INTERVIEWER: First of all, what are the goals of Mercy Corps International, and in particular the civil society program which you head?

MAYNARD: Mercy Corps is an NGO, mid-sized NGO. And what we're, what we try to do is look at whole community rehabilitation. So particularly in Bosnia we're trying to do that, not just reconstruction, which we do. We have a huge reconstruction program there, for example.

But we also are looking at, we do a lot of microenterprise development and trying to give small loans to those individuals that they may fall underneath the large rubric of international entities, such as the World Bank and others, to give, provide funding for the people who need to get back on their feet. And we kind of do it in a innovative fashion. They get, they may get, purchase a cow or restart their business with it.

But then we also look at well how is the community itself rehabilitating itself? And how, how does the social fabric get put back together and rewoven? And we try to do that through our civil society program.

The civil society program is based on the notion that of course you can work on agriculture, you can work on health care, you can do any number of development or relief programs, provide food assistance. But in so doing, what if, where is it that we can leave something that's gonna grow for generations. And the notion that people have a voice, that they can group together and fend for what they want, help in the decisionmaking process within local government to decide for themselves what their needs are, and hold government accountable. That's what we try to develop through various avenues of working within our relief and development program.

INTERVIEWER: There's a tendency, in the Western media at least, to label most of today's wars as ethnic conflicts. How do you respond to that characterization and what might be a better term?

MAYNARD: Well my view is that they're, I call them identity conflicts. And the notion is that pre--well during World War II so the first half of this century, World War II, World War I, and all, and, and up to that point we had what I call trinitarian(?) warfare, which is the notion that the state dictates who we fight, when we fight. And it's the military that does the fighting and it's for the people, so therefore the military, the state, and the people form the trinity.

I think we emerged out of that into what I called--what was it? Actually I'm thinking of the word now. Different kind of warfare during the mid-, mid-to--

INTERVIEWER: Why don't you start that we, we've moved out about, from there?

MAYNARD: Yeah. Okay. Well what's my term that I'm using? I got--

INTERVIEWER: You don't even need to use the term (inaudible) associate change to--

MAYNARD: Yeah. Okay. Well anyway. We moved out of that into a different kind of warfare during the second part of the, this century, which included things like independence movements, guerilla movements, the type of warfare that you found people fighting for a political ideology, that sort of thing, the battle between communism and capitalism all represent that.

And then I think in the end of the eighties, during the end of the Cold War, just as it was leaving and we were merging into a new phase, we got into a new form of warfare, which was based on not just ethnic but ethnic is certainly a major part of it. Language, regional, cultural, various racial, tribal, but what I call identity conflict whereas people begin to focus on their, what it is that is most important to them as an individual.

In, in the earlier phases what we had is warfare basically against certain groups, and they were military or paramilitary groups. Now you have warfare and identity conflicts that are much more based on individuals, on, they go into the homes, they go into the schools, into the hospitals. They ravage everything. It is descended into a very public, very common type of warfare which we've never seen before.

And the identity notion of it, that it is a very personal experience, causes extreme damage to the social fabric, as you can imagine. Not only do doctors kill their patients and mothers kill their children, such as happened in Rwanda and those kind of devastating impact, but also they trying to meld people, reform the community back together again. Very, very difficult under those circumstances, where neighbors attack neighbors, where--how does that begin to reemerge as a new community again under such conditions?

INTERVIEWER: You've written that, that warfare and relief aid used to be measured quantitatively, that there were X number of dead or X number of weapons needed, Y number of assistance dollars needed to repair the damage.

MAYNARD: Um hmm.

INTERVIEWER: And now I think you argue for an evolution beyond that type of thinking. Can you articulate that concept for our viewers?

MAYNARD: I think we're emerging into, again as this identity conflict becomes the paramount form of warfare in the new, new post-Cold War era, we need to look at much more of the social, this qualitative, the softer side of reconstruction and rehabilitation. So, yes, we can count the number of houses we've reconstructed. We can count the number of people we've fed and hospitals we've, number of patients we've served in hospitals.

However, what does that do for a community five years from now? What does that do ten years from now? The fact that they have these things does not necessarily mean that they have a functioning community. And after all, what we're looking for is the ability for people to get back on their feet. And in fact, as some would submit, conflict can be seen as an opportunity to go beyond where they've been before. So it's not just getting back to where they were and get back on their feet, but actually use it as a stepping stone to a better life, better communities, possibly even dealing with some of these issues that started the conflict in the first place.

Now, obviously that's pretty optimistic. But I think we need to look at it much beyond counting figures, counting numbers, counting people.

INTERVIEWER: A term that you've, or that, that keeps coming up I mean, development assistance has generally been seen again as economic reconstruction. You know it follows from the last question, dealing with society as a whole. What is the importance of addressing it on an individual level and a grass roots level?

MAYNARD: Well as we have, again you know the new identity conflict, it, it is by definition grass roots. It is by definition goes into the heart and home of each individual. And it is pervasive. It doesn't just affect a community here and there, for the most part. Now this is a wide generalization.

But so as we need to look at reconstruction we--and rehabilitation, and those terms are, are somewhat tentative, but what we need to see is it in a much broader context. That is it's not simply government structures, institutions that need to be rehabilitated, or even elections being held and this sort of overarching larger community or, or, or country-wide programs that actually gets into the community, the individual, the family. That's not to say that we didn't affect those things in the past, but I think the focus is growing closer to, it's, it's becoming more obvious that we need to have much more focus on the individual and on the grass roots, just by virtue of the kind of conflict we're dealing with these days.

INTERVIEWER: This, I mean every, as you say every war in every region is different. Yet you've outlined a, a more holistic framework of recovery that might be applied to the majority of today's identity conflicts. Is there, could you describe the, the steps in that recovery process?

MAYNARD: There's always a danger in generalization. But I think what is required these days to is a framework for recovery because again this is a new form of conflict. Now, you know we, here we are eight years into it essentially, and we need to have a framework that is different than what we've had in the past on how--

INTERVIEWER: I'm gonna interrupt. Say eight, eight years into what?

MAYNARD: Eight years into this new form of conflict, identity conflicts.

INTERVIEWER: Oh, okay. I'm sorry. Why don't you say that again?

MAYNARD: Yeah. Okay. As we've come out of the Cold War and now we're into this new form of conflict, identity conflict, and we have learned, I think we've learned a tremendous amount in these past eight years. But one of the things that we need to begin to build is what does a recovery process require? What are the stages of recovery? How do, how can we affect it in the most positive sense?

And so what I've generalized again, it's, it's difficult to generalize this. Every conflict is so entirely different. The recovery phases. And I propose that there's five different recovery phases in which the international community can take certain actions to help promote the healing during that process.

The first one is what I call the security phase, which is unless you have, unless people feel comfortable and safe in their environment, unless they feel like they are not going to be attacked or move, have to move and leave their homes, but also they need to feel that there is a sense of food security and some economic security. It doesn't have to be extreme but there needs to be no sense of urgency there. Then we can't go further. That's the first and foremost.

INTERVIEWER: And how does the international community, with assistance or whatever, or military or whatever, how do they go about creating that sense of security?

MAYNARD: I, there's a number of things one can do. You can do anything. On one, one extreme that there is groups of people who go in and accompany. It's called accompanying process, but they accompany individuals who may be threatened, or families and live with families. In other words, there's a, a foreign, a Western face or faces in areas that are critical and, and under threat. Anything from that kind of, more of a peace accompaniment role to peacebuilding, peacemaking, peacekeeping. And peacekeeping, first and foremost, is what we consider security in general.

Now we can also bring in foreign militaries in a nonpeacekeeping type of environment, such as Somalia or Rwandas, Iraq, that type of thing in which they can lend certainly a security element. I think we need to take care in how we do that because it can also exacerbate it. And one of the issues is by bringing people in with arms, aren't we just reenforcing the notion that force is what wins and therefore contributing to the conflict.

The second phase is what I call communalization and bereavement. And that is the notion that in reconciliation literature basically the--and also psychological literature the healing process really begins when individuals who've been a part of this development, part of the conflict, part of the, the, turmoil in any part has been able to get it out, tell their story, to be heard and to listen to others. And until that really happens, I don't think that we're gonna get further in the healing process. And this is the phase that's probably most often skipped.

The third phase is the rebuilding of trust and the ability to trust, because obviously if we don't have, if I don't feel like I can leave my children with you as somebody from a different religious group, then we're never gonna get further than having separate communities. So we need to be able to restart economic ties. I need to be able to come to you and buy chickens, and you can come to me and get my wheat. We need to be able to help each other out, and of course, eventually build a community together. Rebuilding trust is a critical point.

The third phase is reestablishing social morals because what happens is what, when do we get to the point of saying what we did was wrong, that there are boundaries in society, there's a need for respect, this is right and this is wrong. Every community has it, and they're very different. Every, every society has, and every culture has very different forms of that. But we need to reestablish those boundaries.

And that happens sometimes, can happen various ways. Judicial systems can help establish that. The other, other forms of the peace, peace and reconciliation process in South Africa, I think, contributes to that.

The fourth, the fourth phase is the--am I onto the fifth phase?

INTERVIEWER: I think you're up to the fourth. Yeah.

MAYNARD: I did communalization.

INTERVIEWER: Reestablishing trust, rebuilding trust, the capacity for trust you did.

MAYNARD: Okay. Hold on just a second.

INTERVIEWER: Sure.

MAYNARD: I gotta think these--okay.

So the fifth phase, then, and the last phase is, is what I call democratization which is the notion that then every individual, every entity in the community needs to have a voice in the decisionmaking process. So as they decide on how to deal with the relief process, all these foreign entities coming in and saying, well hey, we'll give you seeds and tools, or hey, who's the needy in, in this community, how do we help the elderly. We need to be able to deal with that.

But we also need as a community to be able to decide where do we go from here. And this is the step that launches us into the real, the opportunity that exists to go beyond where we've gone before. Okay, maybe we've, we've back on our feet and we have, people have enough food. We have seeds in the ground and we have a basic water system. But we've never had a very good road here. We can't get our food--or, our food to market. Let's start looking at how we can go beyond where we've gone before.

So everybody participates in this process. And of course that's the ultimate, that's when we really come into a democratic, hopefully equal society.

INTERVIEWER: Traditionally, again, this is a form of development assistance that's come through an economic model, or economists come in and say how many roads you need. Is there a need for a more, for multidisciplinary approach from experts or people from other fields--

MAYNARD: Um hmm.

INTERVIEWER: --to work kind of collaboratively?

MAYNARD: I think as we're going, as we're building beyond this sort of numbers and quantitative reconstruction, our sole focus beyond that, and into more of the qualitative and the softer sciences and issues of conflict--

INTERVIEWER: Okay. You start as we've moved beyond the quantitative problems.

MAYNARD: As--yeah, as we move beyond this focus on the quantitative and on numbers and how many houses we've reconstructed, and try to look at the broader picture and who is, how are we rebuilding the social fabric or contributing to it (and obviously we're outside entities so we are not going to be the ones that ultimately have an effect here; that needs to be put up front), how are we going to contribute to the larger picture? And I forget your question.

INTERVIEWER: I, I was asking if there's, there seems to be a more holistic approach. Is there a need--

MAYNARD: Ah, yeah.

INTERVIEWER: --a need for anthropologists or psychologists or, or beyond just economists--

MAYNARD: Yes, yes.

INTERVIEWER: --and, and road builders--

MAYNARD: Yeah.

INTERVIEWER: --and that kind of thing.

MAYNARD: Okay.

INTERVIEWER: How can we look at sort of a--

MAYNARD: Yeah.

INTERVIEWER: --more multidisciplinary approach to this?

MAYNARD: Okay. And I think one of the things that we need to focus on, as we're getting away from only focusing on figures and how many houses we've reconstructed and that sort of thing, and into more of the qualitative and softer rebuilding social fabric, we need both, both entities very much. And we need to expand our vision. We need to expand our input.

One of the things I think we in the international community do poorly at is building our base of knowledge for our so-called interventions. (I actually call them intercessions 'cause I hope that we're not actually intervening as such.) How is it that we can understand what the context is? And, and to do that we need to have an understanding of the history, geography of the area, the conflict, what happened before, what happened recently, what is the, some major political or military battles. Are there specific ethnic issues that we have to look at, specific ethnic issues in certain groups that aren't, don't affect others, religious, etc.?

But we also need psychologists. We need people to tell us what is part of this healing process, how does it affect, the trauma of conflict affect individuals?

So we need to broaden our, our input. And I would also say that we need to broaden it in three different ways. One is we need the academics. We need the people to, who have been studying these from a very book and removed point of view. But we also need the practitioners who've been on the ground, the people, community development people, local nationals who have insight into these things. And they also need the policymakers. And the trilogy of those three--the policymakers, the practitioners, and the academics--is critical to this understanding, as it has been in the past. Those are much more separated. We need to draw those closer together.

And we, we're getting there, but it's still a long ways to go. That will then, will form a much more firm foundation for how we approach whatever intercessions we attempt.

INTERVIEWER: Another area that I keep hearing as a, a problem area is lack of coordination amongst various you know international groups, multilateral, bilateral, UN--

MAYNARD: Um hmm.

INTERVIEWER: --government, NGO, that oftentimes they're in competition with each other, and not sending a clear voice to the local population, and can often be contributing to the chaos. How can, do--first of all, do you agree with that notion? And secondly, how do we go about better coordinating the administration of aid?

MAYNARD: Um hmm. (inaudible) always use the word coordination and immediately you get people's attention and, and get the hair on their back standing up because it's a, it's a hot word, so that people are beginning to say collaboration and cooperation.

But in essence it's the idea that there are so many different factors, different elements, from United Nations agencies to bilateral aid agencies (our Agency for International Development and Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, for example; ECHO, which is the European assistance people) to nongovernmental organizations, which come from all around the world, to private entities, foundations. So you have such a smattering of people. Not only is it a variety of types of organizations, but they're from all over the world. So they in themselves bring the variety of religious and cultural and ethnic views themselves into this.

On top of that, you've got different structures of organizations. So you military, which tends to operate hierarchically; NGOs, which definitely operate horizontally if, if they do collaborate, and I think it is improving.

So I think what needs to happen is several levels of so-called coordination. One is the donor level. And there are these formats. The structures exist. The problem is that we all have our individual mandates, our individual political reasons for being there.

And I think there's a couple of things we need to do. One is we need to reduce our expectations because we don't all think alike. We need to become more flexible and recognize that there's places that we're not going to coordinate, but in those places where we can we need to do it much more diligently. Donor coordination, for example, has some very good parts to it. I mean it collaborates much more on, for example, joint appeals, when the UN says hey, we need help in this country. From time to time there's excellent donor coordination, and in other ways. But, but in terms of their approach to the process, how do they see the rehabilitation of this country? It's not as, it's not as coordinated.

On the ground what you have is various UN agencies which often don't agree with each other, or there's the problem of who's going to be the lead agency. And then you have the NGOs who also have their own mandates and their own ideas.

So to take it back to the ground level, if you're in a country such as Rwanda, we established--we, international community--funded, operated underneath at the time from the Department of Humanitarian Assistance, which was a UN agency, a coordination mechanism. Meetings, meetings on water, specifically, meetings on health, specifically, and those sort of things, which by and large function well. I think we need to establish this in a much more cohesive fashion, something that people can expect from one country to another, albeit with great flexibility because it needs to be adjusted to each context.

And I also think that the NGOs themselves are beginning to collaborate much better than they used to, to have more of a united voice in this bigger coordination structure. They are now having a much bigger voice among donors themselves, among UN agencies, and among, in the international humanitarian community.

INTERVIEWER: I wanted to look at the, specifically the role of the World Bank. And, well in the past the World Bank has been criticized for everything from bureaucracy to cultural insensitivity to large-scale development projects, like a dam, that might foment conflict as much as resolve it.

MAYNARD: Um hmm.

INTERVIEWER: The Bank has recently started a, a post-conflict unit to deal specifically with the problems of post-conflict societies. Do you see the Bank making a fundamental shift or a change in the way that it administers assistance?

MAYNARD: I think the World Bank is beginning to follow this change in types of conflict that we've had, and the types of emergencies we've had, and the types of need for international assistance that has all evolved in this post-Cold War era. So they are beginning to evolve, to a large degree, out of the large project--the dam reconstruction, the bridge reconstruction-type of thing--and focusing more and more on the individual level, on the community level to correspond with the needs from, that are, result out of identity conflicts.

So I think Wolfensohn has done a, a good job on trying to get the Bank to focus on some of these changes. And it's a huge institution. And it's, it's incredibly bureaucratic so the changes take time.

But for one of thing that they've done is develop this post-conflict unit. It's a new institution. It's intended to look at what happens after a conflict, that the development process and the rehabilitation process requires a different type of assistance, a different type of economic aid, but also social aid. So that rather than just focus on economic rehabilitation, as they have done before, or economic development, they're beginning to see it much more as it's a, it's a holistic process. It's the social, it's the political, and it's the economic.

And thankfully they have gotten to the point of recognizing--I should say I, I, I think they are getting to the point of recognizing their own role as leaders in this. The Bank is a, is a unique institution. All the Bretton Woods institutions are unique in their respect that they hold tremendous power, and yet they have not taken the leadership role in helping to coordinate others all that much in the past. I think the opportunity exists. And as they begin to look at their new process in this post-conflict, or post-conflict, that post-Cold War kind of conflict, they may be taking that on a little bit more seriously.

INTERVIEWER: It's still very early to, to tell. I mean this unit is--Okay. I know it's--

(END OF SIDE ONE, TAPE A)

Do you see the World Bank in a unique position to take a leadership role, in theory and practice, of international assistance in post-conflict peacebuilding?

MAYNARD: Um hmm. Well I think the World Bank is definitely in a unique position to take a, a lead role in post-conflict rehabilitation. I think the fact that it wields so much power vis-a-vis its money, it is a natural leader. The fact that it has not done that in the past in terms of really being a coordinator of international institutions and international players in rehabilitative efforts, it's, it's beginning to play on them. They're recognized more and more as a leader and grappling with that themselves. And I think this new post-conflict unit that they've established, which is new--it's a year old, something like that--and very small, stands to lead the way in that.

But they have so many issues to deal with. The fact that post-conflict rehabilitation, economic rehabilitation is so drastically different than normal rehabilitation or normal development. So the issues of do you, how do you deal with debt. Now this is a possibly either a new government that's in or it's been a stateless society for a while and has not been able to, to do a thing with its debt. We need to approach these things differently. Currencies. All the, the, this assistance to individual citizens. You can't just drop those off the face of the earth when people are recovering from conflicts.

And the World Bank is grappling with how does it establish its own new guidelines for post-conflict rehabilitation, but also what should be its role within the greater international community in that. And I commend it for, for moving forth and trying to take on some of these very difficult issues.

INTERVIEWER: Their mandate they cite as being essentially apolitical. And yet it would seem to me that these post-conflict environments force a certain dealing with political issues that are overtly political in a lot of ways, in establishing powersharing in governments and everything else. Is that a stumbling block for World Bank involvement in this? Or how do you think they should go about addressing their traditional mandate of being apolitical?

MAYNARD: It's a, it's a difficult question on whether the World Bank can be apolitical. It's, I think it's always been there. And I think there's, I don't think anybody who's really been involved would deny that it has been there before. It's probably more evident now.

And it's not just the Bank who's dealing with that. Humanitarian organizations are also saying how do we deal with something like refugees coming into Goma(?)? And yes, under the definition of refugees they, they are. And yet we also know that many of 'em has, have participated in a genocide. Can we remain apolitical? And I think the World Bank is dealing with some of those things on a broader scale.

The fact that the Bank is beginning to get much more grass roots oriented, or beginning to focus more on a community level--let's put it that way--is helping it. It begins to look at some of the social issues, and the political issues, that are on a lower level, rather than just having to deal with the state government. Now, it still does and still will, and that's by definition how it works. But, for example, in Bosnia, the Bank used to give only very large loans and only to state institutions. Now it's beginning to give loans to individuals. For example, we're working with the World Bank in Bosnia to do microcredits in areas which are basically essentially farmers and small business owners, and that kind of thing. It's a new effort on the Bank's part. And I think, I commend them for doing that.

How do they, how do they manage the fact that the, Bosnia is divided into two entities? Do they need to maintain certain amount of money for the Republic of Serbska(?) and the other part for the Federation? Or do they try to say well this is nonpolitical? I think that's the kind of things that politics begin to seep in and they, like everybody, are grappling with it. And there is no easy answer.

INTERVIEWER: Are, are there recommendations that you would offer in how they go about approaching this to maximize chances for, for positive or successful peacebuilding?

MAYNARD: I would recommend that they continue to look at the issues that they're looking at. And I would say, going back to what we'd spoken of earlier, that they bring in resources from all entities, from ethnographers and anthropologists, to local economists, to their own resources, and obviously they have tremendous economic resources. The people who are looking at it from various angles, not the traditional economic view only.

I would also recommend that they not only look at things from the broader perspective but also from the, from a more variety of institutions, so nongovernmental organizations and UN entities and local institutions and that type of thing.

And then I would say that they, that the time frame is critical, that we have consistently and continue to this day to look at recovery from conflict, to look at recovery from disaster as a very quick effort on our part. It does not happen that way. And then when you're talking about identity conflicts where the social fabric has literally been torn apart, we cannot expect reconciliation, social rehabilitation, or even economic rehabilitation under a short period of time.

So we need to all begin to say we're committing to this recovery for the next 10 to 20 years and not assume that it's gonna happen in three to four.

INTERVIEWER: Is that realistic, with donor fatigue cited often today, with 40-some conflicts around the world, and pressure, at least in the United States, to cut foreign assistance? Is there, is it realistic to expect the international community to be able to provide that type of long-term assistance?

MAYNARD: I think the issue of long-term assistance is definitely a critical one. And everybody says, wait a minute——10 years, or you know 20 years? How can we possibly commit to that?

But I think we're gonna have to look at other resources. For one thing, we need to draw in businesses and our economic interests which are increasingly beginning to, to look at countries around the world. I mean the globalization of the economy is drawing big businesses and small businesses alike into other countries automatically. So let's pull on those resources, for one thing.

The other thing is I think we need to, when we commit to something we need to think about our, the long-term from the very beginning. So ideally the scenario runs that if there's any indication of problems such as Kenya, at the moment, Nigeria, Indonesia, that we begin our engagement now; that we don't wait until the bodies start falling. That, that's, that's, that has been time and time again proven to be statistically much more financially feasible if we can engage peace prevention forces and peacekeeping forces and that sort of thing, such as we did in Macedonia. So that's the first step.

The second thing is is as we get involved, every part of our involvement should be with a long-term view. That is, our problem of engaging our forces, the U.S. forces, in Bosnia and saying we're gonna be here for a year was, it, it was an insult. It's an insult to say, how can people who've gone through this, for four years they've been killing each other and we're saying we're gonna, in one year you need to get it together and we'll be gone. I think let's, let's consider what will happen five years from now and ten years from now. Not to say that we're necessarily gonna be there on the ground, but every action should be geared toward the next generation. What will it take to leave the next generation in a higher level than where they are today?

And then the third thing is is in bringing in more of us as the international community, to engage more of us as individuals and as, again, businesses and, and economic opportunities, social relationships, civil society across nations. That kind of a thing. Take some of the edge off of this notion of just assistance and aid, humanitarian aid. If you have chess clubs, for example, tremendous chess clubs in Bosnia, chess clubs engaged from Cleveland, Ohio, cooperating and, and collaborating on, on chess tournaments with those in Bosnia, that's a kind of thing that I think is really going to bring us into the next millennium, with an eye towards the globalization which is happening but a globalization on a positive level.

INTERVIEWER: The, the other end of the long-term engagement is aid dependency. How do we, if we're realistic and say we're gonna be there for 10 years, how do we keep the country from becoming dependent on the foreign presence and the foreign aid so that at the end of that period they're prepared to go--

MAYNARD: Um hmm.

INTERVIEWER: --independently and keep their society intact?

MAYNARD: Yeah. A lot of that, I think, a lot of development of, or the steering away from aid dependency I think happens through development of civil society, and that civil society, again, is the, is the ability for individuals in any community to be able to have a voice and have an effect on the development of the world around them.

So as we work in our relief and development around the world, let's do it with an eye towards bringing, bringing in our understanding of civil society and encouraging their understanding of civil society. So it will be partly the, the grass roots development of their own capabilities. But I think it will also be the integration of the civil societies from around the world into more of a global civil society.

INTERVIEWER: A lot of Americans in, in particular view these conflicts as very remote to them and see, don't quite see the connection to their lives, and yet you've suggested the globalization of economies. How, why should Americans care about providing long-term assistance to apparently far away and unrelated--

MAYNARD: Um hmm.

INTERVIEWER: --regions of the world?

MAYNARD: We're, we're in a unique place, maybe ourselves, New Zealand, and Australia as the more industrialized nations, in our isolation. Because we have Canada, very similar to us but a little bit more connected with Europe, and then we have Mexico on the other side. And other than that, our biggest experience with, with foreign entities are those people who come to us. So in a lot of ways it gives us a fresh view and in other ways we, our isolationism keeps us in ignorance.

I think that there is a change afoot to some extent. And when we talk about a globalization, I'm not talking only about economic globalization. I think that's, that's inevitable. It's, it's occurring. It, it will not stop in the near future.

But there's also globalization of, as we bring in media quicker into the homes, as people get experiences from other people from other countries around them more and more, that Americans are beginning to recognize that we are not quite as isolated or as, as Americanized as we once thought.

Therefore, I think there's a big challenge in, in front of us and the American NGO community is recognizing that. And that is the need for us to spread our interests and our needs as international NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) around the U.S. What is it like for a child in Ethiopia to, on a daily basis? What does she do when she goes to school? What is her day like? What is it like for somebody who's involved in a relief operation? How is it to affect individuals who are in a community who are struggling to plant their seeds because there's a drought going on? What is it like for them? And I think those kinds of stories are the things that the American population needs to hear about. It needs to become a part of our daily experience. As, and therefore the support and the understanding what's happening globally will, will increase.

INTERVIEWER: I wanted to finish up just by shifting gears again. As I mentioned the, the role, is there a role for the U.S. military in the post-conflict peacebuilding process? I mean it's traditionally been tasked with waging war and destroying things. How can it contribute today to peacebuilding in post-conflict societies?

MAYNARD: I think the U.S. military is really taking on a, a big one as a end of the Cold War and to sort of been struggling with their role, and how they see themselves, and with downsizing, and that sort of thing. And in many ways they have done a tremendous job at learning about the humanitarian community. As they've been tasked more and more to engage in, in international affairs--Iraq, Somalia, Rwandas, that type of thing--how is it that we can improve our interaction? And I think there, there's two things.

One is that we need to definitely have clear role divisions. One is where does the military stand? And I, I believe that their best capabilities stand in logistics and security, and that humanitarian operations are not simply handing out food or treating wounds. But there's a very complex process that requires, that requires the experience of experienced human humanitarian individuals who have an understanding of what human rights abuses do and how, how they might be perceived and how they're recognized, and that sort of thing on the ground. And that we have no recognition of what a insecure environment might look like so that that kind of role division is very critical.

On the other hand, we also need to understand much more how the other one operates. And the military has done a tremendous job, the U.S. military, in trying to get to that point. They have set up scenarios and run, run participation programs in which nongovernmental organization'll come in and planned out what they would do under certain conditions. They have sent people to their training. They have seconded military people to nongovernmental organizations to participate in a humanitarian operation. They have really spent the last five years trying to understand where their role is and how they can integrate the most.

Now, I think the question of what we should do with the U.S. military is not been answered. We started out with a bang in Iraq. It was by most accounts a success. We went to Somalia, initially a tremendous success; saved 600,000 lives. And the last part of it, and the so-called mission creep has now tainted it with bad, a bad flavor. So when we get to Rwanda we're limited in our scope. What is the next process? What do we do to establish a consistent and viable role for the U.S. military?

I don't think we've gotten there yet. I think that we need to stick with the logistics and the security notion, but I think that we can evolve that into something that we can count on and not have it always be a piecemeal, ad hoc response to every crisis.

INTERVIEWER: Is there anything else you'd like to add? Just go ahead.

MAYNARD: Not off the top of my head.

INTERVIEWER: Ms. Maynard, thank you very much.

(End of Proceedings)