Caroline Jaine's blog

In September last year, I ran a rather crude survey inviting readers of my blog on Pakistani news channel, Dawn to take part.  The survey was a rather tongue-in-cheek response to the tenth anniversary of George Bush’s Axis of Evil Speech, but it has thrown up some points of interest to communications professionals. 

Most readers picked up on the fact that in today’s connected world, labelling an entire nation as “evil” was not a useful rhetoric.  However, I was overwhelmed with hundreds of responses.  More people completed the questionnaire than I had money to access on the free online survey and many of the comments certainly didn’t shy away from national stereotypes or allegations of evil.

3 November marks five years since CommGap writer Caroline Jaine was evacuated from the Iraqi city of Basra.  In 2006 she was heading Press & Public affairs at the British Embassy Office, during what proved to be one the most perilous moments during the British occupation.  Today her book - a personal account of her 100 days in Iraq - is launched with a seminar at the House of Lords in London.  The seminar, like the title of the book, draws from the then British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s plan for a “Better Basra” and looks at whether the city is in fact any “better” today.

An extract from A Better Basra appears below:

Here was that movie feeling again, but this time the soldiers, perhaps about a hundred or so of them, were like extras waiting to go on set.  I was intrigued about where they had been, what they had done in Iraq so far and where they were off to.  What was their day like? Why weren’t they at that moment busy “soldiering”. 

I’ve been having a look at business communications in the UK this month – with some surprising discoveries for our brilliant 21st Century connected world. 

Twenty-five years ago, as an office junior, I would marvel at the wonders of a fax-machine. The speed that a written message could be pushed down a telephone line and be printed out at the other end in curls of warm paper was wonderment. Colleagues would actually rush to the machine when it rang, to see what would come out and from whom.  Today fax-machines are rarely used, and when they are, their pace appears exhaustingly slow and eyes roll to the sky as a whole bundle of papers gets dragged into the jaws of the machine, meaning the exercise needs repeating. It feels inefficient.

In July I wrote a piece about Simulated Realities, Manipulated Perceptions.  In it I queried our apparent pre-occupation with the gruesomeness of war, as seen through a media lens.  I took Pakistan as a case study for our obsession with disaster and attempted to apply a Baudrillardian theory to new coverage of terrorism in the country.  The irony is, that this article was picked up by an editor for one of the biggest Pakistani news agencies, and ever since I have been writing a weekly column for them.

Having spent years watching and commenting on the media, I have crossed sides, and although I remain a “blogger” not a “writer”, I feel as if I am on the periphery of the very beast I have long deplored.  My short, but intense time at Dawn has been a real challenge, as I have sought to write in a way that I have advocated journalists to and continue to challenge the mainstream media perceptions from within.

People in my profession have struggled with the idea of strategy - what it means, how to implement a communications strategy, how is strategy different from policy, where is strategy different from planning?

This weekend I met some of the world’s best strategists.  And they weren’t working in government or political organisations.  They work in sport.   You might think that motor-racing had little in common with my field of strategic communications in conflict environments, but this is not any-old motor-racing - it’s Formula 1.

When I first met Mark Malloch-Brown several years ago, he was a newly ennobled peer and part of the Gordon Brown lead British Government, serving as a Foreign Minister. Wearing the ermine of a Lord together with his Make Poverty History wrist-band, Malloch-Brown was a figure of both rebellion and conformity.  Given his outspoken stance on the war in Iraq and his uneasy relationship with America’s neo-cons, I wondered then whether he would be forced to compromise on his principles.

His latest offering to the world is certainly no compromise.  In The Unfinished Global Revolution, as the title suggests is all to aware that it is written at a time of immense change, less at the cusp of revolution – more in the thick of it.

This is a book about Malloch-Brown’s personal journey, and whilst the writer candidly shares remarkable anecdotes, he also offers unique insight into some of the world’s most challenging conflicts and commentary from inside both government and international organisations.  Ultimately, however, true to character, this reads as a call to action.  As he writes: We need to get on with it!

Twenty years ago, the French philosopher, sociologist and political commentator, Jean Baudrillard wrote an essay entitled “The Gulf War Did Not Take Place”.  Published in French and British Newspapers (Libération and The Guardian), it attracted huge criticism from people like Christopher Norris, who castigated Baudrillard and other postmodern intellectuals for arguing the Gulf conflict was unreal and essentially fictive. Some even labelled Baudrillard “a theoretical terrorist”.  He was not, however, in denial that lives were lost nor that “more explosives were dropped in the two months of the Gulf War than the entire allied air attacks in World War II”. His central issue was one of interpretation and the presentation of the facts through a media lens – his concern was whether these events could be called a war.

My last blog entry back in July was perhaps a sign of things to come.  In it I wrote how the “hearts” bit of so-called “hearts and minds” initiatives was often missing.  I argued that the policy makers viewed arts and culture as a fluffy luxury and often missed their power as a key driver for change.  I was at the time a self-critical policy-maker.
 
So, after 15 years as a diplomat and communications strategist, I have given it all up and embarked on Masters of Fine Arts study in Cambridge, England.  At first it felt indeed like a fluffy luxury, at best a mid-life crisis, but once I entered into what I can only describe as a sublime learning curve, I quickly understood that my art making can easily and effectively incorporate my passions for positive societal discourse, transforming conflict and even diplomacy.  Furthermore my art practice can incorporate a genuinely moving participatory element.

As I write this I realise that my favourite reference book on “Hearts & Minds” was stolen some months back.   I will persevere nevertheless.  As usual, I have something on my mind and having one foot in academic reference could distract me from an eloquent rant.

I am almost as tired of the misuse of the term “hearts and minds” as I am about the generic tossing of the words “strat-com” around the media centre - without applying its meaning.  We are told of its importance in communications (particularly when policies begin to fail), but few think deeply or employ it properly.  Perhaps because no-one has articulated what hearts and minds means (or strat-com for that matter). Google tells me:

I couldn’t have been further away from Sudan last week - sipping fine green tea in a London private members’ club - but Sudan was one topic of conversation.  I stumbled upon an organisation about to set up a development bank in the South of the country and, with a keen understanding of the operational environment, the focus will be on microfinance.  Our discussion was just one of many I have had lately about the crucial role business plays in development and as I dip my toe (or ear) into the world of development communications, I meet more and more people who (like me) have Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart’s cherished book “Fixing Failed States” tucked into their coats.  Paddy Doherty of the above-mentioned development bank sums it up simply - “profitability ensures sustainability”.