Image via WikipediaWhere most people see only deprivation and misery, Paul Brinkley sees potential. With luck, business will agree (Business Week)The skyline of the city of Herat, in the westernmost corner of Afghanistan, is dominated by the Qala Ikhtyaruddin, a 700-year-old stone citadel. On a chilly December afternoon, as the sun begins to dip, the citadel's grounds are largely unoccupied. The general public isn't allowed in until renovations to the time-ravaged site are finished. Paid for in part by a $725,000 grant from the U.S. government, the project is scheduled to be completed at the end of 2011.
Paul A. Brinkley isn't the general public. As U.S. Deputy Under Secretary for Defense, he moves freely behind the barricades, ushering a handful of American visitors, including Silicon Valley executives Atul Vashistha and Mike Faith, the heads of Neo Group and Headsets.com, through dark corridors and up steep stairways to the highest reaches of the fortress. The tour comes after a morning of meetings with the provincial governor and the local university's chancellor and students, all of them pushing, along with Brinkley, for the executives to consider a noble and dangerous proposition: opening up shop in Afghanistan. "I've never regretted taking a businessperson to the theater," Brinkley says. "This is about getting their eyes on the problem."
In Herat, Kabul, and cities large and small, Brinkley serves as tour guide, ambassador, fixer, motivational speaker, and leader of the unofficial Afghanistan chamber of commerce. With all of his titles and duties, he prefers to think of himself primarily as a matchmaker, negotiating high-stakes unions between multinational companies like IBM and JPMorgan Chase and Afghan officials and entrepreneurs. Building a culture of business is the only way Brinkley and General David Petraeus, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, believe they can counteract the legendary forces of destruction here—from decades of war and deprivation to the brutal rule of the Taliban and a reliance on opium as a chief export. "It's an infusion of optimism in what can seem like a hopeless situation," Brinkley says. "The Afghans say, 'People actually want to do business with us? Maybe there is something at the end of the rainbow.'"
The Task Force for Business & Stability Operations was launched in 2006 as part of the Defense Dept.'s effort to link military strategy and economic development in Iraq. For four years the task force recruited Western companies in an attempt to modernize Iraq's banking system and reopen factories. Early results were unsuccessful. Security concerns prevented staff from restarting most heavy manufacturing sites, and overseas companies balked at doing business in Iraq because of the very real possibility that their employees could be wounded or killed. A former chief information officer at JDS Uniphase (JDSU) in California, Brinkley joined the Defense Dept. to help with internal business operations. His work in Iraq spurred the creation of the task force. "When we started our work in May 2006," he says, "[Iraq] was in a complete daily deterioration."
The task force ultimately sponsored more than 200 visits by corporate executives and investors, including Honeywell International (HON) Chief Executive Officer David M. Cote and Boeing (BA) CEO James W. McNerney Jr., which generated investment commitments of more than $5 billion, according to task force data.
That doesn't include oil-related investments; Iraq, home to the world's fifth-biggest oil reserves, has, finally, seen some success in reconstructing its energy industry. On Jan. 3 the country agreed to build pipelines across its shared border with Jordan. "The idea of what the military is trying to do is a constructive one," says Isobel Coleman, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "If you're there for the long haul, creating jobs and sustainable businesses is crucial."
With the Iraq project coming to an end, Brinkley shifted his focus in 2010 to Afghanistan, an even more daunting task. More than 30 years of economic and political distress dating to the Soviet invasion of 1979, and spanning the Taliban era and nearly a decade of war, have turned the country into a synonym for hopelessness. Corruption is rampant—accusations reach all the way up to President Hamid Karzai's family—and unlike Iraq, Afghanistan didn't have much of an economic base to begin with: Afghanistan's gross domestic product in 2009 was $26.9 billion, ranking it 110th in the world. Iraq is 65th, with a GDP of $109.9 billion, according to the CIA World Factbook.
In Iraq, thanks in part to Brinkley's efforts, General Electric (GE) is building power plants to meet the country's power shortages; Honeywell opened an office last year to sell equipment to the oil and gas industry; and Daimler (DAI), having created a motor vehicle training workshop in 2008, established a Baghdad office a year later. "Success depends on those iconic companies," Brinkley says. "You augment them with mid-tier companies who are more risk-oriented. Your agility and speed comes from there." Brinkley needs to replicate and expand on the process in Afghanistan, using the military's own spending power to promote local companies and convincing multinationals that Afghanistan is not just a safe place but also a land of real opportunity.
Brinkley and his team allowed a Bloomberg Businessweek reporter to shadow them for five days in December as they went about their Red Bull-fueled, stubbornly optimistic work. Arriving in Kabul on a commercial flight, the task force team and one of two business delegations in the country at the time spent a day in the capital before flying to Herat, then back to Kabul for three more days of tours and meetings. From the natural resources buried in the mountains and valleys where blood is still shed almost daily, to the women-run workshops tucked in corners of Kabul, to the restless students unwilling to become another lost generation, Brinkley sees huge potential. Whether he can convince anyone it's worth the risk is another matter.
With his shaved head, tieless suit, and black leather jacket, Brinkley cuts a distinctly non-Afghan figure. He peppers his conversations with simple phrases such as "Tashakor" (thank you) and frequently puts his right hand over his heart, an Afghan gesture of respect. In meetings, he listens more than he speaks, usually making introductions and then retreating with a self-effacing remark. During an encounter with Herat University's chancellor, he introduces Vashistha and Faith, plugs their Silicon Valley credentials, and then says, "That's my entire contribution, so I'm going to step back."
Brinkley, 44, grew up outside Dallas and earned undergraduate and master's degrees in engineering from Texas A&M University. He is now known, to members of the task force, as "Mr. Brinkley" or "the boss."
Brinkley's pitch to executives starts at home. In the months before the December trip he was in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, and New York—and working the phones in between from his Pentagon office—to make his case. Like any good salesman, he believes that if he can just get the customer onto the showroom floor, he can close a deal. "We tap into something," says Brinkley. "There is a huge desire to support the mission among all Americans. People want to help and are at least willing to take a look at it. We just tell them, 'Come over and see for yourself.' "
Read the rest - http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_03/b4211046076242_page_2.htm
In Iraq, thanks in part to Brinkley's efforts, General Electric (GE) is building power plants to meet the country's power shortages; Honeywell opened an office last year to sell equipment to the oil and gas industry; and Daimler (DAI), having created a motor vehicle training workshop in 2008, established a Baghdad office a year later. "Success depends on those iconic companies," Brinkley says. "You augment them with mid-tier companies who are more risk-oriented. Your agility and speed comes from there." Brinkley needs to replicate and expand on the process in Afghanistan, using the military's own spending power to promote local companies and convincing multinationals that Afghanistan is not just a safe place but also a land of real opportunity.
Brinkley and his team allowed a Bloomberg Businessweek reporter to shadow them for five days in December as they went about their Red Bull-fueled, stubbornly optimistic work. Arriving in Kabul on a commercial flight, the task force team and one of two business delegations in the country at the time spent a day in the capital before flying to Herat, then back to Kabul for three more days of tours and meetings. From the natural resources buried in the mountains and valleys where blood is still shed almost daily, to the women-run workshops tucked in corners of Kabul, to the restless students unwilling to become another lost generation, Brinkley sees huge potential. Whether he can convince anyone it's worth the risk is another matter.
With his shaved head, tieless suit, and black leather jacket, Brinkley cuts a distinctly non-Afghan figure. He peppers his conversations with simple phrases such as "Tashakor" (thank you) and frequently puts his right hand over his heart, an Afghan gesture of respect. In meetings, he listens more than he speaks, usually making introductions and then retreating with a self-effacing remark. During an encounter with Herat University's chancellor, he introduces Vashistha and Faith, plugs their Silicon Valley credentials, and then says, "That's my entire contribution, so I'm going to step back."
Brinkley, 44, grew up outside Dallas and earned undergraduate and master's degrees in engineering from Texas A&M University. He is now known, to members of the task force, as "Mr. Brinkley" or "the boss."
Brinkley's pitch to executives starts at home. In the months before the December trip he was in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, and New York—and working the phones in between from his Pentagon office—to make his case. Like any good salesman, he believes that if he can just get the customer onto the showroom floor, he can close a deal. "We tap into something," says Brinkley. "There is a huge desire to support the mission among all Americans. People want to help and are at least willing to take a look at it. We just tell them, 'Come over and see for yourself.' "
Read the rest - http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_03/b4211046076242_page_2.htm
