every Eid it was,‘Are we going to go to school or are we going to stay home and celebrate with our family?’ Our parents were always like, ‘No, you have to go to school.’ So you miss out on the celebrating with your family,” said Zainab Chaudry, 31, a Baltimore native of Pakistani heritage and the outreach manager at the Maryland chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which organized the Eid campaign.

But the issue is not just about missing out on a family celebration; older children in particular can face a difficult

“Religion and spirituality are paramount in our lives…. Providing [our children] with a foundation rooted in religion and community has been a positive experience in many ways.”

— Dilshad Fakroddin, mother in Rockville, Md. the 1970s has closed schools for the major Jewish holidays in addition to the Christian holidays — has countered that it’s not a question of recognizing one religion over another but of sheer attendance.

“We were met with a lot of resistance. We were told that we have to prove that attendance would be impacted significantly,” said Chaudry. “We’re not asking for special rights for the Muslim community.We basically want equal rights.”

Aside from the Eid issue, however, some Muslim parents, and their children, prefer public schools for the wider range of opportunities they offer, such as languages and extracurricular activities. Fakroddin of Rockville says her three children have each experienced both public and Islamic private Photo: Ayesha Ahmad schools, with two gravitating more toward the latter, while her middle child, an outgoing A Camp Ramadan camper pulls a cart of canned food collected from 11-year-old boy, has opted to stay in public neighborhood families to donate to a homeless shelter. school for the more diverse social network. choice between observing a religious holiday and staying “I really feel like we’re kind of a bridge in on top of their schoolwork. that way, where … we’re having, by God’s grace, a balanced, “Imagine that it’s Christmas Eve and you’re studying for positive experience with both” types of schools, Fakroddin an exam that’s going to be on Christmas, and it’s going to said. “More than anything, for my husband and me, I think be 30 percent of your grade. Would that be OK? Most it’s made us realize that … there’s just no one size that fits Americans would consider that unacceptable. That’s essen- all. It’s really an individual experience.” tially what our kids face,” said the ISLA’s Keyworth.

The school board of Montgomery County — which since Vanessa H. Larson (@vanessahlarson) is a freelance writer in Maryland.

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The Washington Diplomat Page29

LIVING L U X U R Y

■ september 2014

UNWANTED EMBASSIES

Photo: Larry LuXner

■ A special section of the washington diplomat

by Martin Austermuhle

K

Above, the Slovenian embassy sits in the heart of D.C.’s Kalorama neighborhood. at right, private residences and embassies line Massachusetts avenue between 22nd Street and Sheridan Circle, including the embassies of georgia and turkmenistan.

alorama is a tony neighborhood sandwiched between Connecticut and Massachusetts avenues in northwest

Washington, a bucolic residential getaway boasting beautiful homes — and its fair share of embassies and ambassador residences.

Photo: WiKiMeDia CoMMonS / aPK

Page 30

Planning Commission Wants Chanceries Out Of D.C. Residential Areas

LUXURY LIVING The Washington Diplomat

September 2014

“Federal and local planners in Washington have the unique responsibility of balancing the needs of foreign missions with the responsibility of orderly growth and development of the community.”

embassies in d.C. have traditionally been located along Massachusetts avenue in a stretch known as embassy row, pictured below, as well as 16th Street, nW. But the national Capital Planning Commission is encouraging foreign missions to locate outside largely residential areas.

— nATionAl CAPiTAl PlAnninG CoMMiSSion

Photo: Larry LuXner

A statue of Mahatma gandhi sits across the indian embassy on Massachusetts avenue.

Photo: WiKiMeDia CoMMonS / agnoStiCPreaCherSKiD

The castle-like French residence takes up a prime piece of real estate in Kalorama.

hoods, provided that a certain ratio of residential-to-commercial use is met in those areas. (It’s known as the onethird/two-third rule: If one-third of the block is used for commercial or non-residential uses, a chancery can locate there.)

While the rule was originally aimed at offering the 185 countries with diplomatic representation in Washington Photo: Larry LuXner more options for their chanceries — there are 322 chanContinued from previous page ceries or chancery annexes in the city — NCPC officials admitted at the July meeting that it had been applied inconsisThat high concentration of diplomatic representation in a small neighborhood — there are some 60 offices or chanceries in tently, allowing for an over-concentration of diplomatic facilities five square blocks — has aggravated some neighbors and prompt- in neighborhoods like Kalorama. Residents have complained that ed a rewrite of the regulations governing where foreign missions the many chanceries lay claim to limited street parking and rarely can establish their permanent presence in the nation’s capital. It show signs of life at night, creating dead zones in the neighboralso points to a change in how and where embassies are located, hood.

“Concentrating chanceries in neighborhoods may impact trafpushing them out of traditional diplomatic enclaves like Embassy fic, parking, noise and land use patterns. There may be other Row. At its July meeting, the National Capital Planning Commission issues related to protecting neighborhood character or site-specif(NCPC), the federal agency that plays a role in determining devel- ic historic preservation issues,” said an NCPC report on how existopment patterns in Washington, approved a change to the rule ing rules have affected neighborhoods like Kalorama.

Along with the NCPC change, officials in the city’s Office of that allows countries to open embassies in residential areas.

Planning have similarly been preparing regulatory changes to According to federal regulations, foreign countries can establish their diplomatic headquarters without prior approval in com- encourage foreign countries to locate outside of Kalorama and mercial, mixed-used or waterfront areas. But since 1983, those Continued on next page regulations also allowed chanceries in residential neighbor-

LUXURY LIVING September 2014

The Washington Diplomat Page 31

the September 2012 issue of The Diplomat).

“New chancery development should be Dupont Circle — the area collectively encouraged at the proposed Foreign known as Embassy Row — as well as 16th Missions Center at the former Walter Reed Street, NW, all historic areas where space is campus. Opportunities to locate chanceries at a premium. Under that proposal, a chan- in areas of the District that have not tradicery could set up in a residential neighbor- tionally been considered should also be hood anywhere in the city, provided that promoted,” says NCPC. The commission admits that it faces a half of the block it seeks to locate on is 7101 Wisconsin Ave already used for office or commercial precarious balance. On the one hand, diplomatic obligations and the over-arching prinSuite 101 space.

Put together, the changes signal a shift in ciple of reciprocity have regularly pushed Bethesda MD 20814 accommodating the ever-expanding pres- the State Department to insist that foreign ence of foreign countries in the limited countries be given wide latitude in locating (301) 656-2800 confines of the nation’s capital (the col- chanceries in the city.

The goodwill works both ways. For lapse of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia in 1990s added some 20 embassies to the city instance, when the State Department facilialone). According to NCPC staff, the city is tated the construction of a massive new running out of land in traditional diplomatic chancery for China in D.C.’s Van Ness neighenclaves, even more so considering that borhood, Chinese authorities responded in chanceries are growing larger and require kind by allowing the construction of a huge new U.S. diplomatic compound in Beijing. more security.

On the other hand, even the sprawling “The availability of sites that meet these NOTE: Although every effort is made to assure your ad is free of mistakes in spelling and needs within traditional diplomatic areas in embassy enclave of Van Ness is simply runcontent it is ultimately up to the customer to make the final proof. the city is increasingly limited, and there- ning out of room.

Foreign missions certainly have their fore, identification of additional areas zoned The first two faxed changes will be made at no cost to the advertiser, subsequent changes for matter-of-right chancery use may be appeal: They invariably boost local busiwill be billed at a rate of $75 per faxed alteration. Signed ads are considered approved. necessary to accommodate future demand nesses and add cachet to their surroundings, and relieve overconcentration in traditional but not all homeowners are enamored with diplomatic enclaves,” explains the NCPC having a diplomatic neighbor next door.

Please check this ad carefully. Mark any changes to your ad.

D.C. officials are seeking to protect the city’s report.

Both NCPC and D.C. officials say that in residential spaces, especially as the city’s f the ad is correct sign and fax to: (301) 949-0065 needs changes the future, more chanceries will be located population continues to grow and real on specially designed diplomatic com- estate becomes a precious commodity.

“Federal and local planners in Washington pounds, like the International Chancery The Washington Diplomat (301) 933-3552 Center in Van Ness and the Foreign Missions have the unique responsibility of balancing Center at the Walter Reed Army Medical the needs of foreign missions with the Approved __________________________________________________________ Center campus, a 43.5-acre site that is responsibility of orderly growth and development of the community,” says NCPC. expected to house up to 15 chanceries.

The Ovation Changes ___________________________________________________________ 371277 / Kettler: center is expected to be fully built-out by ___________________________________________________________________ 2032 (see “State Department Eyes Walter Martin Austermuhle (@maustermuhle) is a web: www.fursbygartenhaus.com | email: gartenhaus@aol.com Reed to be D.C.’s Next Embassy Enclave” in contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

Continued from previous page

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LUXURY LIVING The Washington Diplomat

September 2014

[ exercise ]

Diplomacy on the Move Exercise Offers Ambassadors Respite from Busy Schedules

by Stephanie Kanowitz

T

he benefits of exercise are well documented and well known, but finding time to feel the burn can be a challenge. Ambassadors feel the time constraint as much as, if not more than, other busy professionals. Still, some say the pros of fitting a workout into their hard-working schedules outweigh the cons of shuffling their calendars.

Ambassadors exercise for many reasons, the least of which, it turns out, is to look good during photo ops.

Many say they find a good sweat helps them clear their minds, enabling them to perform better on the job. It also connects them with others in the international community and with Washington residents in general, making exercise a form of public diplomacy. It can even support worthy causes. For one leader, health is the happy byproduct of raising money to support women’s education in his home country.

We spoke with three exercise enthusiasts to find out what they do and why they do it.

E. Angus Friday | Grenada In the December 2013 issue of this newspaper, E. Angus Friday, Grenada’s ambassador to the United States, appeared on the cover in a suit and tie atop his bicycle, which he rode to and from work. Since then, he’s been pedaling less because he’s made the embassy his residence, but the bike remains his preferred mode of transportation and exercise remains a top priority for him.

Friday supplements his previous rides around Washington by exercising three or four times a week in the form of spinning classes — group cycling on specialized stationary bikes — at Vida Fitness’s Metropole location and running along the National Mall. Weather permitting, he still takes his bicycle to and from engagements around D.C. “If I have a meeting on K Street, I’ll take the bike,” he said. “On the weekend, I can go biking down to the Mall.”

A typical week for him includes a 45-minute spinning class on a couple of weekday evenings and a long gym session on Saturdays.

“I’ll go on Saturday morning to an hour spin class.

Occasionally I’ve done a double spinning class,” he said.

On Sundays, Friday likes to run the length of the National Mall. He starts at 14th Street and runs to the Capitol and back.

“When I’m feeling very energetic, I’ll then go down to the Lincoln Memorial and then back again,” he added.

“Usually that’s just about enough for me.”

His favorite biking spots are Rock Creek Park and the trail to Mount Vernon. He can often be found with his girlfriend pedaling alongside him. “It’s just a great form of enjoyment for both of us,” he said.

Additionally, working out helps cancel out some of the snacking he does at receptions and other events. “You really need the exercise to keep some balance,” he said.

Friday began biking in Grenada with a Roadracer bicycle in 2005. He bought a Dutch Bike to use for his commute when he came to Washington to work at the World Bank in 2009 as a specialist in international climate policy.

“I continued that habit when I took up a new job as

Ambassador of Grenada E. Angus Friday, seen in our December 2013 cover story, is an avid biker.

Photo: Lawrence Ruggeri

“A lot of people are getting involved in exercise,” he said.

“It’s something that’s in the culture of Grenadians to keep fit and exercise.”

Stephen D. Matenje | Malawi

Photo: Advancing Girls’ Education in Africa

Ambassador of Malawi Steve Matenje took to cycling last year to participate in the Tri for Malawi Team Challenge, which raises money to help girls back home attend school.

ambassador” in 2013, Friday said. “Washington just lends itself to biking.”

Friday downplays his commitment to exercise in comparison to others in his country. Keith Mitchell, Grenada’s prime minister, for instance, starts his exercise routine daily at 4 a.m., Friday noted.

Boot camps, in which participants are put through tough physical drills,are gaining popularity in the Caribbean island nation. Overall, the country is working to promote its medical and wellness tourism, the ambassador added.

Steve Matenje, ambassador of Malawi to the United States, is something of a new cyclist. He took to two wheels last year for a singular purpose: to participate in the annual Advancing Girls’ Education in Africa (AGE Africa) Tri for Malawi Team Challenge, which raises money to help girls back home attend school.

The race fits with AGE Africa’s mission to provide young women in Malawi with opportunities through education, mentoring and leadership development.The fourth annual Tri for Malawi will take place Sept. 7 on and around the Mall as part of the larger Nation’s Triathlon, which includes a 1.5-kilometer swim in the Potomac River, a 40-kilometer bike ride and a 10-kilometer run.

“Those who are physically fit can do all three events,” said Matenje, who is the biker of his three-person team.

“But most of us do it as a relay team.”

Throughout the year, the ambassador said he bikes occasionally, but training picks up in the summer as he prepares for the race.

“I bike usually on the weekend because during the week usually I don’t have much time to do that,” Matenje said, although he does hop on the treadmill on weekdays.

“Whenever I have a chance during the week to go on my bike after work, I try to do that.”

He typically rides around the Potomac Village area where he lives in Maryland, but he also enjoys riding along

LUXURY LIVING September 2014

Continued on next page

The Washington Diplomat Page 33

“Exercise is my form of relaxation….

It helps calm and center me. I can definitely focus more clearly and have improved concentration after I’ve worked out.”

Continued from previous page

the Potomac.

“Back in Malawi, where I come from, several years ago, I would ride a bike now and then because the bicycle is one of the modes of transportation in Africa, especially in Malawi. I used to do that quite a bit,” Matenje said.

But before last year’s triathlon, he had never competed in a cycling competition, and he’s looking forward to — MAGuy MACCArio doyle, ambassador of Monaco to the united States doing it again this year. The energy of the crowd is infectious, he told us.

“Every day I find some form of exercise to do, whether it is taking a walk, spending an “Everyone was excited, everyone was smiling and everybody was just looking forward to participating. That was my first time to see a large group of people taking part in a hour or so at the gym and sauna or playing a game or two of tennis — my favorite,” competition for charitable reasons,” Matenje said. “Apart from the desire to help raise Maccario Doyle told us. “I’ve recently taken up learning to golf, which is quite therapeumoney for the schoolgirls, it’s also great fun. It’s a great way to meet a lot of people coming tic.”

As a woman in the public eye, it’s easy to assume that Maccario Doyle feels pressure to from across the United States.”

Last year, Matenje joined a team of 50 athletes, corporate team representatives and uphold a healthy physique, but that’s not the case, she said. “I only feel pressure from embassy staff (including his deputy chief of mission) as part of Tri for Malawi, raising within to ensure I look and feel my best and maintain a sense of well being.”

To that end, appearance is a happy consequence for Monaco’s former longtime consul $112,000 to provide 150 scholarships to AGE Africa’s scholars.This year, the event aims to drum up at least $130,000 to support 170 scholarships. Matenje is working hard to ensure general in New York.The main advantage she gains from getting her heart rate up is relaxthat happens by recruiting others in the diplomatic community to either join the compe- ation.

“Exercise is my form of relaxation,” she said. “It helps calm and center me. I can defitition or sponsor him and by tapping into the community of more than 1,000 Malawians nitely focus more clearly and have improved concentration after I’ve worked out.” in the Washington metro area.

“The biggest resource we have in Malawi is the people of Malawi,” Matenje said, adding that more than half of the population is female — although only a small fraction of them sOlVing prOBlEMs OnE sErVE At A tiME ultimately finish secondary school, something AGE Africa is working to change.“In Africa, Regardless of the impetus for the exercise or type of workout, getting moving is a great we say that if you educate a boy, you educate an individual. If you educate a girl, you are way for ambassadors to relieve stress, said Kathy Kemper, a former professional tennis educating a nation.” player and head women’s tennis coach at Georgetown University from 1978 to 1990. She now coaches privately and is also founder and chief executive officer of the Institute for MAguy MACCAriO dOylE | MOnACO Education, a nonprofit that promotes leadership and civility locally, nationally and globally.

In Monaco, physical prowess reigns. Prince Albert II and Princess Charlene were “I think it’s a great example for leaders to exercise. I always think it’s a little bit shortOlympians — he competed in bobsledding at five Winter Games between 1988 and 2002, sighted when people criticize leadership — whether it’s the American leadership or any and she swam in the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney. leadership worldwide — about maybe recreating too much, like maybe they shouldn’t be “They have definitely set a high bar of sportsmanship and healthy living,” said Maguy playing golf because there’s a world crisis going on,” Kemper said. “You want the people Maccario Doyle, Monaco’s recently appointed ambassador to the United States.“There is a that run the world to be clear-thinking, and working 24-7 is not healthy — mentally, strong emphasis on sports, exercise and eating a balanced (Mediterranean) diet in the physically, emotionally, psychologically at all. People need to remove themselves.” principality. Healthy lifestyle choices are taught to the young and retained throughout life.

It is said that more business is conducted on a golf course than in a boardroom, and that In fact, people in Monaco constantly feature on the top of world longevity lists.” can extend to tennis courts or hiking trails, she added. Removing the professional setting, Maccario Doyle herself works out almost daily. If she’s traveling, she seeks out the hotel including the entourage of assistants, enables people to relax and be more open to diagym or pool, while at home, she enjoys “walking and playing tennis as often as I can find logue.That can improve relationships on personal and professional levels. a good partner,” she said.

“I think any kind of activity that one recreates in, whether it’s tennis or golf or just taking a walk, if you get people to spend relaxed time like that off the grid, so to speak, there’s nothing better for building trust and friendship,” she said.

Stephanie Kanowitz is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

No Excuses Finding time to exercise doesn’t have to be difficult, said Kathy Kemper, a longtime Washington tennis coach who now heads the Institute for Education.

She has worked with enough u.S. senators, Cabinet members, Supreme Court justices and diplomats to know. “it’s common knowledge that exercise is good,” said Kemper, former head women’s tennis coach at georgetown university who is well known in local diplomatic circles (she regularly coaches ambassadors and their wives). “if you’re the top dog, you can dictate your schedule.” a 50-minute, one-on-one or a 90-minute doubles tennis session with her is guaranteed to get hearts pumping and muscles working. She always warms up with a game she calls “short court,” or mini tennis. Players stand close to the net, near the first service line, and hit the ball gently to have a rally (a sequence of shots within a point). “that gets your eyes and your hands operating together and it gets your balance warmed up. it gets your tendons and your ligaments warmed up,” said Kemper, who has worked with diplomats from australia, China, Denmark, indonesia, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, norway, Portugal, Singapore, Switzerland, Sweden, the united Kingdom and more.

When the weather is cold, she has clients jog around the court and do jumping jacks, too. those who can’t make it to a game with her or to the gym have no excuses, Kemper said.

She recommends “old-school exercises” such as push-ups and sit-ups, which don’t require equipment and can be done in your pajamas.

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Coach Kathy Kemper, bottom right, hosts a tennis tournament for, from left: Dr. Joanna Breyer, wife of Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer; Deputy Chief of Mission of the Portuguese Embassy Rosa Batoréu; wife of the former Norwegian ambassador Cecilie Strommen; and Christine Sager, wife of the Swiss ambassador. “everybody in the world knows what a pushup is, and everybody in the world knows what a sit-up is, and i think they’re great,” she said.

“Sit-ups work on your core, which is critical to balance, and push-ups get your heart rate going and build upper-body strength.” hiking and walking are popular among diplomats, she added, and moving your body outside a professional setting has enormous benefits. “if you’re sitting at your office in the u.K. embassy, for example, you’re not going to be prone to look at a bird or flowers or sweat,” Kemper said. “i think it’s just pulling people out of their habitat and putting them in nature. it’s just so healthy. that’s not debatable.”

— Stephanie Kanowitz

LUXURY LIVING

12/11/13 1:11 PM

September 2014

culture & arts

■ WWW.WASHDIPLOMAT.COM

entertainment

■ SEPTEMBER 2014

DIPLOMATIC SPOUSES

Different Climate It was a cold awakening for Numa Mulina when she landed in D.C. It was the first time her family had seen snow, it was her husband’s first ambassador posting and it was her first time leaving Papua New Guinea. PAGE 37

HISTORY

Polar Opposites

A new Civil War exhibition shines a light on Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant, the two generals who embodied the divisions between the North and South that nearly tore America apart 150 years ago. PAGE 38

[ HISTORY ]

POWER OF THE PRESS the first partnership between the newseum and the Smithsonian, “one nation With news for all” tells the stories of immigrant and minority communities who strived to personalize and share their american experience through media. PAGE 36

ART

Feminism Reimagined Colombian photographer Natalia Arias challenges societal notions of femininity in an eye-turning new exhibition at the Art Museum of the Americas that honors the female body in all of its forms. PAGE 40 Photo: Sarah MerCIer / neWSeuM

DINING

FILM REVIEWS

Ripple continues to make waves with a string of local and national awards. PAGE 42

“Jealousy” is raw in its depiction of love, infidelity and the inexhaustible struggles of being an artist. PAGE 44

[ history ]

Telling Their Stories Newseum Explores How Minorities Discovered Power of Press Photo: Jonathan thoMPSon / neWSeuM

by Sarah alaoui

W

hile the Pledge of Allegiance does not directly mention a democratic press, the Newseum has consecrated a new exhibition around the notion of “One Nation With News for All.” Representing the first partnership between the Newseum and the Smithsonian Institution, “News for All” showcases the stories of immigrant and minority groups who strived to personalize and share their American experience through media.

“We wanted people to walk away with a better understanding of how their various ethnic communities contributed to the American experience,” said Sharon Shahid, the exhibit’s lead writer.

What began as a conversation between Smithsonian Secretary Wayne Clough and Newseum CEO James Duff developed into a full-fledged historical experience roughly one year later, with 60 featured artifacts — including abolitionist Frederick Douglass’s pocket watch and the press passes used by pioneering Univision anchors Jorge Ramos and María Elena Salinas — to illustrate the story of minorities in media.These individuals grew tired of seeing mostly white, English-speaking publishers and journalists either misrepresent or entirely exclude their communities from the news and created their own forums to fight for their rights.

Since the publication of America’s first German-language newspaper Philadelphische Zeitung in 1732 by Benjamin Franklin, more than 3,000 media organizations now offer news in different languages, from Amharic to Yiddish. Franklin recognized the increasing influence of the German population — the largest ethnic group in America in the 18th and 19th centuries — and decided to publish the newspaper with his high school-level grasp of the language. While his particular venture proved unsuccessful, other German publications took off, providing newcomers to the United States with an important connection to the homelands they left behind.Today, one in four Americans turn to ethnic media for their news.

These outlets also connected Americans to growing immigrant populations.

Politicians use ethnic media to woo voters — Abraham Lincoln shrewdly bought a German newspaper in Illinois — while businesses use it to reach consumers.

“We wanted to challenge communities to see how they fit in with the American journey,” said Shahid.

Various programming will complement the exhibition. For example, Radio One founder Cathy Hughes, featured in “News for All” as heading the largest black-owned broadcast company in the country, spoke about her experience at the Newseum in August. With 50 radio stations, the company reaches 82 percent of the nation’s African-Americans with a variety of programming tailored to the American black experience. On the exhibition’s opening weekend in May,Afro-American Newspapers publisher John J. Oliver and Washington Informer publisher Denise Rolark-Barnes led a discussion on the state of African-American press.The event fittingly coincided with the 60th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision that deemed separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional.

The initial exhibition script was about 30 pages, according to Shahid, as attempts were made to comprehensively represent the spectrum of existing minority media.

The final product includes a balanced representation of groundbreakers and those who paved the way for their respective communities.To further ensure the inclusion of all minority press, the exhibit has a wall showcasing the front pages of various ethnic newspapers. The pages are rotated every Wednesday — a total of 10 papers displayed per week — with headlines not commonly found in mainstream papers.

But minority publications have often broken into the mainstream — and history.

The murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till received international attention after gruesome photos of the boy’s body were published in Jet magazine in 1955, part of a campaign to document injustices in the Jim Crow South. In the Japanese-American community, James Omura of the Rocky Shimpo was the only journalist to cover the military draft of young Japanese men in detention camps. While reporting on the draft resistance movement, Omura was charged with conspiracy to counsel draft evasion, but was later acquitted on free speech grounds. In 1985, Mexican-American photographer

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The Washington Diplomat

Photo: Sarah MerCIer / neWSeuM / LoaneD By KyunG W. Lee

“one Nation With News for all” features items such as, from top: a display of america’s first ethnic newspapers; press passes from Kyung W. Lee, who started two newspapers serving the Korean community in Los angeles; a copy of the Cherokee Phoenix, circa 1829, the first native american newspaper printed in the u.S., still in existence today; as well as a Frank Bolden typewriter used during World War II, pictured on the culture cover.

[

one Nation With News for all through Jan. 4, 2015 Newseum 555 Pennsylvania ave., nW For more information, please call (888) 639-7386 (NEWSEUM) or visit www.newseum.org.

] Photo: neWSeuM CoLLeCtIon

Octavio Gomez was awarded $195,000 in a lawsuit after U.S. agents confiscated his camera while he was covering immigration protests for La Opinion; it was the first lawsuit filed on behalf of Spanish-language media.

More recent controversies are also covered in “News for All.” For example, the exhibit highlights the work of AngryAsianMan.com, a blog founded in 2001 by KoreanAmerican Phil Yu that features Asian-American news and pop culture. Yu also blogs about discrimination against the Asian community, which was up in arms in 2002 when Abercrombie & Fitch came out with offensive caricatures on its T-shirts. One of them, displayed in the exhibit, features the slogan “two wongs can make it white.”

The impact of these varied media outlets is indeed far-reaching, reflecting and catering to the country’s diversity while at the same time touching Americans of all stripes. Ethnic media has shaped history and continues to have a powerful presence today, as seen in the explosive popularity of Spanish-language networks. It’s not only a source of news, but also pride for each ethnic community — whether it be African American, Asian, Spanish or Native American. “The best feedback we received was from the various ethnic media who walked away feeling proud,” Shahid said.

Sarah Alaoui (@musingsdiffused) is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

September 2014

[ diplomatic spouses ]

Weathering Changes First-Time Ambassador, Wife Adjust to Life Outside Papua New Guinea

by Gail Scott

W

hen Numa Mulina stepped off the plane and arrived in D.C. earlier this year, it was a big departure from the life she had known. She was not only leaving behind her Pacific home of Papua New Guinea for the first time, she was also entering a completely new world.

It was a cold awakening, literally. “We came here in January and it was snowing,” said Mulina, wife of Rupa Abraham Mulina, the ambassador of Papua New Guinea.“We saw it as we landed.We had never seen snow before.We took off our shoes and jackets and walked through it; we wanted to completely experience it.The whole staff from the embassy was there to greet us with warm clothes. Now, I can hardly wait for fall and all the colored leaves.”

It’s a new experience for her husband as well. A first-time ambassador, Rupa Mulina is a Hubert Humphrey Fellowship scholar who holds a master’s degree in economics from Macquarie University in Sydney. He has served as the defense and treasury chief of his country, later becoming the managing director of a commercial bank and then a private consultant. He’d been asked before to serve as his country’s ambassador to the United States, but he turned down the prestigious position.This time, though, he said yes.

While Numa said she misses Papua New Guinea’s laidback lifestyle and the fact that she We had never seen had her extended family close by, she apprecithe grandeur and sophistication of snow before. We took off ates Washington. “This very powerful country is so in health care, education and infraour shoes and jackets and organized structure. Here, I get to meet different kinds of walked through it; people from all over the world and all walks of life.”

But the climate is different, in more ways we wanted to completely than one. In Papua New Guinea, she said peoexperience it. ple tend to spend more time outdoors — not surprising given that temperatures average in the 70s and 80s — and socialize with neigh— Numa Mulina bors. “At home, we often take a walk after dinwife of the Ambassador of Papua New ner and chat with people, Guinea Rupa Abraham Mulina sit on the porch and discuss the day with our neighbors.

We are much more casual, relaxed and very social.”

Here, Numa doesn’t know her neighbors well and the move took her away from her family. “We came to this very big house — there were only three of us. It was lonely and very sad.At home, the house would be full; I’d be helping to take care of my brother’s children,” Numa told us.

The house became less empty, however, after the arrival of their teenage boys. The oldest, 20-year-old Reuben, came in July and is interested in studying business and music.“He’d love to make records or have his own record company,” Numa said. Pala, 15, who came in April, is a ninth-grade student at Woodrow Wilson High School and wants to be a lawyer some day. Meanwhile, 14-yearold Joshua, who landed in the snowstorm with them, is in the eighth grade and dreams of becoming a pilot.

“The other two boys follow Reuben and try to do whatever he does,” Numa said. “These days with social media, you can’t control them. Apart from Facebooking, there’re good boys.”

Despite the allure of social media, the teens do their fair share around the house.“I don’t cook.The boys do. My husband cooks, grills too,” Numa told us.“They say that since they outnumber me, they will cook and clean.

They each clean their rooms before they leave in the morning.”

The family also enjoys playing ping-pong together. “My husband is the

“

”

September 2014

Numa Mulina, above, and her husband, Papua New Guinea Ambassador Rupa Abraham Mulina, are here in Washington on his first ambassadorial posting.

Photo: Larry Luxner

At left, they joined Ambassador of Fiji Winston Thompson and his wife Queenie for a State Department-hosted trip to Seattle this summer.

best. He and I always beat the kids,” she said.

Now that the boys are teenagers, though, Numa tries to keep herself busy when the boys are at school or away. “I read novels but never finish them,” she said. “I also love to read magazines and newspapers. I love to watch movies. I take a walk every morning and afternoon and enjoy window-shopping.”

Back in Papua New Guinea, Numa held two jobs: managing a restaurant in a five-star, family-run hotel and serving as an administrator in the

See Spouses, page 39 The Washington Diplomat Page 37

[ history ]

Faces of War Two Generals Embody Divisive Spirit, Shared History of Civil War

by Gary Tischler

N

ext year marks 150 years since the end of America’s Civil War, and the country has been marching forward — much like Union soldiers did through Georgia — through the final months of remembering a traumatic, historydefining conflict that ultimately unified the country and ended slavery, but at the expense of an estimated 750,000 soldiers and an untold number of civilians.The divisive bitterness between the North and South that sparked secession lingers to this day, as the modern-day fights over flying the Confederate flag so aptly illustrate.

In particular, Washington, D.C., has been home to an outpouring of essays and exhibitions reflecting on the legacy and left-behind items of the Civil War, fought from 1861 to 1865. Perhaps it’s only fitting that much of the 150th anniversary commemoration takes place in D.C., the capital of a unified nation that remains a symbol of its deep political polarization, some of it fueled by historical grievances.

The country’s ongoing fragmentation chips away at the central idea of the Civil War — the Photo: SMIthSonIan aMerICan art MuSeuM deceptively literary notion that Americans above, robert e.

Lee surrenders to ulysses S. Grant fought Americans, brother against brother, in farms and fields. at appomattox in alonzo Chappel’s 1870 painting.

Stripped naked and unarmed, no doubt Rebel and Yankee soldiers looked as if they came from the same national womb, but in action, at left, Grant is pictured in Mathew B. Brady’s 1864 in fighting ability and in leadership, they were from two different photograph as part of the national Portrait Gallery’s worlds (and almost two different countries). “one Life” exhibition showcasing the two Civil War The generals embodied these differences, adapting their armies generals. to the costly nature of the war, each in their own way. In the end, the two legendary figures at the head of the warring armies — Grant, who rose from failed business venRobert E. Lee, the charismatic general of the Confederacy, and tures in the country’s Midwest to become Ulysses S. Grant, the eventual Union victor by a bloody-minded the leader of the Union Army, typified the tenacity of spirit — proved to be metaphoric examples of what the idea of the uncommon man hailing from war was about. a common background: brusque, mascuThe National Portrait Gallery (along with a number of institutions line, cigar-smoking and hardscrabble. He throughout the city such as the Library of Congress and American never became an adept politician, or History Museum) features a variety of exhibits dedicated to the Civil president, but he came to understand War — among them “Mr. Lincoln’s Washington:A Civil War Portfolio” war the way an ordinary soldier might depicting the effects of the war on the District of Columbia and Photo: natIonaL PortraIt GaLLery / SMIthSonIan InStItutIon — as a pitiless enterprise whose objec“Mathew Brady’s Photographs of Union Generals.” tive is the continued destruction of men and materiel.

But it’s the smaller “One Life” exhibit that offers Grant was not so much a leader of men as a leader of the most intriguing insights on two generals whose one life: Grant and lee armies. He wasn’t particularly adored by his troops, but he lives were intertwined by combat. The “One Life” through May 31, 2015 was respected. In the political realm, he was ill at ease in series usually focuses on a single person who had a the presence of Abraham Lincoln, a complicated man with major impact on American life — people that range National portrait Gallery a similar background but a more eloquent way of leading. from abolitionist Frederick Douglass to Elvis Presley 8th and F Streets, nW. No one would ever write a poetic elegy about Grant. to former President Ronald Reagan. For the first For more information, please call (202) 633-8300 Nevertheless, he was a faithful and strong family man who, time, the series is focusing on two figures: Lee and or visit www.npg.si.edu. near the end of his life, stricken with cancer, managed Grant, though it can be argued the exhibit is about through pain and sorrow to write one of the most highly the fight for one life, that of the United States of praised autobiographies in American literature.

America.

In stark contrast, if one were to think of the plantation elites of the South as a Although both men were West Point graduates and fought in the MexicanAmerican War, which proved to be a training ground for many of the military kind of democratic aristocracy steeped in gentility, then Robert E. Lee, the son of leaders of the Civil War, the exhibit reveals that they could not have been any a dashing Revolutionary War hero, was its master. The polished Confederate genmore different from each other. In their rise to the highest ranks, their leadership eral became a heroic figure as well, with his seemingly wounded, far-seeing eyes, styles, military strategies and personalities, they exuded the values and character quiet manner of talking and the palatable regard and love he inspired from his troops. of their respective “nations.”

Despite his daring strategic thinking that outmaneuvered a variety of Union For poet Walt Whitman, who tended to the Civil War wounded in the nation’s capital, the battle was one of ideals, fiercely held and fought over by average men. generals, Lee failed to understand the true nature of the Civil War and the violence

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September 2014

that would portend future conflicts. As he was said to be watching the carnage of Union soldiers charging uphill to slaughter in the Battle of Fredericksburg, he reportedly observed that,“It is a good thing that war is so terrible, else we grow to love it too much.”

Lee saw what was coming: There was no escaping Grant and the Union’s philosophy of total war that destroys armies and resources.That day in Fredericksburg, the Union suffered twice as many casualties as did the Confederates.Yet in subsequent battles spanning Virginia, despite heavy losses, each day Grant’s army would resurface to fight again without respite. It was an implacable fight right up to Appomattox, the courthouse where Lee would surrender to Grant.

Grant treated Lee with the deference of a great man from another era.After the war, Lee became president of what is now Washington and Lee University and supported Reconstruction. He remains an iconic military figure, a reverence that colors the portraits in “One Life,” which depict Lee as a young officer and as a seasoned general. But whether he’s posing with his officers or on his legendary horse, he always looks like a man who upon death would instantly become immortalized as a statue.

Grant, on the other hand, was not exactly humble, but he remains a sort of mystery and the exhibition shows that.As president, Grant pursued Reconstruction of the South and pushed for African American rights, yet his time in office was marred by corruption and financial crisis. His presidency did not go down well in the history books, but more recent scholars have been somewhat

from page 37

Spouses

Photo: natIonaL PortraIt GaLLery / SMIthSonIan InStItutIon

ulysses S. Grant successfully commanded union troops to victory in the Civil War and eventually became u.S. president.

kinder to Grant.

At the National Portrait Gallery, we see Grant in his never-changing uniform: thick beard, cigar and a solidity that seems impenetrable. Grant looks like a thoroughly modern late-19th-century man, while Lee seems only at home in his time, a bygone era in America’s evolution.

The composite portrait never quite comes together because the two men, like the country, were so fundamentally at odds. Nevertheless, Grant and Lee deeply affected the other and the outcome of a conflict to which both will forever be tied, together.

Gary Tischler is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

International Training Institute, a leading private training and education provider.

Now her job is supporting her ambassador husband and helping him get to know the local diplomatic community. “Through my connections to other wives, my husband meets other high-ranking men and women. I guess that makes me the kitchen cabinet of my husband,” she joked.

Another important responsibility is simply educating Americans on her Pacific island nation of 6.5 million people.

“I am proud of my country. When I tell people where I am from, obviously they don’t know where Papua New Guinea is. They guess that we are in Africa and that we are cannibals,” Numa quipped.“I tell them no and that we are a Pacific country between Indonesia and Australia.”

Situated about 100 miles north of Australia, Papua New Guinea shares the main island of New Guinea with Indonesia but also includes many smaller surrounding islands. Altogether, the country is about the size of California and features mountainous terrain along with coastal lowlands and rolling foothills. More than 800 hundred different languages are spoken in Papua New Guinea, although English is the main language of business and education; Numa speaks six languages.

“Asians know who we are but even Europeans don’t. We are just developing with a recent pipeline of $20 billion in an ExxonMobil project,” Numa said of the resource-rich economy, whose per-capita GDP is nearly $3,000 while growth topped 5 percent last year.

In addition to natural resources and agricul-

oFFICIaL WhIte houSe Photo By LaWrenCe JaCKSon

From right, rupa abraham Mulina, the ambassador of Papua new Guinea, and his wife numa Mulina present his credentials to President obama earlier this year.

tural products like cocoa, tourism is an important economic driver, although the most obvious source for tourists — Australia — is also a source of frustration for some Papua New Guineans.“We have to have a visa to go to Australia but they don’t need one to come to us. We need more understanding between the two countries,” Numa said.

Numa is equally frank about relations with the United States:“I wish the U.S. would play a bigger role in the development of our country. We are dealing with gender violence and we would open our doors to the help. In comparison, the Chinese ask us what we want.”

Her candor is a rarity in the more formal circles of diplomacy, and while she says protocol is important, so is honesty. “For me, there is too much protocol.”

Gail Scott is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

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www.turkishfestival.org The Washington Diplomat Page 39

[ photography ]

Unabashed ‘Femininity’ Colombian Artist Ponders Beauty of Women Beyond Archetypes Photo: nohra haIMe GaLLery, ny

by miranda Katz

A

woman sits on a bed gazing between her legs, where she appears to have given birth to a cubed watermelon. On the opposite wall, a faceless figure takes a pair of garden shears to a grassy garden growing between her thighs. Meanwhile, in the next room, a heavily pregnant, gold-sheathed belly tapers into the toned legs of a ballet dancer, wearing shiny, red dance shoes.

These are just a few of the arresting images that comprise a new exhibit at the Art Museum of the Americas. Titled “Femininity Beyond Archetypes,” it showcases the work of Colombian photographer Natalia Arias. Though the title might suggest a one-note, third-wave feminist, heavily conceptual approach, the photographs in fact encourage a broad meditation on the meaning of femininity, be it from a feminist or simply artistic perspective.

The exhibit features works from two of the artist’s series: “Taboo,” which she worked on from 1999 to 2005, and “Venus,” which spanned 2005 to 2010.Though the series differ in content and concept, the visuals are consistent throughout:The photographs are of women — many of whom conceal their faces in some manner — and their bodies are canvasses, whether gilded in gold or painted into a reincarnation of the deity Quetzalcoatl.

The “Taboo” series, according to text displayed in the exhibit,“exemplifies [Arias’s] departure from rigid discourses on femininity, where social values champion perfect physiques while religious ideologies dismiss the natural processes of women.” And the photographs are taboo, indeed: Ranging from the comical to the grotesque, they conPhoto: CourteSy oF the BoBB-WILLIS FaMILy front oft-avoided topics such as female anatomy.

From top, “Flower,” “Life” and “Dancing In “Virginidad,” a woman reclines, nude, on a bed; the crop is close, and only a Queen” are among the arresting images portion of her torso and hips are visible. Were it not for the deep red blood that

by Colombian photographer natalia arias stains the sheet beneath her, the photograph might appear almost prosaically innothat explore the female form and womancent. The effect is surprisingly beautiful. Here, the blood often associated with a hood in “Femininity Beyond archetypes.” woman’s loss of virginity becomes an accent of color to an otherwise monochrome image. It challenges the silence surrounding virginity, instead asserting it as something natural and beautiful, whose taboo is socially constructed.

The ancient “Venus of Willendorf,” one This theme is prevalent throughout: Natural processes, such as the loss of virginof the earliest known representations of ity, pregnancy and birth, are hailed, rather than hidden. Arias celebrates the experithe female form, is reincarnated in Arias’s ences implied in femininity, pointing to the beauty that lies in imperfection and “Woman from Willendorf,” in which a bodily change. braid wraps itself around a woman’s face, Things take a turn for the bizarre in “Life,” in which a woman peers between her mimicking the effect on the Paleolithic legs to find cubed watermelon, to which she has apparently given birth.This work statue. Both women are full-figured, but Photo: CourteSy oF MS. nICoLe haIMe was inspired by one of the artist’s teachers, who told her that “giving birth is like whereas the original statue’s fleshiness pushing a watermelon through a lemon.” The piece has a nightmarish quality — was at the time regarded as a symbol of fertility,“Woman from Willendorf” takes on rather than a child, the product of birth is chopped fruit — and the pinkish-red the controversial notion of a “real woman” who embraces curves and is unconwatermelon’s resemblance to blood or bodily cerned with thinness. matter is a bit too close for comfort. The piece Viewers may be more familiar with Botticelli’s “Birth of Femininity Beyond archetypes: has a cringe-worthy effect that seems almost Venus,” which Arias reimagines in her “Venus of Botticelli.” A photography by Natalia arias intentional.The underlying theme of the waternude model rises out of a painted paper flower, which is melon as a metaphor for fertility and reproducscattered with packing peanuts at its base. Her long hair through oct. 5 tion pales in comparison to the stark image of flows down to her legs, and her figure is conventionally organization of american States art museum a woman confronting, perhaps in horror, the attractive. Like Botticelli’s “Venus,” she exudes sexuality and of the americas unexpected fruits of her labor. femininity, yet a comparison of the two reveals how time has 201 18th St., nW Then, there are the photographs that could changed what is generally considered attractive and femiFor more information, please call (202) 370-0147 double as covers of beauty magazines. In nine: Botticelli’s “Venus” has a softer body; she is pale-skinned, or visit http://museum.oas.org.

“Flower,” for example, a woman in a floral bathnot tan; and she is demure, while Arias’s model is confident. ing cap blows a kiss at the camera, her makeup The juxtaposition suggests that while norms of beauty may artfully done and white feathered eyelashes lending her an ethereal quality. The change over time, norms themselves nonetheless persist. model herself seems to be the flower, blossoming out of the frame; the symmetry “Femininity Beyond Archetypes” engages theoretically with concepts of femiof the photograph, coupled with the unmistakable beauty of the piece, make it nism, femininity and beauty, yet one can also enjoy the exhibit on a purely aespositively Vogue-worthy. thetic level. The photographer’s sense of symmetry, light and color makes the The “Venus” series takes a quite different approach to exploring femininity, as photographs a pleasure to behold. Arias honors the female body in all of its forms, Arias reimagines the hallmarks of female beauty in art history, producing her own celebrating pregnant bellies alongside fleshy women and conventional beauties, all take on iconic works. Here, famous Venuses that have appeared in art for millennia while shattering taboos and highlighting the power of imperfection. are reborn, taking the form of modern women and examining how concepts of femininity have both changed and remained stubbornly static.

Miranda Katz is an editorial assistant for The Washington Diplomat.

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September 2014

[ theater ]

Rising Voice Trinidad Native Sings Up a Storm in Stage Version of ‘Dirty Dancing’ by lisa Troshinsky

T

[

he life of songstress Jennlee Shallow is truly one of rags to riches. Originally from Trinidad and Tobago, Shallow grew up in a one-room shack in the Caribbean with three siblings and a strong single mother. She was discovered at a young age for her natural singing talent and has been traveling the world ever since — musical theater style.

D.C. audiences will get a chance to see her in the upcoming North American tour of “Dirty Dancing – The Classic Story on Stage,” to hit the National Theater this month.

“In the Caribbean, there were no such opportunities,” Shallow told The Washington Diplomat.“If you wanted to be a singer, people laughed at you. I always knew I wanted to be a singer because it was the only thing that made me feel alive. But I came from a poor family. We couldn’t afford piano, dance or singing lessons. I’ll never forget seeing my mom starve herself so we could eat.”

Loyal fans of the infamous 1980s movie starring Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey won’t be disappointed, and will also enjoy some new additions to the plot, Shallow said.The dance hit, made in 1987, tells the story of a privileged young girl who, while on vacation in New York in 1963, falls for the resort’s sexy dance instructor who opens her eyes to a whole new world.

Shallow will be featured as an ensemble member portraying the character of Elizabeth, who was added to the show and helps to tie the story together through music. She’s featured singing the show’s iconic anthem,“Time of my Life,” as well as “Yes,” “This Magic Moment” and “You Don’t Own Me.” “We Shall Overcome,” not included in the movie, will also be sung by Shallow.

Although “Dirty Dancing” takes place in an idyllic resort in the Catskill Mountains, the rest of the country was consumed by hot-button issues such as civil rights, and the show does touch on some of the turmoil of the 1960s (the film, for example, depicts an illegal abortion). “The characters also talk about the Freedom Riders. It adds another dimension to the show,” Shallow noted.

Shallow was born in Trinidad and grew up in St. Vincent, singing in her church choir. Her first big break came just out of college when her accounting teacher, who was teaching choir after school, suggested she audition for a local production of Disney’s “The Lion King.”

Little did she know that this audition — her first — would drastically change her life.

“I didn’t even know what musical theater was,” admitted Shallow, who had no formal vocal training.“I didn’t know what to sing and they suggested ‘Amazing Grace,’ which of course I knew because I sang in church.They said I looked Dirty Dancing – and sounded like Heather Headley [a The Classic Story on Stage Trinidadian-American R&B and soul singer].

A week later I was understudying the role of through Sept. 14 Nala [the love interest of Simba].”

National Theatre Shallow understudied Nala in Germany 1321 Pennsylvania ave., nW for eight months and then was offered the tickets start at $48. lead for a brand new company opening in For more information, please call (202) 628-6161 Australia, where she performed for three and or visit http://thenationaldc.org. a half years.

Up until this time, she had learned the business by watching fellow performers on stage, but eventually decided she wanted to formally study musical theater. She left Australia for a scholarship to study at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in Los Angeles, where she broadened her horizons with tap, ballet, jazz and voice work lessons.

From there she moved to New York and was cast as Sarah in “Ragtime” at the Kennedy Center in D.C. She was offered the role on Broadway, but declined for the chance to perform as the lead singer in Cirque du Soleil’s “Viva Elvis” in Las Vegas. After three years in Vegas, she was cast in Franco Dragone’s “Taboo” in Macau, China.

September 2014

]

Photo: FranZ Mahr

Jennlee Shallow, pictured in new york City during studio rehearsals for “Dirty Dancing,” which is being staged this month at the national theater in D.C., was born in trinidad and tobago and got her big break when she auditioned for Disney’s “the Lion King.”

Photo: FranZ Mahr

Although musical theater has been more than good to Shallow, allowing her to travel the world, she said her true passion is to be a recording artist.

“I wrote songs as a teenager, won a song writing competition in Trinidad and still write from time to time. I grew up listening to Whitney Houston, Celine Dion and Mariah Carey — my three idols. I want to be like them some day; that passion is still burning. I have to get connected with a great producer who believes in me. I need to do my own kind of music. I’m a pop ballad singer with a big gospel voice.”

For now, though, she’ll be able to show off that voice on stage, in a sultry cult favorite. “Dirty Dancing – The Classic Story on Stage” will star Samuel Pergande as Johnny Castle and Jillian Mueller as Frances “Baby” Houseman.

Eleanor Bergstein is the screenwriter of original the film and book writer for the musical.

“The company that we have assembled for our North American tour is beautiful and truthful,” Bergstein said in a release. “I originally wrote the movie because I love to dance.And since the movie first appeared, the openhearted audience response has made me believe that everyone has a secret dancer inside them.… This remarkable cast brings those dreams to life through their extraordinary talent and exceptional skill.”

Lisa Troshinsky is the theater reviewer for The Washington Diplomat.

The Washington Diplomat Page 41

[ dining ]

Ripple Makes Waves New Chef Racks Up Accolades, Keeps Neighborhood Mainstay Fresh

by Rachel G. Hunt

I

t has been a banner year for Cleveland Park’s Ripple, with nods from local and national groups alike. The little restaurant just across the street from the Uptown Theater opened back in 2010 as a wine bar. This year, it won the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington’s RAMMY Award for its wine program, as well as a RAMMY for best upscale casual restaurant of the year, a sign of Ripple’s evolution and all-around appeal.

Like all good businessmen, owner Roger Marmet, a former executive for The Learning Channel with no previous restaurant experience, did his homework before opening Ripple in a potentially risky location — several well-established spots are within a stone’s throw (and several have closed). Looking carefully at the attributes of successful ventures in the area, he put together a casual concept that incorporates local and seasonally sourced ingredients, eco-friendly wines, house-made charcuterie and unusual cheeses, a winning recipe that has not only endured but also thrived. With its combination of whimsy and solid performance, Ripple’s stature has grown as a comfortable neighborhood restaurant and as a destination in its own right.

Ripple balances its commitment to its original wine focus with an equally serious emphasis on the food. Undaunted by chef Logan Cox’s departure last year, Ripple Marmet sought out a chef who could 3417 Connecticut ave., nW carry on Cox’s work in modern American (202) 244.7995 cuisine based on organic, seasonal, locally sourced products while imbuing it with www.rippledc.com his or her own originality. After an extenDinner: Daily from 5 p.m. sive search he brought on Marjorie MeekBradley, the chef de cuisine at Mike Brunch: Sunday, 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

Isabella’s Graffiato, in her first executive Snacks: $4- $6 chef role and her first chance to create Small plates: $8 - $13 her own dishes, not someone else’s. entrées: $21 - $32 Once again, Marmet’s hunch was a good one. Meek-Bradley took on the new Sides: $6 - $8 role with a passion and dedication that is Desserts: $8 evident in each new dish she invents.

And the industry has noticed. She’s been Dress: Casual a finalist or semifinalist for several rising Reservations: accepted and suggested chef awards from the likes of Food & Wine magazine and the James Beard Foundation.

A northern California native, Meek-Bradley grew up in a time and place where seasonal and locally sourced products were the norm, laying down a foundation for her culinary approach. Extensive experience in kitchens across the country under top chefs honed both her skills and her understanding of the importance of technique. It also toughened her up for the challenges of running her own kitchen and taking her own risks.

She’s clearly comfortable with risk. Ripple’s menu changes almost daily (perhaps one of the few downsides of the restaurant since you can never be

[ ] want to

go?

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Photo: eLIZaBeth ParKer

Ripple has earned a reputation for using local, seasonally sourced ingredients in dishes such as the branzino fish, top, beet salad, above, and chilled cauliflower soup, although the restaurant’s menu changes almost daily.

sure you’ll get the dish you’re craving). The options reflect what the kitchen has been able to procure and what creative fancy strikes the chef. USA Today tapped Ripple as having one of D.C.’s best seasonal menus earlier this year.

Simply reading it is a culinary adventure. Offering snacks, small plates, main courses and side dishes, the menu offers both flexibility and experimentation.

Meek-Bradley uses ingredients like an artist’s palate — a dab here, a splash there and a big flourish right in the middle. But her palate is multidimensional, encompassing taste, texture PhotoS: LInDa roth aSSoCIateS, InC. and color to elevate her masterworks. A salad of brightly colored heirloom tomatoes mixed with soft, pale white, house-made ricotta, smooth peaches and crunchy cashews is a summer bouquet bursting with flavor.

Ripple offerings start simply enough — perhaps a snack of pickles, or marinated olives or bacon-roasted pecans. But after that, one dish after another offers unusual but effective combinations of ingredients. Stuffed bone marrow, for example, is paired with house-made bacon, chimichurri and blueberry jam. A slightly heavy smoked eggplant agnolotti, meanwhile, is dressed with pesto, maitake mushrooms and stracciatella. A soothing chilled cauliflower soup is flavored with saffron and accented with blue crab chunks, cucumber and radish.

Diners preferring meatless meals will not be disappointed at Ripple. The September 2014

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h For 25 years Taberna del Alabardero has served the best, most authentic Spanish cuisine to Washingtonians in an atmosphere of ambience and elegance.

YouR ReSTauRaNT HeRe 123 Dining Way www.web.com • (123) 555-1234 With more than 120,000 readers, the Washington Diplomat is the flagship newspaper of the diplomatic community, featuring news and culture stories that reach our highly targeted and lucrative market. the new dining guide is a unique opportunity to put your restaurant in front of our readers. Call (301) 933-3552 to advertise in the dining guide of our next issue.

MEDIUM BOX : $350 4.75” x 2.75”

As we proudly celebrate our 25th anniversary this year, we invite our patrons to be delightfully reminded why we have been classified by Zagat as the “Rolls-Royce of Spanish” restaurants in the nation’s capital.

Our commitment to continuously innovating the Spanish traditional food combines with the best staff eager to welcome you into a fresh, savory contemporary, romantic, business and memorable experience.

menu features well-developed dishes such as a mixed-green salad with shaved fennel, local berries, hazelnut and garrotxa cheese, as well as a compressed melon salad with kohlrabi cabbage, fennel and Mexican sour gherkins. Main course options include tender, crispy squash blossoms with quinoa, wild rice, beets and Greek yogurt.

Ripple also offers a free-standing cheese and charcuterie station at the end of the bar, where meat and cheese are sliced to order and you can also get a grilled cheese sandwich that’s an inspired twist on the homey classic. You can pick your own ingredients or pick one of Ripple’s rather exotic creations, such as the rich e rich (hand-sliced prosciutto, Morbier cheese and truffle butter) or the infidel (pork rillettes, Surryano ham, taleggio cheese and pickles).

Both are delicious but very rich.

Ripple has recently brought on pastry chef Vanessa Ochotorena to handle the end of the meal. Ochotorena mirrors Meek-Bradley’s eclectic approach in constructing complicated desserts. Highlights include the bread pudding with almonds, sweet corn ice cream, caramelized peaches and rum cream, as well as the dense chocolate-hazelnut tart served with dulce de leche, cherries and a surprising but refreshing buttermilk sherbet. While desserts change frequently as well, one of the favorites, baked-to-order chocolate chip cookies and milk — on the menu since Ripple opened and still one of the best choices — is always available.

Part of Ripple’s growing success is almost certainly due to the efforts of Danny Fisher, the general manager and wine director who has been with the restaurant since it opened. Prior to joining Ripple’s team, Fisher helped open Cork Wine Bar and worked September 2014

LARGE BOX: $500 4.75” x 5.75” Call (301) 933-3552 to advertise your restaurant in the new Diplomat Dining Guide.

Photo: LInDa roth aSSoCIateS, InC.

Ripple is known for its inventive grilled cheese sandwiches. at right, Marjorie Meek-Bradley has been called a rising chef by Food & Wine magazine and the James Beard Foundation.

with a wine importer in Seattle, both experiences that deepened his appreciation for wines and his understanding of the complex challenges of operating an upscale casual spot in a crowded market. His time as a commercial fisherman off the coast of Washington and Alaska also probably taught him how to weather any storm.

A first-level sommelier from the Court of Master Sommeliers, Fisher has put together a wine program of over 400 variably priced bottles from around the world, along with over 50 wines

by the glass. He tends to emphasize small-production wineries that use sustainable, organic and biodynamic viticulture practices, and he likes to sell the brands of winemakers he has met personally. Fisher too has received recognition for his work at Ripple, earning a RAMMY and a listing on Wine Enthusiast’s 100 best wine restaurants in America for 2014.

Though focusing primarily on wine, Fisher has put together a nice collection of craft brews and ciders as well as some fascinating cocktails, such as spurring an aviation — a potent combination of Espolón Reposado Tequila, maraschino liqueur, creme de violette and lime juice.

Photo: GreG PoWerS Though it has been around for several years, Ripple has taken its time to get things right, and the burst of attention this year illustrates just how well the strategy has worked. Reservations are hard to come by on a weekend, and there are frequently crowds on a weekday night. While some of this popularity is certainly the result of the awards this year (and probably frustrating to those who discovered the Ripple secret before the awards) and the critical luster may fade, the Ripple team’s collaborative efforts to deliver a satisfying experience for each diner every time is likely to ensure that this is not a just another ripple on the surface of the D.C. restaurant pond.

Rachel G. Hunt is the restaurant reviewer for The Washington Diplomat.

The Washington Diplomat Page 43

[ film reviews ]

Raw ‘Jealousy ’ Love, Infidelity and Aimless Artists Collide in Garrel’s Bohemian Meditation

by Ky N. Nguyen

“J

ealousy,” the current release from French writer-director Philippe Garrel (“Regular Lovers,” “Frontier of the Dawn”), feels very French with its black-and-white cinematography and melancholic story centering on love, infidelity and artists struggling to make a living from their craft.Yet “Jealousy” turns out to be one of Garrel’s films that is relatively friendly to American audiences.

Despite serious subject matter, the tone is noticeably more upbeat than standard Garrel fare.

Though still free flowing, the smart script includes more defined plot structures than is usual in Garrel’s films. Still, the narrative is not what makes “Jealousy” tick.

The film thrives on the vitality brimming from the actors’ extraordinary performances. The audience feels deep in their bones how alive the characters are, even when they are exhausted from the trials and tribulations handed to them by PHOTO: DISTRIB FILMS life. Utilizing a range of shots including ample close-ups, cinematographer Willy Kurant sharply cap- Louis Garrel, center, stars in his father Philippe’s melancholic black-and-white film “Jealousy” as an artist struggling with tures the rawness of their emotions, while Garrel’s love, family and making ends meet. laidback direction seems to effortlessly convey the rhythms of life.

As the film opens, our bohemian protagonist Louis The Trip to Italy (Louis Garrel, Philippe’s son), a sporadic theater actor, (English; 108 min.) is shown at home in an unremarkable domestic scene Landmark’s E Street Cinema with his wife, Clothilde (Rebecca Convenant), and precocious 8-year-old daughter, Charlotte (Olga ★★★★✩ Milshtein). Clothilde has abandoned her own artistic ambitions to take an office job to support the family.

In round two, Brydon has been Shortly thereafter, Louis leaves his family’s home to tapped by The Observer to be its restaumove in with his new girlfriend, intellectual Claudia rant reviewer on assignment, and he (Anna Mouglalis), a fellow actor who has not worked brings along his dour sidekick, Coogan. in six years despite her apparent talent.

In “The Trip to Italy,” Coogan and Brydon Despite the separation, Louis works to maintain a once again more or less play themselves, good relationship with his daughter, Charlotte, taking improvising witty dialogue and eating Claudia along for the visits. He also spends quality their way through beautiful Italian landtime with his sister Esther (Esther Garrel, Philippe’s scapes. In a Grand Tour of Italy from daughter).

PHOTO: THE INDEPENDENT FILM CHANNEL LLC Liguria to Capri, they follow the trail of As Louis and Claudia’s honeymoon period fades, she the English Romantic poets Percy Bysshe Steve Coogan, left, and Rob Brydon improvise their way through another begins to resent their cramped existence in what she Shelley and Lord Byron. The second calls their“hovel,” road comedy in “The Trip to Italy.” round certainly has better-looking scena tiny apartment Jealousy ery, which is gorgeously captured with at the top of a walk-up building. She considLa Jalousie ers taking a non-acting job to supplement crisp cinematography by James Clarke.

Lacking the startling originality of “The Trip,” “The Trip to Italy” does not quite (French with subtitles; 77 min.; scope) their meager income. They both become entangled in extracurricular liaisons, some leave the same impact, but it is still quite a ride. At first, audiences may feel disoriThe Avalon Theatre more threatening to their relationship than ented in this alternate world dominated by Coogan and Brydon’s endless banter, but most viewers should acclimate soon enough. Coogan and Brydon have expert others. ★★★★✩ command of the dry humor for which the British are famous.Their bromance continues as they talk about nothing, Seinfeld-style, including trivialities such as the ‘The Trip to Italy’: British Bromance teenage girl-friendly angst of Canadian singer-songwriters Alanis Morissette and Renowned British filmmaker Michael Winterbottom’s “The Trip to Italy” is a pleas- Avril Lavigne.

Before we know it, the subjects of conversation have suddenly swerved into antly successful sequel to 2010’s innovative “The Trip,” in which comedians Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon mostly improvise their way through northern England’s more serious topics such as the ultimate worthiness of a career in the arts, family Lake District on a road trip checking out top restaurants. Coogan and Brydon had and marital tensions, and other issues of life and death. Coogan has a love-hate previously joined forces in Winterbottom’s “Tristram Shandy:A Cock and Bull Story.” relationship with his international stardom. Though Brydon enjoys domestic fame, Though Winterbottom is known for his extremely versatile range (“Welcome to he’s largely unknown outside the United Kingdom, compelling him to seek a part Sarajevo,”“24 Hour Party People,”“A Mighty Heart,”“The Road to Guantanamo”), this in a Michael Mann Hollywood action film.

Coogan’s son joins them for part of their travels. Coogan talks to his son about time he basically sticks to the same comedic formula that worked before.

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moving closer so that they can spend more time together, lamenting the time they have been apart while Coogan has built his career. Brydon admits that he’s cheated on his wife during this trip. Coogan observes that the pretty young women smile at them like they would smile at their uncle.

‘Last Days in Vietnam’: Ignominious End

Last Days in Vietnam (English and Vietnamese with subtitles; 97 min.)

Landmark’s E Street Cinema Opens Fri., Sept. 12

★★★★✩

]

Without U.S. government authorization to evacuate non-American citizens, State After its highly regarded area premiere at AFI Docs Department official Joseph McBride and film festival, the mesmerizing feature “Last Days in Army Capt. Stuart Herrington took the Vietnam” returns to D.C. for a well-deserved theatrical initiative to smuggle refugees out of the release. Documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy’s country on cargo planes and ships. (“Ghosts of Abu Ghraib,”“Ethel”) latest film takes a look Meanwhile, Richard Armitage of the at the little-reported stories behind the U.S. military’s Pentagon schemed with South Vietnamese evacuation of Saigon in April 1975, at the end of the Navy Capt. Kiem Do and others to clanPHOTO: BETTMANN / CORBIS Vietnam War. “Last Days in Vietnam” provides a timely destinely move 30,000 South Vietnamese A CIA employee helps Vietnamese evacuees onto an Air America helicopter a half-mile from the U.S. refugees on departing U.S. military ships. flashback as the 40th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon comes closer.

Embassy during the Fall of Saigon in 1975, pictured in the documentary “Last Days in Vietnam.”

Joining an array of former American In an era of documentary innovation, “Last Days in officials and veterans, former U.S. Secretary The film opens with the Paris Peace Accords of 1973, which of State Henry Kissinger is perhaps the film’s most prominent Vietnam” is by no means a cutting-edge non-fiction film. Not surprisingly for a production of PBS’s “American brokered a ceasefire followed by the withdrawal of most interviewee. Avoiding much confrontation, Kennedy generally Experience” historical series, it depends — probably too much American troops from Vietnam. After former U.S. President lets him skate by on the controversial aspects of his involve— on all the usual public television documentary techniques, Richard Nixon was forced to resign in 1974 to avoid impeach- ment as a primary architect of the Vietnam War. including archival footage, reenactments, a plethora of talking ment in the wake of the Watergate scandal, communist North A not inconsiderable shortcoming is that “Last Days in Vietnam took advantage of the fallout and violated the peace Vietnam” does not show much from the Vietnamese point of heads, loud musical score, etc.

Kennedy’s work manages to overcome its stock origins and treaty by making a military advance into South Vietnam. U.S. view, talking to only a few Vietnamese people within a big limitations with a compelling tale and astounding images of Ambassador to South Vietnam Graham Martin failed to roster of interview subjects. Disclosure: This writer was a the evacuation of South Vietnam before the rapid approach of acknowledge the rapidly forthcoming defeat, compounding South Vietnamese refugee who was evacuated — as a toddler the North Vietnamese Army. An unforgettable highlight is the the U.S. government’s lack of proper planning for the eventual dependent of a civilian U.S. Embassy employee — out of remarkable historical footage of U.S. marines pushing helicop- evacuation of the remaining U.S. personnel, as well as South Saigon in the final days before the city’s fall. ters off the sides of U.S. aircraft carriers to make room for more Vietnamese partners who would face execution and detention by the communist regime. choppers dropping off the next round of evacuees.

Ky N. Nguyen is the film reviewer for The Washington Diplomat.

Repertory Notes

by Washington Diplomat film reviewer Ky N. Nguyen

Please see International Film Clips on the next page for detailed listings available at press time.

AMERICAN FILM INSTITUTE (AFI) SILVER THEATRE Programmed by cultural attachés from D.C. embassies, the 2014 AFI Latin American Film Festival (Sept. 18-Oct. 8) returns to perennially packed audiences.

The “Cinema and the Great War” series (through Sept. 17) presents World War I films.

The “Mario Bava Centennial” retrospective (through Sept. 17) showcases the Italian horror master’s bloodiest work.

The “Alec Guinness Centennial” retrospective (through Sept. 15) looks back at films starring the British acting legend, Sir Alec Guinness.

(301) 495-6700, www.afi.com/silver

FREER GALLERY OF ART Cosponsored by the Royal Thai Embassy, the retrospective “Dreams, Hallucinations, and Nightmares: The Films of Pen-ek Ratanaruang” (Sept. 7-28) reviews the work of one of the most lauded Thai directors. Ratanaruang discusses in person the following programs: “Headshot” (Sat., Sept. 13, 2 p.m., preceded by refreshments at 12:30 p.m.) and “Monrak Transistor (aka Transistor Love Story)” (Sun., Sept. 14, 2 p.m.). ((202) 357-2700, www.asia.si.edu/events/films.asp

DC CHINESE FILM FESTIVAL The 2nd Biennial DC Chinese Film Festival (Sept. 4-7) unspools films across D.C. at the Freer Gallery of Art, Landmark’s E Street Cinema, the Wilson Center, the U.S. Navy Memorial Heritage Center, the

September 2014

Goethe-Institut, the American University’s Malsi Doyle and Michael Forman Theater, Busboys and Poets, and Silo.

German State in America,” introduces Edgar Reitz’s “Home from Home - Chronicle of a Vision” (Wed., Sept. 10, 6.p.m.).

www.dccff.org

As part of the series “World War I: Film Captures the Great War” (through Oct. 6), Stanley Kubrick’s “Paths of Glory” (Mon., Sept. 15, 6:30 p.m.) is introduced by Marion Deshmukh, a professor at George Mason University.

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART Presented in partnership with the Embassy of Finland, the Finnish Film Foundation and the Finnish Film Archive, the retrospective “A Sense of Time and Place: Peter von Bagh” (Sept. 6-20) screens at the National Portrait Gallery’s McEvoy Auditorium and at the NGA’s West Building Lecture Hall. Esteemed Finnish filmmaker von Bagh introduces his films on Sept. 7.

Mark Kendall’s Guatemalan documentary “La Camioneta” (Sept. 17, 19, 1 p.m.) screens at the NGA’s West Building Lecture Hall.

Ramuntcho Matta introduces “Intimatta” (Sun., Sept. 21, 4:30 p.m.), his documentary about his father, Chilean painter Roberto Matta, at the NGA’s West Building Lecture Hall.

In collaboration with the Embassy of Italy, Roberto Rossellini’s “Voyage to Italy” (Fri., Sept. 26, 7 p.m.) and Dino Risi’s “Il Sorpasso” (Sun., Sept. 28, 4:30 p.m.) play at the American University’s Malsi Doyle and Michael Forman Theater.

(202) 842-6799, www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/calendar/filmprograms.html

ASEAN FILM FESTIVAL

F.W. Murnau’s “Nosferatu” (Mon., Sept. 29, 6:30 p.m.) boasts a new score performed by Michael Obst, German composer and pianist.

(202) 289-1200, www.goethe.de/ins/us/was/ver/enindex.htm

DCJCC The Washington Jewish Film Festival Year-Round Screenings include the “The Gift to Stalin” (Tue., Sept. 9, 7:30 p.m.), with a presentation from Ambassador of Kazakhstan Kairat Umarov; the Israeli sociopolitical drama “Life According to Agfa” (Sun., Sept. 14, 11 a.m.) and the Polish saga “Run, Boy, Run” (Tue., Sept. 30, 7:30 p.m.).

(202) 518-9400, www.washingtondcjcc.org/center-for-arts/film/ wjff-year-round-/film-pages/Year-Round-Screenings.html

DC SHORTS

GOETHE-INSTITUT

The 11th Annual DC Shorts Film Festival (Sept. 11-21) will present 135 films from 25 countries — as well as the DC Shorts Screenplay Competion and Filmmaker Workshops — at Landmark’s E Street Cinema, the U.S. Navy Memorial Burke Theater and the Angelika Film Center at Mosaic. The City View Party (Fri., Sept. 12, 9 p.m.) opens the weekend on a rooftop at Carroll Square. The Grand Bash (Sat., Sept. 13, 8 p.m.) unwinds at the the U.S. Navy Memorial.

Peter Roloff, project manager of the exhibition “Utopia: Revisiting a

www.dcshorts.com

The ASEAN Women Circle (AWC) presents the inaugural ASEAN Film Festival (Sept. 5-14), screening at the Freer Gallery of Art, the University of the District of Columbia, the American University and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. aff.usaseancreativeproject.org

The Washington Diplomat Page 45

[ film ]

CINEMA LISTING *Unless specific times are listed, please check the theater for times. Theater locations are subject to change.

Bahasa Indonesia The Jungle School (Sokola Rimba) Directed by Riri Riza (Indonesia, 2013, 92 min.)

This drama follows Butet Manurung, Time magazine’s 2004 “Hero of Asia,” as she evolves from an anthropologist into an educator and, finally, an activist. While working with indigenous people in Indonesia, Butet collapses from malaria. A tribal boy named Bungo comes to her aid, motivating her to teach the children in his remote clan, but her good intentions do not get the blessing of Bungo’s clan members (part of the ASEAN Film Festival; followed by a discussion with Gouri Mirpuri, wife of the Singaporean ambassador and co-writer of the book, and Ro King).

Freer Gallery of Art Sun., Sept. 7, 1 p.m.

Burmese Kayan Beauties Directed by Aung Ko Latt (Myanmar, 2012, 105 min.)

Three Kayan women and a young girl travel from their remote village in Myanmar to sell handicrafts in the distant city of Taunggyi, but when the girl is kidnapped by human traffickers, the women embark on a desperate search far from home and out of their element (in Burmese and Kayan; part of the ASEAN Film Festival).

Center for Strategic and International Studies University of the District of Columbia Sat., Sept. 6, 1 p.m.

English The Blue Max Directed by John Guillermin (U.K., 1966, 156 min.)

A lowly German infantryman moves up the ranks to lieutenant and becomes a decorated fighter pilot, but his crude ambition rankles the sensibilities of the various “vons” in the privileged officer class.

AFI Silver Theatre Tue., Sept. 2, 3:20 p.m., Thu., Sept. 4, 4 p.m.

Doctor Zhivago Directed by David Lean (U.K., 1965, 212 min.)

David Lean’s Oscar-winning adaptation of the Boris Pasternak classic recounts the time before, during and after the Russian Revolu­ tion, as experienced by soulful doctor/poet Omar Sharif and recounted later by his halfbrother, Soviet army officer Alec Guinness.

AFI Silver Theatre Sept. 1 to 4

Frank Directed by Lenny Abrahamson (U.K./Ireland, 95 min.)

Acclaimed Irish director Lenny Abrahamson creates a wildly quirky comedy about a naïve young wannabe musician who finds himself out of his depth when he joins an avantgarde rock band led by the mysterious Frank.

Landmark’s E Street Cinema

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God Help the Girl Directed by Stuart Murdoch (U.K., 2014, 111 min.)

In Glasgow, Scotland, a young girl starts writing songs as a way of coping with her problems, eventually moving to the city where she meets two other aspiring musicians.

AFI Silver Theatre Opens Fri., Sept. 12

The Green Prince Directed by Nadav Schirman (Germany/U.S./U.K./Israel, 2014, 95 min.)

The son of a founding leader in the Palestinian organization Hamas becomes a spy for the Israelis (English and Hebrew).

Landmark’s E Street Cinema Opens Fri., Sept. 19

The Kill Team Directed by Dan Krauss (U.S., 2013, 79 min.)

Private Adam Winfield was a 21-year-old soldier in Afghanistan when he attempted with the help of his father to alert the military to heinous war crimes his platoon was committing, but his pleas went unheeded and he was himself drawn into the moral abyss, forced to make a split-second decision that would change his life forever.

Landmark’s E Street Cinema

Last Days in Vietnam Directed by Rory Kennedy (U.S., 2014, 97 min.)

This documentary examines the chaotic final weeks of the Vietnam War, when the North Vietnamese Army closed in on Saigon as panicked South Vietnamese desperately tried to escape while American officials had to figure out whether to help.

Landmark’s E Street Cinema Opens Fri., Sept. 12

The Missing Picture Directed by Rithy Panh (Cambodia, 2013, 92 min.)

Director Rithy Panh recounts the firsthand experience of his family and friends’ suffering at the hands of Pol Pot’s communist regime. Because most of the existing recorded artifacts of that time are propaganda footage, Panh utilizes beautifully sculpted clay figurines and elaborately detailed dioramas to recreate the missing images from his memory (part of the ASEAN Film Festival).

Freer Gallery of Art Sun., Sept. 7, 4 p.m.

Our Man in Havana Directed by Carol Reed (U.K., 1959, 111 min.)

A Havana vacuum cleaner salesman is surprised to find himself recruited by a Caribbean spymaster for service in MI6.

He’s happy for the extra income, but when nothing much happens, he spices up his reports to please his superiors.

AFI Silver Theatre Sept. 5 to 11

A Passage to India Directed by David Lean (U.K./U.S., 1984, 164 min.)

In 1920s colonial India, headstrong Brit Judy Davis befriends a local doctor, but a mysterious event while touring the mystical

THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT Marabar caves leads to accusations of rape.

AFI Silver Theatre Sept. 7 to 10

Paths of Glory Directed by Stanley Kubrick (U.S., 1958, 87 min.)

In the third year of World War I, the erudite but morally bankrupt French general Broulard orders his troops on a suicide mission to seize the heavily fortified “Ant Hill” from the Germans.

September 2014

The Zero Theorem Directed by Terry Gilliam (U.K./Romania/France/U.S., 2013, 107 min.)

A computer hacker whose goal is to discover the reason for human existence continually finds his work interrupted thanks to the Management; namely, they send a teenager and lusty love interest to distract him.

AFI Silver Theatre Opens Fri., Sept. 19

A Very Long Engagement (Un long dimanche de fiançailles) Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet (U.S./France, 2004, 133 min.)

After her soldier fiancé goes missing in action under mysterious circumstances during the Battle of the Somme, determined Audrey Tautou undertakes a daring search for him herself.

AFI Silver Theatre Sat., Sept. 13, 1:30 p.m.

Goethe-Institut Mon., Sept. 15, 6:30 p.m.

Finnish

German

Regeneration aka Behind the Lines

Helsinki, Forever Directed by Peter von Bagh (Finland, 2008, 74 min.)

Comradeship (Kameradshaft)

Directed by Gillies MacKinnon (U.K./Canada, 1997, 114 min.)

Directed by G.W. Pabst (Germany/France, 1931, 93 min.)

This screen adaptation of Pat Barker’s Man Booker Prize-winning novel chronicles the long road to recovery for Great War vets traumatized by their time at the front and the horrors of war.

An exquisite collage portrait of Finland’s capital as captured by the country’s leading feature and documentary makers over a period of one hundred years, “Helsinki, Forever” is also an essay on Finnish culture in a broader sense.

AFI Silver Theatre Sept. 12 to 17

National Gallery of Art Sun., Sept. 7, 4:30 p.m.

Even though the Great War is over, tensions run high in the towns along the FrenchGerman border, but after a mining disaster on the French side traps some 600 French miners below ground, German miners volunteer to aid the French effort to rescue the men.

Ryan’s Daughter

French

AFI Silver Theatre Wed., Sept. 3, 5 and 9 p.m.

Directed by David Lean (U.K., 1970, 195 min.)

A British-occupied village in 1916 Ireland is scandalized when word gets out that the much-younger wife of a staid schoolteacher is carrying on an affair with a British officer.

Bicycling with Molière (Alceste à bicyclette) Directed by Philippe Le Guay (France, 2013, 104 min.)

The Swan

In this warm, funny, literate comedy, two French actors portray two French actors, friends who are at odds with one another in every possible way, except their love of Molière’s “The Misanthrope.”

Directed by Charles Vidor (U.S., 1956, 104 min.)

The Avalon Theatre Wed., Sept. 17, 8 p.m.

AFI Silver Theatre Mon., Sept. 1, 12:30 p.m.

A Mittel-European princess (Grace Kelly, in her Hollywood swansong, before marrying Prince Rainier of Monaco) is torn between marrying the Crown Prince Alexander (Alec Guinness), as her family desperately desires, and her love for a dashing tutor.

AFI Silver Theatre Sept. 7 to 10

The Trip to Italy Directed by Michael Winterbottom (U.K., 2014, 108 min.)

Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon team up again, this time for another comedic, improved road trip through Italy.

Jealousy (La Jalousie) Directed by Philippe Garrel (France, 2013, 77 min.)

Shot in lustrous, widescreen black and white, the film opens with a man leaving his wife and daughter and, in a series of brief conversations, observed gestures, chance encounters and impulsive acts, tells the story of the relationships that flounder and thrive in the wake of this decision.

The Avalon Theatre

Landmark’s E Street Cinema

Joyeux Noël

Westfront 1918

Directed by Christian Carion (France/Germany/U.K./Belgium/Romania/ Norway, 2005, 116 min.)

Directed by G.W. Pabst (Germany, 1930, 93 min.)

Four German soldiers spend the last months of World War I on the French front in the first talkie by Austrian filmmaker G. W. Pabst.

AFI Silver Theatre Sat., Sept. 6, 11 a.m., Sun., Sept. 7, 11 a.m.

German, French and British soldiers set aside their arms to celebrate a day of peace and brotherhood (in French and German).

AFI Silver Theatre Sun., Sept. 14, 11:10 a.m., Tue., Sept. 16, 7 p.m.

Yentl

Love Like Poison (Un poison violent)

Directed by Barbara Streisand (U.S., 1983, 134 min.)

Directed by Katell Quillévéré (France, 2010, 92 min.)

In her directorial debut, Barbra Streisand stars as Yentl, a young woman who wants nothing more than to study religious scripture but is denied that possibility because she is a woman. So she moves, passes herself off as a male named Anshel, and then begins her studies.

Anna, a 14 year-old girl, returns home for the holidays from her Catholic boarding school to find that her father has left.

Emotionally devastated, her mother seeks the help of a local priest, while Anna grows close to a free-spirited boy who cares little about God (French, Italian and English).

Washington DCJCC Tue., Sept. 16, 7:30 p.m.

Embassy of France Tue., Sept. 9, 7 p.m.

Home from Home – Chronicle of a Vision (Die andere Heimat – Chronik einer Sehnsucht) Directed by Edgar Reitz (Germany, 2013, 230 min.)

In the mid-19th century, hundreds of thousands of Europeans immigrated to faraway South America in a desperate bid to escape the famine, poverty and despotism that ruled at home. This drama and love story is set against the true backdrop of this forgotten tragedy and centers around two brothers who realize that only their dreams can save them.

Goethe-Institut Wed., Sept. 10, 6 p.m.

Nosferatu (Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens) Directed by F.W. Murnau (Germany, 1922, 81 min.)

This silent classic is based on the story “Dracula,” in which Vampire Count Orlok expresses interest in a new real estate agent’s wife.

Goethe-Institut Mon., Sept. 29, 6:30 p.m.

Run, Boy, Run (Lauf Junge lauf) Directed by Pepe Danquart (France/Germany, 2013, 107 min.)

After escaping the Warsaw ghetto at the behest of his father, a 9-year old Polish boy seeks the kindness of others in his solitary struggle to outlast the Nazi occupation and keep alive his Jewish faith.

Washington DCJCC Tue., Sept. 30, 7:30 p.m.

Hebrew Life According to Agfa Directed by Assi Dayan (Israel, 1992, 100 min.)

After a group of chauvinist soldiers are kicked out of a Tel Aviv pub with a

The Washington Diplomat

September 2014

multicultural clientele, the unintended consequences are greater than anyone could have imagined.

Il Sorpasso

Washington DCJCC Sun., Sept. 14, 11 a.m.

Wonderfully mismatched costars Vittorio Gassman and Jean-Louis Trintignant embark on a wildly reckless ride from Rome to rural southern Italy in this elegy on the unfettered energies of the early 1960s.

Hindi Siddharth Directed by Richie Mehta (Canada/India, 2014, 97 min.)

Mehendra is a chain-wallah, eking out a living fixing zippers on the bustling streets of New Delhi, who slowly begins to suspect that his 12-year-old son was kidnapped by child traffickers. With few resources and no connections, Mehendra desperately travels to Punjab and Mumbai with the hope that whoever took his son might return him unharmed.

Landmark’s E Street Cinema

Italian Journey to Italy (Viaggio in Italia) Directed by Roberto Rossellini (Italy/France, 1954, 97 min.)

Traveling through southern Italy, a mismatched English couple is at odds not only with each other, but also with the setting.

But ultimately the landscape, their isolation, and the aura of their surroundings bring them to a near transcendent moment in their lives.

American University Malsi Doyle and Michael Forman Theater Fri., Sept. 26, 7 p.m.

Lisa and the Devil (Lisa e il diavolo)

Directed by Dino Risi (Italy, 1962, 105 min.)

American University Malsi Doyle and Michael Forman Theater Sun., Sept. 28, 4:30 p.m.

Japanese A Letter to Momo (Momo e no tegami) Directed by Hiroyuki Okiura (Japan, 2011, 120 min.)

Clinging to an unfinished letter written by her recently deceased father, young Momo moves with her mother from bustling Tokyo to the remote Japanese island, where she soon discovers three goblin spirits living in the attic, mischievous creatures that only she can see who, constantly hungry, create mayhem as she tries desperately to keep them hidden.

Landmark’s E Street Cinema

Korean Kundo: Age of the Rampant (Kundo: min-ran-eui si-dae) Directed by Jong-bin Yoon (South Korea, 2014, 137 min.)

A pack of bandits calling themselves Kundo rise against the tyrants, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor in the last days of the Joseon Dynasty.

Area theaters

Directed by Mario Bava (Italy/W. Germany/Spain, 1972, 95 min.)

Malay

Vacationing in the ancient walled city of Toledo, Spain, the lovely Lisa Reiner is spooked that the man shopping alongside her for antiques bears an uncanny resemblance to the devil depicted in an old fresco she viewed that day.

Bunohan

AFI Silver Theatre Thu., Sept. 11, 7:20 p.m.

Planet of the Vampires (Terrore nello spazio) Directed by Mario Bava (Spain/Italy, 1965, 86 min.)

On a deep space mission from Earth, two spaceships respond to a distress signal coming from an unexplored planet, but most of the crew become possessed by a mysterious force, first causing them to slaughter one another, then reanimating their corpses.

AFI Silver Theatre Tue., Sept. 2, 9:30 p.m.

Rabid Dogs (Cani arrabbiati) Directed by Mario Bava (Italy, 1974, 96 min.)

At a red-light street crossing, fleeing bank robbers carjack an innocent woman and force her to drive them to Rome.

AFI Silver Theatre Tue., Sept. 9, 7:20 p.m.

Shock aka Beyond the Door II (Schock) Directed by Mario Bava (Italy, 1977, 93 min.)

Dora is a recently released mental patient who moves into her old home with her new husband, but when he goes out of town, her son seems to be possessed by the ghost of her ex-husband, a heroin addict who committed suicide.

AFI Silver Theatre Fri., Sept. 12, 9:30 p.m., Wed., Sept. 17, 7 p.m.

September 2014

Directed by Dain Iskandar Said (Malaysia, 2011, 97 min.)

Adil, a young Muay Thai kick-boxer, has just fled an honor fight-to-the-death and must hide from an assassin — Adil’s stepbrother — who’s been hired by the organizer of the death match to kill the fugitive (part of the ASEAN Film Festival).

when they encounter a woman from the past.

Freer Gallery of Art Fri., Sept. 5, 7 p.m.

Russian The Gift to Stalin Directed by Rustem Abdrashev (Kazakhstan/Russia, 2008, 95 min.)

Set against the sweeping beauty of the Kazakh steppes, “Gift” is the heartwarming tale of a young orphaned Jewish boy who is sent into exile during a Stalinist purge, but saved by a gruff older Muslim (in Russian, Kazakh and Hebrew; includes a presentation from Kazakh Ambassador Kairat Umarov).

Washington DCJCC Tue., Sept. 9, 7:30 p.m.

All Quiet on the Western Front Directed by Lewis Milestone (U.S., 1930, 132 min.)

AFI Silver Theatre Sat., Sept. 6, 4 p.m.

I Do Bidoo Bidoo: Heto nAPO Sila!

Two teenage sweethearts who are both nursing students in Manila learn that they’re going to become parents and decide to get married, but they quickly realize that their parents have other plans (part of the ASEAN Film Festival).

Thai

Rock Me to the Moon

Directed by Pen-ek Ratanaruang (Thailand, 1999, 118 min.)

Freer Gallery of Art Fri., Sept. 26, 7 p.m.

A stranger’s intrusion and a wife’s suspicions about her husband’s fidelity leads a Thai couple to reassess their seven-yearlong marriage.

Last Life in the Universe

Freer Gallery of Art Sun., Sept. 28, 1 p.m.

Directed by Pen-ek Ratanaruang (Thailand, 2003, 112 min.)

Tibetan Old Dog Directed by Pema Tseden (China, 2011, 88 min.)

An aged shepherd on the Himalayan plains struggles to keep his Tibetan mastiff, an ancient breed desired by pet dealers and dog thieves, in this beautiful depiction of contemporary Tibet, where rural society and traditional values clash with modernity.

Our readers’ top income is

15% higher

than the average Washingtonian.*

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Freer Gallery of Art Fri., Sept. 5, 2 p.m.

Depressed after being laid off from her job, Tum wakes up one morning to find a box of money outside her door, accidentally left there by gangsters. Tum’s decision to keep the money gets her mixed up with a host of bungling thugs, and she soon starts running out of places to hide the corpses piling up in her flat.

Stray Dogs

Freer Gallery of Art Fri., Sept. 19, 7 p.m.

Directed by Tsai Ming-liang (Taiwan/France, 2013, 138 min.)

Headshot

An alcoholic father and his two young children attempt to survive in modern-day Taipei, where they eat food left over from supermarkets and seek shelter in abandoned buildings — until one stormy night

Directed by Pen-ek Ratanaruang (Thailand, 2007, 105 min.)

Center for Strategic and International Studies Fri., Sept. 5, 5 p.m.

American University SIS Founder’s Room Sat., Sept. 13, 1 p.m.

Six middle-age fathers, all with children suffering from incurable rare diseases, find comfort in their music and undertake an impossible mission: to perform at the highly competitive Hohaiyan Rock Festival.

Ploy

After carrying out a job to poison his boss’s wife, Kyoji is sent on a cruise to Phuket, pursued by two mysterious characters who may have dastardly designs on him.

Directed by Pen-ek Ratanaruang The first two faxed changes will be made at no cost to the advertiser, subsequent changes (Thailand, 2001, 129 min.)

Vietnamese will be billed at a rate of $75 per faxed alteration.

Signed ads are considered approved.

National Gallery of Art Wed., Sept. 17, 1 p.m., Fri., Sept. 19, 1 p.m.

Directed by Chris Martinez (The Philippines, 2012, 120 min.)

Directed by Huang Chia-Chun (Taiwan, 2013, 115 min.)

Directed by Pen-ek Ratanaruang (Thailand, 2006, 115 min.)

A young man with dreams of pop stardom enjoys a Please simple life with his in Floating Lives to your ad. check thisnew ad wife carefully.

Mark any changes Spanish their country village until he is drafted into Directed by Nguyen Phan Quang Binh the army. Unhappy on the front, he soon min.)

La Camioneta If the ad is correct sign and fax to: (301) 949-0065(Vietnam, 2010, needs113 changes goes AWOL to join a pop music troupe and A man, angry at his wife’s betrayal, Directed by Mark Kendall pursue his dreams of becoming a singer (U.S./Guatemala, 2013, 71 min.)

The Washington Diplomat (301) 933-3552 lives with his two children among the (part of the ASEAN Film Festival). labyrinth canals of the Mekong River — Following the makeover of a decommisFreer Gallery of Art in exile from modern life and materialism sioned American school bus into one ofApproved the __________________________________________________________ Sun., Sept. 14, 2 p.m. that he sees as the reason for his wife brightly colored camionetas that transport Changes ___________________________________________________________ giving into the temptations of selfthe majority of Guatemalans to work each ___________________________________________________________________ Nymph indulgence (part of the ASEAN Film day, “La Camioneta” deploys its transnationDirected by Pen-ek Ratanaruang Festival). al tale in a form that is both pointed and (Thailand, 2009, 108 min.)

University of the District of Columbia understated, while exploring a host of comAn unhappily married couple tries to repair Sat., Sept. 6, 3:30 p.m. plex themes.

Mandarin

Set in Singapore, “Ilo Ilo” chronicles the relationship between a family of three and their newly arrived Filipino maid, Teresa, who has come like many other Filipino women in search of a better life (part of the ASEAN Film Festival).

Freer Gallery of Art Sun., Sept. 28, 3:30 p.m.

A group of young friends in Germany, full of youthful passion and unquestioning patriotism, enlists in the Prussian Army at the out- Freer Gallery of Art Sun., Sept. 21, 2 p.m. break of the Great War, but are soon shaken to their core by the horrors of trench war- NOTE: Although every effort is made to assure your ad is free of mistakes in spelling and Monrak Transistor aka Freer Gallery of Art fare in this seminal screen adaptation of content it is ultimately up to the customer to make the final proof.

Thu., Sept.

4, 7 p.m.

Transistor Love Story Erich Maria Remarque’s classic novel.

Tagalog

Directed by Anthony Chen (Singapore, 2013, 99 min.)

Invisible Waves

Kenji is a lonely librarian’s assistant attempting to hang himself in his Bangkok apartment when his plan is interrupted by his brother, who gets shot and killed by a Japanese gangster. Kenji kills his brother’s murderer and flees, winding up at the home of a rambunctious young Thai woman.

Silent

American University SIS Founder’s Room Sat., Sept. 13, 3:30 p.m.

Ilo Ilo

Freer Gallery of Art Sat., Sept. 13, 2 p.m.

their relationship with a vacation in the country. Little do they know that two men were recently murdered there, and a mysterious force is trying to draw the husband deeper into the jungle.

shadowy syndicate dedicated to murdering fat-cat politicians, corrupt businessmen, and others who hold themselves above the law.

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Directed by Pen-ek Ratanaruang (Thailand, 2011, 105 min.)

A straight-laced cop is framed for a crime he didn’t commit and loses his job.

Disillusioned, he becomes an assassin for a

* Based on a September 2013 audit by CVC.

The Washington Diplomat Page 47

[ around town ]

EVENTS LISTING **Admission is free unless otherwise noted. All information on event venues can be found on The Diplomat Web site at www.washdiplomat. com. Times and locations are subject to change.

Unless listed, please call venue for specific event times and hours of operation.

ART Sept. 1 to Feb. 1

From Neoclassicism to Futurism: Italian Prints and Drawings, 1800–1925

The visual arts in Italy between the first stirrings of nationalistic sentiment and its corruption into Fascism — the long development of the modern Italian state — remained extraordinarily diverse and vital.

The National Gallery of Art has in recent years begun to develop a collection of Italian prints and drawings of this period that is surpassed only by the holdings of Italy’s principal museums.

National Gallery of Art Sept. 1 to Feb. 1

Modern American Prints and Drawings from the Kainen Collection

The final in a series of three exhibitions celebrating the generous bequest of Ruth Cole Kainen, this show explores the first seven decades of 20th-century American art.

“Mexicana Suburbia” series considers the interdependence of humans and landscape in the face of urban expansion.

Art Museum of the Americas Sept. 9 to Nov. 3

Gabriel Figueroa: Cinematographer – Great Moments in Mexico’s Golden Era of Cinema From the early 1930s through the early 1980s, the Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa (1907-97) helped forge an evocative and enduring image of Mexico.

This exhibition features film clips, photographs, posters and documents, as well as works by contemporary artists and filmmakers that draw from the vast inventory of distinctly Mexican imagery associated with Figueroa’s cinematography.

Mexican Cultural Institute Sept. 13 to Jan. 25

From the Library: The Book Illustrations by Romeyn de Hooghe Artistically gifted and socially well connected, Romeyn de Hooghe (1645– 1708) can help us to unravel the complexities of the late Dutch Golden Age, particularly through his vast and varied oeuvre of book illustrations.

National Gallery of Art Sept. 13 to March 22

National Gallery of Art

Nasta’liq: The Genius of Persian Calligraphy

Through Sept. 2

More than 20 works ranging in date from 1400 to 1600 form the first exhibition of its kind to focus on nasta’liq, a calligraphic script that developed in the 14th century in Iran and remains one of the most expressive forms of aesthetic refinement in Persian culture to this day.

Peruvian Gold: Ancient Treasures Unearthed

This exhibition journeys through civilizations from 1250 B.C. to 1450, learning through the ceremonial gold, silver, ceramics and textiles created by the complex Andean civilizations in ancient Peru that rival anything made by the ancient Egyptians.

National Geographic Museum Sept. 3 to Oct. 31

Kafka & Co. by Jiri Sliva

The Embassy of the Czech Republic will launch the Mutual Inspirations Festival 2014 – Franz Kafka with a special exhibition by Czech cartoonist Jiří Slíva featuring humorous drawing, lithographs and etchings inspired by Kafka and others. Slíva, who has been featured in over 150 publications including the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, believes that “Kafka had fun for us,” exemplified through the Czech writer’s realism, humor and irony.

Embassy of the Czech Republic Through Sept. 5

Marks and Traces: Helga Thomson Retrospective

The work of Buenos Aires-born artist Helga Thomson, who studied in Argentina, Europe and the United States, encompasses etchings, collagraphs, monoprints, digital prints, mixed media and installations that are rich in color and content, reflecting a life story with deep symbolic references.

Embassy of Argentina Through Sept. 7

Small Guide to Homeownership: Photography by Alejandro Cartagena of Mexico

This selection from Alejandro Cartagena’s

Page 48

Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Through Sept. 14

Bountiful Waters: Aquatic Life in Japanese Art

This exhibition features a selection of prints, paintings, illustrated books and ceramics that depict the Japanese appreciation for the beauty and variety of fish and other species.

Freer Gallery of Art Through Sept. 14

The Color of Nature: Recent Acquisitions of Landscape Watercolors Thanks to a number of generous donors, more than 200 nineteenth-century European and American watercolors and gouaches have been added to the National Gallery of Art collection in just the past ten years. This exhibition features 15 of them—stunning and sun-filled landscapes

by European masters that express some of the rich possibilities of this endlessly fascinating medium.

National Gallery of Art Through Sept. 14

Meret Oppenheim: Tender Friendships More than 20 artworks and archival papers

by Swiss surrealist Meret Oppenheim (1913-85) explore friendship as a source of support and inspiration, as seen through two 18th-century poets, Bettina von Brentano and Karoline von Günderode.

National Museum of Women in the Arts

THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT Sept. 17 to Sept. 13, 2015

Chief S.O. Alonge: Photographer to the Royal Court of Benin, Nigeria This retrospective showcases the work of noted Nigerian photographer Chief S.O. Alonge, the first indigenous photographer of the Royal Court of Benin, in conjunction with royal arts from the Benin kingdom.

The collection of historic photographs was captured on Kodak glass-plate negatives and documents more than 50 years of the ritual, pageantry and regalia of the obas (kings), their wives and retainers.

National Museum of African Art Sept. 18 to Oct. 10

Innovation @ Upper Austria

Innovation is the successful implementation and application of an idea that combines the traditional with the new.

This exhibition sheds light on the creative talents of Upper Austria, home to talented innovators and visionaries who have propelled Austria’s economy, technology, art and culture.

Embassy of Austria Through Sept. 21

Vibration of Amber Threats (Latvia) and Sami Crafts of Soul, Hand and Mind (Sweden)

Textile artist Iveta Vecenāne of Latvia has transformed threads of amber into works of art by weaving them into fabric to create remarkable tapestries that explore the ancient traditions and folkways of the ancient Baltic peoples. Meanwhile, through a display of uniquely hand-sewn garments and short films, Swedish artist Maria Axelsson and filmmaker Oskar Östergren showcase the textile culture and the eight seasons of Sápmi, the land of the indigenous Sámi peoples. This exhibit is a collaboration between the embassies of Latvia and Sweden.

House of Sweden Through Sept. 21

Ubuhle Women: Beadwork and the Art of Independence

A community of women living and working together in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, has developed a new form of bead art — using black fabric as a canvas and different colored Czech glass beads as the medium of expression — to empower local women.

The Anacostia Community Museum Sept. 21 to Jan. 4

Captain Linnaeus Tripe: Photographer of India and Burma, 1852-1860

September 2014

chronicle the loss and preservation of countless works of art and architecture that were in peril during armed conflict.

female bodies are charged with concepts prohibited by society, denying the inherent beauty in biological functions.

National Gallery of Art

Art Museum of the Americas

Through Sept. 27

Through Oct. 10

Postcards from the Trenches: Germans and Americans Visualize the Great War

ApocalyptiCAT: Woodcuts and Papercuts by Franca Bartholomäi

This exhibition seeks to highlight one aspect of the World War I experience: the imagery produced by ordinary soldiers who were drafted or commissioned into the conflict, including Otto Schubert, a rising star in Dresden’s pre-war modernist movement.

Pepco Edison Place Gallery Sept. 27 to Jan. 11

Neo-Impressionism and the Dream of Realities: Painting, Poetry, Music With more than 70 paintings and works on paper, this exhibition demonstrates how the neo-impressionists employed stylization and a deliberate orchestration of color to create landscapes and figures that went far beyond observed nature to accentuate subjectivity and an inner world of experience.

The Phillips Collection Through Sept. 28

American Metal: The Art of Albert Paley

Spanning a remarkable 50-year career, this first-ever retrospective surveys the art of Albert Paley, one of the world’s most distinguished metalsmiths.

Franca Bartholomäi’s woodcuts and papercuts are unique within German contemporary art. No other artist combines the tradition and iconography of woodcut with romantic and psychedelic motifs from the 19th and 20th centuries to form images with such expressive power.

Goethe-Institut Through Oct. 12

Total Art: Contemporary Video

The first museum exhibition to focus on women’s impact on the field of video art highlights the inventive processes and compelling subjects that sustain women artists’ position at the forefront of video.

National Museum of Women in the Arts Through Oct. 26

Symbols of Honor: Heraldry and Family History in Shakespeare’s England

This show — the largest and most comprehensive of its kind ever mounted — explores the birth of genealogy in its modern form by examining the colorful world of heralds and their rivals, which competed to profit from the craze for coats of arms that seized England during the reign of Elizabeth I.

Corcoran Gallery of Art

Folger Shakespeare Library

Through Sept. 28

Through Nov. 14

Mark Tribe: Plein Air

Nine large-scale images explore the aesthetics and representation of aerial views in landscape photography through the virtual lens of computer simulation.

The First Woman Graphic Novelist: Helena Bochořáková-Dittrichová

Through Sept. 30

Helena Bochořáková-Dittrichová (1894– 1980) was a Czech graphic artist whose 1929 novel “Zmého dětství (From My Childhood)” is widely acknowledged to be the first wordless novel created by a woman.

Marco Paoli Photography

National Museum of Women in the Arts

Corcoran Gallery of Art

Marco Paoli presents large black-and-white photographs from his collection “Silenzio (Silence)” and from his forthcoming monograph on Ethiopia, using his travels as metaphors for an artistic exploration around the concepts of silence, memory, emotion and inner journey (viewing appointments must be made by emailing iicwashington@esteri.it).

Embassy of Italy Through Oct. 5

Through Dec. 31

Cartier: Marjorie Merriweather Post’s Dazzling Gems

One of Cartier’s most important and enduring clients, Marjorie Merriweather Post commissioned some of the most exquisite jewelry sets, fashionable accessories and finely crafted jeweled frames of any American collector.

Hillwood Estate, Museum and Gardens

Degas/Cassatt

Through Dec. 31

National Gallery of Art

National Gallery of Art

One of the most sensual paintings of the Italian Renaissance, Titian’s “Danaë” from the Capodimonte Museum in Naples will be on view to celebrate the commencement of Italy’s presidency of the Council of the European Union.

Through Sept. 26

Through Oct. 5

In the first major traveling exhibition of photographs by Captain Linnaeus Tripe (1822–1902), some 60 works will include early pictures he took in England as well as the outstanding body of work he produced in India and Burma (now Myanmar) in the 1850s.

In the Library: Preservation and Loss during World War II

The loss of cultural patrimony in times of war is often a sad byproduct of military action, and until the modern era was rarely documented. But the National Gallery of Art Library contains thousands of photographic images that do just that:

Although Edgar Degas’s influence upon Mary Cassatt has long been acknowledged, the extent to which Cassatt shaped Degas’s artistic production and prepared the way for his warm reception by American audiences is fully examined in this exhibition for the first time.

Femininity Beyond Archetypes: Photography by Natalia Arias of Colombia

This exhibit showcases Natalia Arias’ series “Venus,” which initiates a conversation on her vision of Venus and references the idea of the goddess throughout history, and the series “Taboo,” which demonstrates that

Titian’s Danaë from the Capodimonte Museum, Naples

National Gallery of Art Through Jan. 4

One Nation With News for All

Ethnic newspapers, radio, television and online publications have helped millions of immigrants to America become part of their new country while preserving their ties to their native lands. This exhibit tells the dramatic story of how immigrants and

The Washington Diplomat

September 2014

minorities used the power of the press to fight for their rights and shape the American experience.

Through Jan. 11

Salvatore Scarpitta: Traveler

A fascinating and singular figure in postwar art, Salvatore Scarpitta (1919-2007) created a powerful body of work that ranges from nonobjective abstraction to radical realism.

Metamorphosis

Perspectives: Chiharu Shiota

Wed., Sept. 3, 6:30 p.m.

Alberto Ruy Sánchez Honoring Octavio Paz

Alberto Ruy-Sánchez, a writer and essayist from Mexico City and editor-in-chief of Artes de México, shares his personal insights about Nobel laureate Octavio Paz gained from their long friendship and the years they worked together at Vuelta.

IDB Enrique V. Iglesias Auditorium Sept. 11 to 13

The Second Conference on Latvian Diaspora Archives, Libraries and Material Culture The three-day conference looks at the Latvian diaspora collections and the preservation, cataloging and housing of the historical and cultural materials.

Library of Congress (Sept. 11) Embassy of Latvia (Sept. 12) American Latvian Association Center and Museum (Sept. 13)

MUSIC

PHOTO: ELIOT ELISOFON PHOTOGRAPHIC ARCHIVES

quartet compositions. Admission is free; reservations can be made at www.instituteofmexicodc.org.

free; reservations can be made at www.instituteofmexicodc.org.

Mexican Cultural Institute

Mexican Cultural Institute Thu., Sept. 18, 7:30 p.m.

THEATER

Martin Babjak, Baritone

Sept. 3 to Oct. 12

Baritone Martin Babjak is widely known as one of Slovakia’s finest singers and has performing in Verdi’s “Aida,” Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro” and other productions; he’s joined by acclaimed pianist Daniel Buranovsky. Tickets are $75, including buffet; for information, visit www.embassyseries.org.

Embassy of Slovakia Sept. 19 to 21

Sivam, Inc. presents: Utsav: Celebrating India’s Maestros of Music and Dance

Sivam, Inc was established with the mission of promoting opportunities for education and the advancement of Indian classical dance as a traditional art form. Utsav is a three-day celebration featuring performances of traditional Indian music and dance by renowned Indian artists.

Tickets are $35.

Belleville

Sept. 20 to 28

Washington National Opera: Florencia in the Amazon

Two-time Grammy Award–winning American soprano Christine Goerke stars as a famous opera singer who embarks upon an enchanted riverboat journey to her South American homeland of Brazil in late Mexican American composer Daniel Catán’s mesmerizing opera.

Tickets are $25 to $300.

Kennedy Center Opera House Through Sept. 21

Shining City / Molly

Scena Theater presents two overlapping Irish productions: “Shining City,” by Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company modern master Conor McPherson, and the world premiere of “Molly,” a play Sept. Although 12 to 21 every effort is made to assure NOTE: yourthe admistress is free of of Irish mistakes in spelling and about playwright content ultimately up to the customer final proof.

The Magic Flute it–isImpempe J.M Syngetobymake Georgethe O’Brien.

Yomlingo Tickets are $20 to $40.

TheVenus first two changes will be made at no cost to the advertiser, Atlas Performing Arts Centersubsequent changes andfaxed Adonis

will billed at a Theatre rate of $75 per faxed Abby and Zack traded the comforts ThebeShakespeare Company brings alteration. Signed ads are considered approved. of America for noble adventure abroad, two productions by the Isango Ensemble to Through Sept. 21 Please check—this ad carefully. Sunday Mark any yourGeorge ad. moving to the trendy Parisian enclave in changes the Parktowith D.C. The Isango Ensemble whose Belleville for his prestigious post with unique performances reset Western theater Signature launches its 25th anniversary ad is correct andAfrican fax to:township, (301) 949-0065 needs changes Doctors Without Borders. Their lives seemIf the classics within sign a South season with Stephen Sondheim and James perfect, but when Abby returns home utilizing music, dance and elements of Lapine’s Pulitzer Prize- winning play The Washington Diplomat (301) 933-3552 early one afternoon, she uncovers a few South African heritage — will perform an inspired by the painting “A Sunday seemingly inconsequential surprises. adaption of Mozart’s opera “The Magic Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” Tickets are $44 to $88.

Approved Flute–__________________________________________________________ Impempe Yomlingo” and

by Georges Seurat that merges past and The Studio Theatre Changes ___________________________________________________________ Shakespeare’s epic love poem “Venus and present into beautiful, poignant truths Adonis” in repertory at the Lansburgh about life, love and the creation of art. ___________________________________________________________________ Sept. 5 to 21 Theatre. Please call for ticket information.

Please call for ticket information.

Shakespeare’s Globe: King Lear

Weary of his royal duties, King Lear proposes to break up his kingdom and divide it among his three daughters in Shakespeare’s Globe’s “King Lear,” which stars Joseph Marcell, well known as the English butler on the hit TV show “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.” Tickets are $50 to $85.

Folger Shakespeare Library

Lana Trotovsek, Violin

Wed., Sept. 24, 6:45 p.m.

Sept. 5 to Oct. 19

Mexico City Woodwind Quintet

The Shoplifters

Embassy of Slovenia

México Mágico, the Mexico City Woodwind Quintet, is regarded as one of the foremost chamber music groups in Mexico today — formed with members of the National Symphony Orchestra, the Mexico City Philharmonic Orchestra and the Mexico State Symphony Orchestra. Admission is

The winner of international competitions and prizes, Slovenian violinist Lana Trotovšek made her debut in 2012 with the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra under the baton of Valery Gergiev. Tickets are by invitation only; for information, call the Embassy Series at (202) 625-2361.

Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

Fresh from its critically acclaimed presentation of “The Václav Havel Project” in D.C., Alliance for New Music-Theatre presents a dark and comical interpretation of Franz Kafka’s iconic work that imaginatively creates an alter-ego figure, Gregor, also the son of a dogmatic father and otherwise claustrophobic family, who inexplicably wakes up to find himself transformed into a giant insect. Tickets are $30 (part of the Czech Embassy’s Mutual Inspirations Festival 2014 – Franz Kafka).

Stella Osarhiere Gbinigie, 16, is pictured in Benin City, Nigeria, in a 1950s photograph and hand-colored print by Solomon Osagie Alonge as part of a new exhibit at the National Museum of African Art.

Kennedy Center Terrace Theater

Tue., Sept. 9, 7:30 p.m.

David Adjmi’s “Marie Antoinette” takes a highly contemporary look at the famously iconic and controversial queen of France, from her growing celebrity to her ultimate demise at the hands of those who had once extolled her. Tickets start at $35.

Sep. 10 to 21

Through June 7, 2015

DISCUSSIONS

Marie Antoinette

Embassy of the Czech Republic

Hirshhorn Museum

Arthur M. Sackler Gallery

Sept. 15 to Oct. 12

A Report to an Academy

Red Peter details his transformation from ape to human and the horrors of being snatched into captivity and held within a confining cage in Franz Kafka’s riveting short story, brought to life in a stunning adaptation by Drew Valins as part of the Czech Embassy’s Mutual Inspirations Festival 2014 – Franz Kafka.

Admission is free.

Newseum

Performance and installation artist Chiharu Shiota, Japan’s representative at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015, will recreate a monumental yet intimate work in the Sackler pavilion that amasses personal memories through an accumulation of nearly 400 individual shoes, each with a note from the donor describing lost individuals and past moments.

Tue., Sept. 9, 6:30 p.m.

When Alma, a career shoplifter, is caught by an overzealous rookie security guard and his ambivalent mentor, she risks losing her freedom, her resolve and maybe even the steak she has stuffed in her pants.

Tickets are $45 to $90.

Shakespeare Theatre Company

Signature Theatre

Washington, D.C.’s

flagship

diplomatic publication for

20 years.

Arena Stage

Thu., Sept. 11, 7:30 p.m.

Bratislava Boys’ Choir

The Bratislava Boys’ Choir, which has been part of the Slovak artistic scene since 1982, is part of a private music school and boasts a concert ensemble of 45 members.

Years of collaboration with symphonic orchestras such as the Vienna Symphony Orchestra have enriched the choir’s repertoire of dozens of oratorios, cantatas and symphonies. Admission is free; register at http://acfdc.org.

CuLTuRE GuIDE Plan Your Entire Weekend.

www.washdiplomat.com

Embassy of Austria Thu., Sept. 11, 7 p.m.

Cuarteto Latinoamericano

The Latin Grammy Award-winning Cuarteto Latinoamericano is famed for its extensive repertoire of Latin American works and brings an elegant, refined touch to string

September 2014

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DIPLOMATIC SPOTLIGHT

The Washington Diplomat

September 2014

U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit

Photo: State Department Photo: Iyabo Obasanjo / African Presidential Center Official White House Photo by Amanda Lucidon

President Barack Obama, left, and first lady Michelle Obama, right, greet President of Senegal Macky Sall and his wife Marieme Sall in the Blue Room of the White House during a U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit dinner at the White House on Aug. 5.

Photo: State Department

Secretary of State John Kerry, right, greets South Sudanese President Salva Kiir before their bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the U.S.-Africa Business Forum in D.C.

Photo: State Department

African heads of state listen as President Barack Obama delivers remarks at the U.S.Africa Leaders Summit session on “Investing in Africa’s Future,” at the State Department; the summit was the largest event any U.S. president has held with African heads of state.

From left, Robert Crowe, partner at Nelson Mullins Riley and Scarborough; Prime Minister of Mauritius Navinchandra Ramgoolam; Charles Stith, director of the African Presidential Center at Boston University; first lady of Tanzania Salma Kikwete; and President of Tanzania Jakaya Kikwete attend a reception at the law offices of Nelson Mullins Riley and Scarborough as part of the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit.

Photo: Patricia’s Professional Photos

Photo: State Department

From left, Marilyn Sephocle, founder and director of the Women Ambassadors Foundation; first lady of Burundi Denise Bucumi; Andrew Gelfuso, vice president of the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center; first lady of Guinea Djene Kaba Condé; and embassy liaison Jan Du Plain attend the African Digital Security Conference at the Reagan Building as part of the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit.

Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Linda ThomasGreenfield, left, poses with President of Ghana John Dramani Mahama before the Ghana Compact Signing Ceremony at the State Department as part of the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit.

From left, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power and Secretary of State John Kerry hold a bilateral meeting with Egyptian Prime Minister Ibrahim Mahlab as part of the three-day U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in D.C.

Photo: Shaun Harris / Afrika Moves Media Agency

This Is America in Benin From right, U.S. Ambassador to Benin Michael Raynor welcomes producer Jake Cregger and television host Dennis Wholey to his residence in Cotonou as part of the filming for “This Is America & The World.”

Photo: Patricia’s Professional Photos

Myron Belkind, a former AP bureau chief who is now president of the National Press Club, right, presents an NPC coffee cup to President of Burkina Faso Blaise Compaoré at a Newsmaker discussion as part of the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit.

Omani Iftar

photo: larry luxner

Ambassador of Oman Hunaina Sultan Al-Mughairy, left, welcomes Wendy Chamberlin, president of the Middle East Institute, to a Ramadan Iftar celebration at the Sheraton Pentagon City in Virginia.

Moroccan National Day

From left, Fatiha Bennani and Ambassador of Morocco Rachad Bouhlal welcome Babs Jackson and former U.S. Deputy Chief of Mission to Morocco Robert P. Jackson to their residence for the celebration of Morocco’s National Day, known as the Feast of the Throne.

Former Deputy Defense Secretary and World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, left, and Cmdr. Ali Al-Hinai, assistant military attaché at the Omani Embassy, attend the Moroccan National Day reception.

Page 50

Ambassador of Egypt Mohamed M. Tawfik, left, talks with Ambassador of Brazil Mauro Vieira at the Moroccan National Day reception held at the Moroccan Residence.

From left, Ambassador of Central African Republic Stanislas Moussa-Kembe, Ambassador of Senegal Cheikh Niang and Mamadou Blondin Beye, manager of international government affairs for Chevron, attend the Moroccan National Day reception.

From left, Ambassador of Spain Ramón Gil-Casares, Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Miriam Sapiro and Minister at the Delegation of the European Union to the U.S. Antonio de Lecea attend the Moroccan National Day reception.

Saida Zaid, counselor at the Moroccan Embassy, left, and former U.S. Assistant Chief of Protocol Lawrence Dunham attend the Moroccan National Day reception.

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) and his wife Dr. Maya Rockeymoore-Cummings enjoy the traditional cuisine at the Moroccan National Day reception.

From left, Miriam Elinoree Hooker Coe, Publisher of The Washington Diplomat Victor Shiblie and Ambassador of Nicaragua Francisco Obadiah Campbell Hooker attend the Moroccan National Day reception.

From left, J. Peter Pham, director of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center, and his wife talk with former National Security Advisor Gen. James Jones at the Moroccan National Day reception.

Former Ambassador of Libya Ali Aujali, left, and Ambassador of the Arab League Mohammed Al Hussaini Al Sharif attend the Moroccan National Day reception.

The Washington Diplomat

September 2014

Jazz at Japan

photos: Gail scott

Ambassador of Japan Kenichiro Sasae, center, welcomes Willee Lewis and her husband Finlay Lewis to a reception and concert for the DC Jazz Festival held at the Japanese Residence that featured worldrenowned Japanese saxophonist Sadao Watanabe, pictured right, who was awarded the 2014 DC Jazz Festival Lifetime Achievement Award.

THIS at Glen Echo

Nobuko Sasae, wife of the Japanese ambassador, left, welcomes Sunny Sumter, executive director of the DC Jazz Festival, to the Japanese Residence.

Internet of Things

Michelle Galler of the DC Jazz Festival Board, left, and Board Chairman Michael Sonnenreich attend an awards concert at the Japanese Residence as part of the 10th annual DC Jazz Festival, which hosts over 100 jazz performances throughout the city each year.

Grammy Award-winning producer Charles Fishman, who established the DC Jazz Festival in 2005, celebrates the festival’s 10th anniversary at the Japanese Residence with his wife Stephanie J. Peters.

From left, John Paul Farmer, co-founder of the White House Presidential Innovation Fellows (PIF) program who is now director of technology and civic engagement for Microsoft, joins fellow White House PIFs Sokwoo Rhee, Joe Polastre and Geoff Mulligan at a roundtable discussing the “Internet of Things.”

Photo: kevin allen

Former THIS for Diplomats President Joan Keston, Hugh Grindstaff and THIS Program Chair Sheila Switzer welcome diplomatic families to Maryland’s historic Glen Echo Park. THIS for Diplomats is a nonprofit that assists diplomats during their stays in D.C. Lui Weimin of the Chinese Embassy brought his wife Jing Song and son Yoyo Liu, a rising fifthgrader at Somerset Elementary, to Glen Echo Park as part of an excursion organized by THIS for Diplomats.

Yaara Shriebman and Galit Hermoni of the Israeli Embassy take 16-month old Gaya to Glen Echo Park as part of an excursion organized

by THIS for Diplomats. photos: Gail scott

Physicians are not employees or agents of this hospital.

From left, founder and CEO of the Institute for Education (IFE) Kathy Kemper, her daughter Christina Kemper Valentine, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, Bo Kemper and Joanna Breyer attend an IFE INFO Public Policy Roundtable Salon on the “Internet of Things.”

From left, founder and CEO of the Institute for Education (IFE) Kathy Kemper, Jackie Kazil, Ambassador of Bulgaria Elena Poptodorova and Ina Ginsburg attend an IFE INFO Public Policy Roundtable Salon on the “Internet of Things” at the Kalorama home of UNESCO Ambassador Esther Coopersmith.

Dr. Amy Geng, innovation steward at the Institute for Education (IFE), left, and Aneesh Chopra, the firstever chief technology officer of the United States, attend an IFE INFO Roundtable on the “Internet of Things” at the home of Esther Coopersmith.

Monaco Summer Reception

From left, Ambassador of Monaco Maguy Maccario Doyle; former U.S. Assistant Chief of Protocol Lawrence Dunham; Sophie Ravano; Lorenzo Ravano, deputy chief of mission of the Embassy of Monaco; Deborah Dunham; Ambassador of Barbados John Beale; and his wife Leila Beale attend a summertime wine tasting and musical celebration at Monaco’s official residence.

Photos: Larry luxner

Ambassador of Monaco Maguy Maccario Doyle, left, welcomes Ambassador of Ireland Anne Anderson to a summertime wine tasting and musical celebration at Monaco’s official residence.

From left, Julie Butler, director of development and philanthropic strategic partnerships for the Children’s Hospital Foundation; Ambassador of Monaco Maguy Maccario Doyle; Syd Butler; and Vera Luxner, senior associate director of development at the Children’s Hospital Foundation, attend Monaco’s wine and musical celebration.

Appointment scheduling • Interpretation Package/Cost estimates 202-715-5100 • helen.salazar@gwu-hospital.com

September 2014

The Washington Diplomat Page 51

from page 10

Immigration Index 2014 issued by the Americas Society. The annual index assesses human rights, access to markets and education, political participation and women’s empowerment throughout the hemisphere. Dead last on this year’s list was Guatemala; El Salvador wasn’t far behind, in 14th place. (In contrast, Uruguay scored highest, while the United States came in fourth.)

So while Central American leaders justifiably point to America’s voracious appetite for drugs for fueling violence in their countries, they also need to own up to the lack of regional cooperation and graft-ridden governance that allows drug gangs to thrive, often in collusion with security forces.

“The Obama administration is right to urge them to more seriously tackle domestic challenges, including corruption, which is pervasive and shows few signs of abating,” wrote Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue in Politico Magazine recently. “Central Americans in positions of power have not done nearly enough to advance the rule of law, promote economic opportunities and help construct a decent life for their poorest citizens.”

Honduras and Guatemala, for example, have been pushing the U.S. for a Plan Colombia-type military assistance package to fight narco-trafficking, but it’s unclear if these governments have the institutional capacity to absorb such a massive investment. Since 2008, the United States has already spent nearly $650 million on the Central America Regional Security Initiative but has hardly made a dent in the political dysfunction.

As a result, even though the most effective way to reduce immigration is to keep people from wanting to leave in the first place, Washington is understandably wary of pouring millions of dollars into countries with little accountability.

Question of Money Yet Agüero points out that Washington has already spent enormous sums of money in a futile attempt to militarize a porous 2,000-mile border.

“My view as a woman, perhaps, is more humanitarian in nature. We’re talking about children and families that are being broken,” she said. “We need to be logical. What have we gotten out of this strengthening and hardening of the border? If the U.S. had decided to give 10 percent [of what’s been spent on border security] to employment programs or maquilas [factories], our history today would be different.”

Zamora said that in addition to the lack of opportunities back home, the increasing prosperity of Central Americans already in the United States is also attracting immigrants to reunite with their families.

“The father or mother has special status in the U.S., but they left their child in El Salvador. Now they have the capacity to have the kids live with them in their own home,” the diplomat from El Salvador said. “What father wouldn’t ask for his own child? The upward mobility of our community has created the conditions for that phenomenon.”

Doris Meissner, founder of the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, said this phenomenon isn’t necessarily new, and that money isn’t going to the right places to adequately deal with it.

“Migration emergencies have happened before, and will happen again, but that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with. The problem now is that the average wait time for a child migrant to appear before a judge is 578 days. At the same time, funding for immigration enforcement programs has jumped by 300 percent in recent years, while the money available for hear-

Page 52

Photo: Jamie Martin / world bank

A boy carries bricks in El Salvador. More than 57,000 unaccompanied minors have crossed into the U.S. from Mexico during the first nine months of this fiscal year, mostly from countries such as El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.

ings has risen by only 70 percent,” said Meissner, who headed the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service during the Clinton administration.

Despite this backlog, she defended the antitrafficking law that granted migrants from

from page 5

Miller “It’s one of the anomalies of a democratic enterprise,” he said.

“You support free elections and basically you accept the results, but great powers don’t have to do that. Neither do small powers.

They behave in an inconsistent and anomalous and contradictory fashion. Hamas is a threat to the Palestinian Authority, Israel and Egypt and by direct implication has a very negative resonance in the United States.

“There is little consistency in foreign policy,” Miller added. “We take military action in Libya but not Syria. We support an Arab Spring in Egypt but not Saudi Arabia. We call for free and fair elections and we oppose Hamas.”

Miller is equally blunt in his belief that it is impossible for the U.S. to be an honest broker in a dispute in which America clearly has much deeper bonds with the Israelis.

“We have an extraordinarily close relationship with Israel driven by many things — value affinity, domestic politics and also the behavior of the Arab states, which constitute the most effective talking points you could fashion as to why the U.S. supports Israel,” he said. “We don’t have the same kind of relationship with the Israelis that we have with any other parties to the conflict.”

Miller cited a 2014 Gallup poll that showed Americans’ support for Israel is at an all-time high.

“What’s happened in the Arab Spring in the last four years becomes the poster child for why

Central America added legal protections.

“Special protections have to do with the fact that children are vulnerable,” Meissner said.

“They are much less likely to understand the legal options available to them, so they cannot be returned voluntarily to their home countries

it’s easier for Americans to understand and relate to Israelis than it is for others in the region,” he said.

“We aren’t an honest broker — we never have been. We can, in my judgment, be an effective broker.

“When we are prepared to be tough, fair and reassuring — and when the parties are inclined to want to deal — we can be a broker,” he said, noting that former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were effective brokers.

“We’ve only succeeded three times in producing actual agreements between Arabs and Israelis.”

Miller’s candor has made him one of the most sought-after experts on the region, appearing on CNN, Fox, NBC, CBS, NPR, the BBC and other new outlets. Still, he’s just one of many in a crowded field. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has, in fact, produced a whole cottage industry of highprofile, well-connected former government officials who were unsuccessful at forging Middle East peace but now readily give advice on it.

Miller, though, downplays the importance of his role as a commentator and says that while the list of experienced pundits on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process might not change much, what matters is that the people in charge do.

“You change the president and secretary of state and national security advisors,” Miller pointed out. “In my view, people [such as himself] are looked to because they have experience and expertise — full stop. I’m not running

in the way adult migrants can.”

Meissner estimated that 82 percent of the kids who have crossed the border are now in the care of either parents or close relatives, but she disputes the notion that these minors are hiding from the law.

“What we have on the southwestern border is young people coming to turn themselves in, not evade enforcement,” she argued. “They’re coming to find an agent to bring them to a Border Patrol station so these proceedings can begin.”

Zamora says these youths would rather face U.S. law enforcement than the gangs that operate with impunity in the northern tier of Central America, such as Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, and Barrio 18 — many of whose members were themselves deported from the United States over the last decade.

“Gangs create a very serious problem on the peripheries of big cities, where they control the territory. They decide who lives and who doesn’t,” Zamora said.“Let’s say a 12-year-old boy sees the gangs approaching him and telling him, ‘Work for us or we’ll kill your mother.’ What’s he going to do, move to another place? Usually these are poor people.What are the alternatives?

They know they have a relative in the U.S. who is ready to accept them, so they go.”

Larry Luxner is news editor of The Washington Diplomat.

for anything; I haven’t been involved in government in over a decade and I’m not interested in returning.

“Secretaries of state and presidents change all the time,” he added.“The reality is the key decision makers on this issue are the president, secretary of state and the national security advisor.

Ultimately, it is the president and secretary of state who make the decisions.”

On that note, Miller isn’t hopeful that current Secretary of State John Kerry, who invested a huge amount of time and sweat to bring the Israelis and Palestinians closer to an agreement, can be an effective broker. He suggested that Kerry back off and save his energy for other crises.

“Why would you want to continue to try to resolve a problem which you cannot resolve?” Miller asked.“Failure has a consequence.

The notion that trying and failing is better than not trying at all is more appropriate for a high school football team than it is a substitute for strategy for the most consequential power on earth.”

A far more pressing problem — for both the U.S. and Israel — may be the dramatic rise of the Islamic State, which has seized large swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria and seeks to establish a Muslim caliphate throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

Miller said President Obama will most likely continue his deliberative, risk-averse policy in confronting the group, launching occasional strikes but reluctant to resume “his predecessor’s trilliondollar social science project in

Iraq,” as Miller puts it.

While the emergence of the Islamic State is equally if not more troubling for Israel, Miller suspects Israeli officials are prepared to deal with the hardened radical group, and the possible splintering of Arab states, for years to come.

“I don’t think the Israelis believe they are going to [go away],” Miller told us. “This is the trend line for the future: Weak, fragile, decentralized Arab states and transnational movements taking advantage of this weakness.

Look around, everywhere you see non-states trying to behave as states. Lebanon has been a nonstate for years, Syria is still in civil war,Iraq is melting down,Palestine is like Noah’s ark — two of everything. Even in those states that are cohesive like Egypt you have political and economic dysfunction.”

And the cold, hard reality is that this dysfunction might not be fixable. “The world is a pretty cruel and unforgiving place,” Miller wrote last month.“It’s beset more by tough challenges and problems without solutions than it is by slam-dunk opportunities.

Ukraine, Syria, the Arab Spring, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — that’s a pretty fun-filled list. Add the fact that the nature of those challenges is simply no longer quite as amenable to the conventional application of American military, political and diplomatic power as it used to be, and you have a pretty nasty witches’ brew.”

Michael Coleman is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

The Washington Diplomat

September 2014

AROUNDTHEWORLD

THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT

September 2014

HOLIDAyS AFGHANISTAN Sept. 9: Martyrs’ Day ANDORRA Sept. 8: Patron Saint, National Holiday (Mare de Deu de Meritxell)

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CHILE Sept. 18: Independence Day Sept. 19: Armed Forces Day

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CZECH REPUBLIC Sept. 28: Day of Czech Statehood

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DOMINICAN REPUBLIC Sept. 24: Day of the Virgin of Mercedes

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ISRAEL Sept. 24-26: Rosh Hashanah

EL SALVADOR Sept. 15: Independence Day

JAPAN Sept. 21: Respect for the Aged Day (Keirou no hi) Sept. 23: Autumnal Equinox (Shuubun no hi)

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APPOINTMENTS arm yourself with Argentina Roberto Diez departed the post of minister in February.

Florencia Soledad Garcia assumed the position of third secretary in February.

Silvina Khatcherian departed the post of first secretary in February.

Juan F. Gutierrez Telleria assumed the position of third secretary in February.

Bahrain Muneera Al Doseri assumed the position of third secretary in May.

Cabo Verde José Luis Fialho Rocha became ambassador of Cabo Verde on July 14, having previously served as secretary of state (deputy minister) for foreign affairs since 2011. Ambassador Rocha also served as director of national political affairs and cooperation in the Ministry of Ambassador Foreign Affairs (2010-11); José Luis Fialho MNECC director-general of foreign policy (2007-09); ambassa- Rocha dor and representative of the Organization Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) in Brussels (1999-2006); and ambassador of Cabo Verde to Belgium and Luxembourg as well as head of mission to the EU and ACP Group (1995-99). In addition, he was director-general for international cooperation and deputy national authorizing officer of the European Development Fund, as well as a member of the General Council of PROMEx (Center for Promotion of Exports and Investment in Cabo Verde) from 1991 to 1995. Other postings include director of services of bilateral cooperation (DGCI), member of the installation committee and recruiting for PROMEx, and head of division of bilateral cooperation (DGCI) in the 1980s. Ambassador Rocha holds a bachelor’s in political science and international relations and a special post-graduate diploma in devel-

September 2014

opment studies from the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. He was also trained in management and development finance at Pittsburgh University.

Ambassador Rocha speaks Cabo Verdean, Portuguese, French, English and Spanish. He is married to Dr. Yamile Luque Tamayo Saco Rocha and has two sons and one daughter.

Georgia Sopio Kupradze assumed the position of first secretary on July 13. Kupradze has 14 years of experience in the Georgian public sector and previously served as deputy director of the International Law Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for four years.

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Laos Khen Sombandith assumed the position of counselor, deputy chief of mission in April.

Timor-Leste Domingos Sarmento Alves was appointed ambassador of Timor-Leste to the United States on May 1, having previously served as political advisor to the vice-minister of foreign affairs and cooperation. He was also Timor-Leste’s ambassador to Japan, advisor of international relations to the president, Ambassador acting director of bilateral relaDomingos tions in the Ministry of Foreign Sarmento Alves Affairs, and acting chief of protocol of the president of the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste. In addition, Ambassador Alves is the founder of the Democratic Party (PD) and worked as a special representative of RENTIL (National Resistance of the Students of Timor-Leste) during the struggle for the independence of Timor-Leste. Ambassador Alves has a bachelor’s degree in labor and organizational psychology and did his post-graduate studies on ASEAN and European Union institutions from Portugal.

He speaks fluent Tetum, Bahasa Indonesian, Portuguese and English as well as basic Spanish.

Ambassador Alves is married and has one daughter.

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September 2014

Placing Classifieds Ads Free Ads for Diplomats

Real Estate Ads

Foreign diplomats are entitled to a 25 word ad (additional words are 35¢ each) for merchandise only.

Offer limited to one ad per month and does not include real estate or business ads. Must fax a copy of Diplomatic Identification card.

Real Estate ads of 25 words with a photo are $40, without photo $20. Each additional word is 35¢.

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T: 5.25 in

DIPLOMAT REAL ESTATE CLASSIFIEDS

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• Receptionist services

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Featured SPeaKer:

aBOut CPS CONFereNCe 2014: CPS is the only event of its kind where top-level diplomats gather to hear from experts on topics such as: branding strategies for your country; ways to access Congress and the White House; what lobbyists do for foreign governments; crisis communications; trade and investment, including free trade agreements; social media and the latest in digital diplomacy trends; and tourism development.

TeRRy mcauliffe Governor of Virginia

SPONSORS: in collaboration with

SPONSORSHIPS AND LIMITED EXHIBIT BOOTHS AVAILABLE An opportunity for your firm to get the attention of more than 60 nations at one event.

To apply to speak, email: events@washdiplomat.com

+1 301-933-3552 Page 56

The Washington Diplomat

#CPS2014

www.washdiplomat.com/events/2014/CPSconference September 2014