The working group met at Larry Roeder’s home on Saturday, February 22^th from 1-4:30pm and agreed to meet again on March 14 at 1pm.  The address  for that meeting will be the home of Mustafa and Zahra Omar.  25485 Carrington Drive, South Riding, VA 20152.   There are now 25 participants in the Working Group, either by email or in meetings.

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I.   Report of the February 22nd meeting

1.  After introductions, the first part of the discussion focused on PowerPoint presentations on the following topics.  Each of these discussions was seen as the opening of a series of talks

• Somalia: (facilitated by Mustafa and Zahra Omar   Mustafa presented a detailed PowerPoint and DVD film that illuminated the history of Somalia in order to provide a basic understanding of the current conflict and national character, in particular discussing the variety of national aspirations and challenges faced by Somalis.    The group agreed that further discussion as essential that a pilot project that further refined the nature of the land should be developed.   Many Somali and Somali Americans live in the Washington area, and humanitarian NGOs that work in Somalia are also based here.  Larry and Mustafa were asked to facilitate attracting speakers from those communities.  There was also a long discussion of how US tax dollars are spent in Somalia, which led to talking about CAP, an appeals procedure of the United Nations that can be sued to track how funds are spent and by whom.

• Afghanistan  (facilitated by James Hickman)  Jim provided a very detailed discussion of the conflict in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, noting that struggle is asymmetrical and that most Americans have little understanding of the Taliban of Al Qaeda, nor what success means to America and the local population and how those visions might be reconciled.  Tim recommended that we link our discussion with other local and national foreign policy groups.  No discussion proceeded on a pilot project; but this is expected to emerge in the net group meeting.

• Restoring America's Image  (facilitated by Tim Buchholz):   Tim’s presentation was about how the US could regain its global reputation after 8 years of steady decline. Starting off, the presentation set benchmarks for the US reputation by taking a quick look at what the US reputation was before the Bush administration. Then we examined some of the potential causes of decline, the resulting the timeline, and characteristics of the decline. This led to a discussion of the US reputation that the Obama administration inherited and why the US has been under attack. We looked the progress that has been made since the election talked about ways that the group can help regain our good reputation. A “straw man” of goals was suggested, including the reduction of cultural ignorance and spreading democracy through positive examples in the US. We concluded with ideas to promote cultural understanding in Loudoun and beyond and provide input into the administration that would help to repair our reputation.  There was also a discussion about how the principles in this report might be applied to pilot projects by the Somalia and Afghan discussion topics.

2.  Following the main discussions, the group also examined a recent statement by the Secretary of State on the balance of human rights, economics and national security strategy while on a trip to China.  This generated a great deal of dialogue, with the group requesting Larry to develop a letter asking for clarification.   This is under development.  For a link to email discussions on this, see the China Link.

3.  Basant also recommended that a topic of discussion might be to examine impressions of Islamic women immigrants by themselves and non-Muslims.  What does this mean for cultural diversity an tension, locally and internationally?

4.  A brief discussion was held on the use of the web by the group, it being agreed to develop a mix of Ning (now being used by the Loudoun County for Obama, as well as MBO and this website.   There was a call for a technical group to flesh out this issue for future consideration.

5.  Basant was invited by Larry to help facilitate group meetings. 

6.  The group ended by agreeing to meet on March 14th.  This meeting will be at the home of Zahra and Mustafa Omar.

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