Teaching

Teaching Timbuktu

In 1999 my wife Michelle and I moved to Virginia. She started her new job at ChildFund International and I began teaching: first at the Shepherd Center and later at University of Richmond (UR), Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and I was often invited to lecture elsewhere –including as the Commemoration Speaker at the Maggie Walker Governor’s School. Then in 2003, Virginia created the Mali Empire standard of learning for 3rd Graders, and I decided to teach in Elementary Schools. Teaching and materials were needed to help E.S. teachers who had no previous Malian knowledge. My book DJITA is a fun about Mali, and built around twelve exercises for teachers..

As it happens, the Mali SOL creation coincided with a post 9/11 rise in Islamophobia and racism in America, based on ignorance. After the Twin Towers fell in New York in 2001, the first victim of white racist anger was a man wearing a Sikh turban: on September 15th Balbir Singh Sodhi a gas station owner in Mesa, Arizona was murdered by 42-year-old Frank Silva Roque, a man with a low IQ who announced to his buddies that he wanted to ‘kill some towel-heads’: he was condemned to death (later commuted to life imprisonment without parole).

Sikhism, of course, has nothing to do with Islam. Sikhism is a monotheistic religion related to Hinduism. Christianity is a reformed version of Judaïsm; and Islam is a spin-off from Christianity: the Prophet Mohamed (PbuH) was a Unitarian Christian before receiving revelations direct from the Archangel Gabriel (Gibril). According to Wikipedia, on August 4, 2002, less than a year after Balbir's death, his younger brother Sukhpal died while driving his taxicab in San Francisco, apparently killed by a stray bullet from a gang fight. Balbir's son said, "What are you going to do with anger? We like peace and we are peaceful people." Sikhs are peaceful people. Islam means ‘peaceful submission’ to God. What about Christians? How peaceful are Christians?

Jesus was a peacemaker, as the non-violent Reverend Martin Luther King recognized. What happened to the message of Jesus in the rest of American Christianity? Why do so many Americans follow the Old Testament and seem to ignore the teachings of Jesus?

Faced with the ignorance of people like Roque, I decided to call my Mali education program TEACHING TIMBUKTU. Many Americans have heard of Timbuktu, even if they think it is near Kalamazoo in Michigan … or an imaginary place. In fact, Timbuktu is the capital of North Mali, on the bend of the Niger River, a major center of Islamic scholarship since 1100 AD and famous for Sufi humanist peace philosophy. Islam came peacefully to West Africa in the 800s with Tuareg and Arab traders from Morocco, who sold Mediterranean goods and blocks of salt from mines in the Sahara desert. These were exchanged on the banks of the Niger for gold from mines hidden in the south. Two thirds of medieval Europe’s gold came across the Sahara desert from Mali. In the early1300s the Emperor Musa of Mali was said to be the richest person the world has ever known. In 1326 Musa built Jingeraiber, Timbuktu’s famous Friday Mosque which is used today.

The Virginia Institute for Peace and Islamic Studies (VIPIS = Vpeace) was the initial vehicle for Teaching Timbuktu, which I created with VCU students and faculty friends in response to 9/11 and to support the stated desire of VCU to develop Peace Studies and Arabic alongside their strong Religious Studies department. VCU abandoned these ambitions, and Vpeace morphed into Virginia Friends of Mali (VFoM) when Mali’s Prime Minister Ousmane Issoufi Maiga visited Richmond in November 2005 with Ambassador Abdoulaye Diop. The PM wanted to meet 3rd Grade students studying the medieval Mali Empire of Sunjata Keita, the original Lion King, and to admire our Mali exhibit at the Richmond Public Library.

The PM invited Richmond to become the sister city of Ségou, Mali’s second city beside the Niger River. We created the 501.c.3 association VFoM in response to his invitation. The book SISTER CITIES, written by Ana Edwards and myself for our 15th anniversary, tells the fascinating story of these two capital cities and their shared history. President Dwight Eisenhower created the sister city movement after World War II to promote peace through ‘citizen diplomacy’ - we have been practising this peace diplomacy and stimulating civil society activity in Richmond and Ségou with remarkable success for the past 15 years.

Teaching Timbuktu has been VFoM’s education program for schools since 2006, led by strong Richmond women like Ana Edwards, Lydie Alapini Sakponou and Dana Wiggins Rudney, Virginia Union’s Barbara Grey, and VCU professors Patricia Cummins, Kathryn Murphy-Judy, Michelle and myself. More than 25,000 people are believed to have passed through our Mali classes and exhibits in Richmond, Mclean, Arlington, Newport News, Harrisonburg, at the annual Virginia Conference of Social Studies Educators, and in schools throughout Central Virginia. We have received Malian visitors every year since 2006 until the coronavirus pandemic stopped travel. More than 50 Richmonders have visited our sister city of Ségou in the past 15 years, often to dance at the Festival on the Niger River in early February. They are all mentioned in our book Sister Cities.

Though I say myself, I am good at teaching small children. I can hold an audience of 20 or 100 normally-rowdy 8-year-olds with my stories of Mali and my pictures of animals ; although I was once flummoxed when – in a library on Richmond Northside – as I was reading A Baba Wagué Diakité book about Mali to 20 kids aged 7-10 years, an additional group of 5-year-olds came crawling in to sit in on the floor in front of me. Five-year-olds do not read the same story books as ten-year-olds! I have recorded a few stories for the use of teachers in class, that can been used by teachers for all age groups. Here is a link to the VFoM YouTube playlist that features Macky Tall (Malian alter-ego) talking about bogolanfini, camels, goatskin bags, salt & gold trading.

Teaching Terrorism

Following 9/11, the VCU Dean of Humanities asked me to create a course on Terrorism. I was a Visiting Professo rat VCU, already teaching a course on the Modern Middle East. I designed the course during my Christmas holiday. Every terrorism lecture began with a piece of protest music. On Day 1, as the students filed in to take their seats, Bob Marley was singing ‘Buffalo Soldier’ and soon the gray-haired professor was dancing to the reggae beat. It takes a stern face not to laugh when a guy in his 60s is dancing reggae. Students began to giggle, and then the question: ‘What is the story of this song?’ At least one student always knew the answer: ‘Buffalo Soldier’ was the name given by Native Americans to the black soldiers who were sent to kill them. Thus my course on Terrorism began with a discussion of the double-genocide that gave birth to the United States of America: the enslavement of Africans and the murder of Native American tribes. The word ‘genocide’ entered the world’s legal vocabulary during the Nuremberg Trials, when Nazi leaders were hanged for killing six million Jews and other minority groups like Gypsies, Communists and people with physical handicaps. The word also describes what White Men did all over America, in Australia and Tasmania.

Genocide was one of the multiple forms of TERRORISM that we explored in class, in books, on film and through music. Poets, I told my students, are the people who give voice to protest against injustice; and injustice (political and economic) is the source of terrorism. The poets of today are the musicians. I began each class with a protest song from a different country. Students later brought in their own CDs with protest songs. Incidentally, I do not believe there is such a thing as ‘religious terrorism.’ Religous labels are adopted by criminal organizations and political movements for fundraising purposes, or to seem respectable: but waving a religious label does not make someone ‘religious.’

In the Conclusion to my book The Limits of Democracy and the Postcolonial Nation State: Mali's democratic experiment falters, while jihad and terrorism grow in the Sahara, I explain that there is no such thing as a Clash of Civilizations. However, Africa most definitely suffers from the Clash of Corporations: extractive corporations (oil, gas, uranium, copper, coltan….); criminal corporations (international drug mafias smuggling heroin and cocaine, cigarettes and amphetamines, and kidnapping people for ransom); and religious corporations: externally-funded international organisations promoting foreign imperialist ideologies (mainly Christian and Islamic). Few African States have the resources to resist these exploitative foreign Corporations. They may call themselves ‘religious’ ….. but that does not mean they speak the truth.

The class explored definitions of terrorism and the motivations of individual terrorists like Timothy McVeigh, Abu Nidal and Carlos the Jackal. When we delved into Gender Terrorism, we explored whether the USA tolerates systemic bias against women, in a country where one in three women will be harrassed during their lifetime. Our Gender Terrorism week ended with a vote: female students voted unanimously that YES, the USA tolerates violence against women, while nearly all the men disagreed…. suggesting that the women are correct. We moved on to study Ecoterrorism (corporations destroying the environment, and other groups fanatically protecting animals against mistreatment). Weapons of Mass Destruction (nuclear bombs) versus Weapons of Mass Disruption (nuclear melt-downs) illustrated the extreme vulnerabilities of our urban civilization.

We studied the history and culture of organizations like Al Qaida and the IRA, considering the Irish Troubles in detail. Protestant versus Catholic? Not really. The invasion of Ireland by Norman and Anglo-Saxon conquerors from England (starting in the 13th century) reduced Celtic farmers to serfdom. Serf = Slave. When Oliver Cromwell brutally reinforced the conquest in the 1650s, Protestant English-speaking Saxons became the owners and tax-collectors of land stolen from Celtic Gaelic-speakers who happened to be Catholic. The religious shorthand used by journalists conceals economic repression and political exclusion at the root of the Irish Troubles.

In Afghanistan, our study of the Afghan Code of Honor known as pashtunwali very soon made clear that the Taliban are not promoting ‘religious’ rules at all. As an anthropologist who has studied rural Afghan villages, I know that 80% of village religion has nothing to do with Islam. Many Afghan villagers are convinced that the Prophet Mohamed (PbuH) imposed the rules of conservative Pashtun Elders, while I happen to know that the Prophet had a very great respect for women and their education. He would be horrified by the way in which rural Afghan women are treated as mere chattels.

The film Bowling for Columbine introduced the final part of my TERRORISM course, looking at possible defenses and solutions. Among other things, this film shows elementary school children in America being taught to hide under their school desks. Why? Against what possible threat could a school desk provide protection? Evidently none, unless pieces of plaster are falling from the classroom ceiling. Michael Moore’s film concludes that Americans are taught to be afraid. Black Lives Matter is very much a reaction against this culture of fear. People who are afraid, said Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany, will follow their leaders anywhere.

My Terrorism Semester ended with a study of The Patriot Act in three acts: The American Civil Liberties Union presented a guest lecture; the Legal Counsel of the F.B.I. delivered a guest lecture ; and then the two of them participated in a Q&A session for our final amusing hour of discovery, finding enjoyment and enlightenment in their amiable confrontation. This session was open to all faculty and students in political science. I chaired the show, not behaving like a Fox News screaming head but playing the audience for laughter and for education: I was not brain-washing them by spewing Fake News. Nor did I pretend to be objective. ‘If I am interesting at all,’ I told my students on Day 1, ‘it is because of my life experiences = my subjectivity. Anyone who tells you that they are objective is either a liar, or a politician. Or – probably - both. You must work out where I am coming from, and take whatever you find useful in my knowledge and experiences.’

Learning about America through Teaching

I learned a lot from my students and I was a very popular teacher. To a large extent I have been training young people all through my career. The classroom experience was deeply enriching for me. I met Maggie, a former student one day at the Richmond Folk Festival, and she said, ‘You were an awesome professor.’ That is one example of my learning experience: during my British childhood, ‘awesome’ was a word reserved for God. American culture downgrades words, and therefore meanings.

‘Ah, here comes one of my favourite dancers’ I remarked as I was lacing up my dance pumps as the beginning of a Richmond Scottish dance evening.

‘Oh? What has she done to you?’ asked my neighbour.

‘Nothing. I just told you that she is one of my favourite dance partners.’

‘Oh! I thought you meant that you didn’t like her.’ Did I not say the opposite?

Thus words lose meaning and change meaning, of course. Winston Churchill (whose mother was American) famously remarked that the British and the Americans are ‘two nations divided by a common language.’ When my British mother said she disliked an ‘Americanism’ I noticed that it was often an older English expression that had died out in Great Britain and was now returning from America, where it had survived.

In modern American usage, however, many words are degraded. The worst, it seems to me, is self-demeaning language I hear in the African American community. I am appalled when I hear Black American comedians using the expression Motherf***er to refer to themselves or to their neighbours. In West Africa where their ancestors came from, Mothers are revered as Goddesses. Mention of a Mother’s sexual parts is the deepest insult possible, leading inevitably to violence. For a White West African like me, this implies that African Americans have reached a stage of self-derision, even self-hatred, a subconscious rejection of their Motherland heritage and culture that illustrates the damage wrought by slavery and by Virginia’s persistent racism. It is distressing.

Another American distortion is society’s attitude to education. While I have spent three decades trying to improve education in Africa, and fifteen years teaching in Virginia, the Trump years illustrate the degree to which large swathes of US society despise learning and knowledge. Americans – even modest families – forget how privileged they are. Few 3rd Graders in Africa have acccess to a computer or a mobile phone.

Meanwhile, the American education system overemphasizes rewards. In Virnginia’s Elementary Schools, every student receives a certificate: the good students are rewarded for being best in math or reading, while the weakest ones receive a certificate for ‘trying’ or for ‘good attendance.’ While I admire the ambiance of caring and encouragement in American elementary schools, I wonder if a sense of false achievement is helpful. I was beaten with a stick by my teacher in England every time I failed a test - a system that I do not recommend. But if no student ever fails in school, I wonder how they are going to survive in life? Americans all want to be winners, which is unrealistic. And they are taught to expect it, even if they have not achieved the level required.

I quickly learned that 33% of my American undergraduates expected an A … which only 10% of British students ever achieve. So I awarded most students A or B, offering A* to the very best, and C to the weakest. I only ever remember failing two students, neither of whom did any work at all. I was very conscious that most VCU students were working to pay for their own studies, and I adapted my demands to fit their reality. What was most enriching was the variety at VCU: I taught the young and the second-career-seekers, the rich and poor, black and white and brown, male and female and everything in-between.

I have often been asked why the ‘Academe’ seems to be ‘left wing’ in America. My first response is that NOTHING in America is left-wing: Europe is social and the USA is individual. ‘Socialism’ – a mild centrist position in Europe - is considered an insulting word by Americans who would not know how to define it. Social = ‘normal’ in Europe or in Africa where the commmunity comes first. That is alien in America’s dog-eats-dog society, where even the human right of universal access to health care is denied. By an accident of history (the motor car industry) health care in America became linked to employment, irrespective of health needs. This has produced the most expensive and most inefficient health system in the rich world.

American health care is the most expensive, and yet American health is among the worst of rich countries, according to a Time.com article in February 2020 by Anne Case and Angus Deaton of Princeton: ‘The U.S. has lower life expectancy than the other wealthy countries but vastly higher expenditures per person. In 1970, the countries were not very far apart, with American life expectancy not much worse and expenditures not much higher, but other countries have seen faster improvements in health and slower increases in costs. In 2017, the Swiss lived 5.1 years longer than Americans but spent 30% less per person; other countries achieved a similar length of life for still fewer health dollars.’ Four million children in the U.S.A. are said to be deprived of the health care they need.

American poverty is important to me, because I became much involved in the modern American civil rights movement partly through my teaching and also through the relationship bwteeen Virginia and Mali.. According to a 2017 report on the U.S.A. by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, 40 million Americans live in poverty. In the OECD the US ranks 35th out of 37 in terms of poverty and inequality. He writes : ‘I heard how thousands of poor people get minor infraction notices which seem to be intentionally designed to quickly explode into unpayable debt, incarceration, and the replenishment of municipal coffers, I saw sewage filled yards in states where governments don’t consider sanitation facilities to be their responsibility, I saw people who had lost all of their teeth because adult dental care is not covered by the vast majority of programs available to the very poor, I heard about soaring death rates and family and community destruction wrought by prescription and other drug addiction.’

These are things I learned through my teaching research. In addition, I have learned from living in Virginia that racism thrives, and it drives poverty. The gains of the Civil Rights movement have been systematically undermined since the 1980s. Martin Luther King failed. Slavery and Jim Crow have been replaced by mass incarceration which is five times higher in USA than for the average of OECD countries, and which has become a new form of slavery and oppression.

‘American exceptionalism was a constant theme in my conversations,’ writes the United Nations rapporteur. ‘But instead of realizing its founders’ admirable commitments, today’s United States has proved itself to be exceptional in far more problematic ways that are shockingly at odds with its immense wealth and its founding commitment to human rights. As a result, contrasts between private wealth and public squalor abound.’

In my experience, Corporate self-interest is usually the opposite of Society’s interest. Pollution, for example, is a financial saving for private enterprise and a huge social and economic cost for Society. Without government regulation, we get bad health, bad water, bad air, bad medicines and environmental destruction. In the USA I often hear as justification for bad behaviour: ‘Well, it’s not illegal.’ Which simply means that corporate interests have bribed politicians to make it legal. Morality and simple common sense have vanished from many American debates. I worked for eight years in the pharmaceutical industry, so I do know a little about how the corporate world works, and makes money. A lot of industrial profits derive from exploitation of public goods (like roads, or clean water that is often polluted when it leaves a factory) for which corporations pay very little. As one American friend told me: ‘I prefer to live in Europe, where I can enjoy the Human Right to breathe clean air and drink uncontaminated water.’ He must have been watching the film Erin Brokovich.

My second response is that professors have to study and know their subjects, so we do not so easily accept government, NATO and Pentagon propaganda. I have lived and worked in Afghanistan, in the Sahara Desert, in Congo and Nigeria and Sierra Leone. I know that Osama Ben Laden was a Saudi Arab (not an Afghan). He was trained by the CIA and funded by Saudi Arabia. I know that the 9/11 hijackers were nearly all Saudi citizens. Not a single one was Afghan. I saw the World Trade Center towers collapse as if on a demolition site; and I have never been able to understand why 7-WTC collapsed at 5.21pm as if that 47-storey building also was being deliberately demolished. The idea that such a plot was hatched in a cave in the Tora Bora mountains never seemed like a convincing conspiracy theory. I am looking for a better explanation.

As Oscar Wilde remarked : ‘I don’t believe in conspiracies except those that are true…’

Griffin is an American philosophy professor, and his book title is taken from the Year 2000 paper ‘Rebuilding America's Defenses’ produced by the Project for the New American Century, suggesting that a ‘new Pearl Harbor’ was needed to convince American society to allow its military dominance to be imposed on the world. Curiously, one of my students in Richmond told me in late 2001 that his grandfather, a retired army general, had responded to the 9/11 attacks by exclaiming, ‘Good God! They did it!’ before sinking back into his armchair and telling his family that he had said nothing.

It is easy for the Establishment to dismiss ‘Conspiracy Theorists’ – but they are dismissing people who question the conspiracy theory being peddled by a compliant press. Having lived in Afghanistan and in West Africa, I am obviously more aware than most people about local details: that most leaders of so-called Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) are actually criminal kidnappers and drug smugglers controlled by Algerian military intelligence, many of whom were recruited during the Afghan war against the Soviet Union; that Osama Bin Laden was an American conduit for arms to the Mujaheddin; that his bases inside Afghanistan were built by the CIA. My research echoes the published findings of Schindler (American), Keenan (British) and Chauprade (French): that AQIM is more of a ‘false-flag’ drug operation in the Sahara, than a religious movement. Military budgets are inflated when the military opens ‘a new front in the global war on terror’ – GWOT is a concept that I reject. You make war against people or States, not against an abstract word. That is too convenient and very expensive.

The average reader cannot make the same connexions as a specialist: that in the Sahel, in Syria, Yemen, Kurdistan, Libya, we are watching a struggle between Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia for leadership of the Sunni world. Very few American, European or African citizens see the world in this way. There is no reason for them to study these regions, and therefore they absorb the propaganda that the Western press feeds us : 80% of which originates with just corporate-owned three sources: Reuters, AP and AFP. We are ill-informed because we have allowed a plutocracy to replace our democracy. We have achieved government of the 1% by the 1% for the 1%.

Wikipedia style bio

Robin Poulton (born July 23rd 1946) is a British writer, teacher and peace maker. A Senior Fellow of UNIDIR Geneva, Robin has acted as a peace advisor to governments and presidents. He has taught widely, including spells as Visiting Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia and the European Peace University in Stadt Schlaining, Austria.

Founder in 2004 of EPES Mandala Consulting (registered in UK), Poulton retired from international peace consultancy following the Brexit fiasco. He is now writing memoirs about Africa, about his passion for Scottish dancing and music; and editing his peace articles into book form. His latest book (2020) is a short story for peace makers about his work in Cambodia: Peace is Possible: Echanging Weapons for Development and how we disarmed the Khmer Rouge with wit, bluff and balloons.

Dr Poulton has written or edited more than twenty books on development, disarmament and peace issues in Asia and Africa : several in French, one in Italian. His first book (written with his wife Michelle) was Afghanistan Que sais-je? (1981). Then came Putting People First (Macmillan 1988) about NGO development programmes; and a number of UN publications including A Peace of Timbuktu (1998) with a preface by Kofi Annan (French 2nd edition: La Paix de Tombouctou published 1999).

His love of dancing is the subject of his memoir I Dance Therefore I Am.

BACKGROUND AND EDUCATION

Dr Robin-Edward Poulton (known in the family as ‘RE’) was born in 1946, immediately after the Second World War. His father’s family was from Oxford where RE was born and baptised, the product of two Scottish grandparents and two English grandparents.

Great grandfather Sir Edward Bagnall Poulton was Hope Professor of Zoology and Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford for 40 years. His son Edward Palmer Poulton became Chief Physician of Guy’s Hospital; grandson Edward Maclean Poulton (RE’s father) trained at Guy’s and graduated D.M. from Oxford. RE followed his father, grandfather and great-uncle Ronald to Balliol College for an MSc in agricultural and development economics after undergraduate studies (MA Hons 1969) at St Andrews University, Scotland in economics and history.

Robin’s father, Dr E.M. Poulton, joined the World Health Organisation as an expert in public health and Maternal & Child Health (MCH), his career taking him to positions in Egypt, Denmark, Nigeria, Congo, Uganda and Sierra Leone. Robin and his four siblings were therefore raised partly in UK and partly in Africa. RE always intended to follow in his father’s African footsteps.

He spent some months at Fourah Bay college in 1968, pre-preparing Finals, as well as participating in the Sierra Leone UN Student Association (which included – being in West Africa - a lot of dancing).

Before going St Andrews, RE spent 9 months in Tübingen, Germany where he worked at the Tropenheim (sorting and packing pharmaceuticals for mission hospitals in India) and attended the Karl-Eberhardts Universität, becoming fluent in German.

DOCTORAL RESEARCH

Robin and his wife Michelle married in Afghanistan, and completed doctoral degrees in Paris at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales 1979, producing a unique study of Afghan village life in two parallel theses. Michelle’s thesis on Afghan women’s lives was called La Vie Derrière les Murs. Robin’s was called La Vie Economique et Sociale. They gained the highest grade of Mention Très Bien Avec Félicitations du Jury. Their Directeur de Thèse was Henri Desroche, president of the Collège Coopératif de Paris and founder of the Université Coopérative Internationale. Their studies in what would later be called ‘development anthropology’ were directed by anthropologist Paul-Henri Stahl of the Collège de France, and economic sociologist Maxime Haubert of l'Institut d'Etude du Développement Economique et Social (IEDES), l’Université de Paris I - Sorbonne.

STUDENT ACTIVITIES

In Scotland and in Oxford, Poulton was active in Oxfam, Anti-Apartheid Movement, Anti-Vietnam War, Amnesty International, International Planned Parenthood Federation, support for World Refugees and refugee students, Unicef, and particularly the United Nations Student Association (UNSA) of which he was president in St Andrews, in Scotland and later Chairman of the Annual conference and Senior Vice-President in UK under the presidency of Michael Tyler (Cambridge). He was a member of the United Nations Association (UNA) Policy Committee when the organisation was led by David Ennis, Leslie Kirkley and Humphrey Berkeley. RE was a member of the ANC (African National Congress) and SWAPO (South West African People’s Organisation), a disciple of Nelson Mandela. Mentors included Peter Katjavivi of SWAPO, Ruth First, Basil Davidson and the founder of the Iona Community in Scotland, Lord George Macleod.

SANROC, the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee led by Dennis Brutus in London, launched an international sports boycott of racist South Africa, starting with the 1970 cricket series. The 1969-70 Springbok Rugby Football tour began with a match against Oxford University. Poulton who was headed to Oxford, was charged with the launch of a campaign spearheaded by Peter Hain (later Baron Hain) recently exiled from Southern Africa. On Day 1 in Balliol College Robin met Rhodes Scholar David V. Williams, a life-long friend who would one day lead a New Zealand campaign against apartheid sport. On Day 2 he met the Secretary of Oxford UNSA, Michelle Elcoat, whom he later married. Michelle contacted the Oxford associations, and at the end of that week Poulton chaired a meeting in the Balliol common room, addressed by Hugh Geach from Reading University, Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) and the Stop the Seventy Tour Committee (STST). The campaign was launched. Every Springbok rugby match drew ten thousand protesters, and the 1970 South African cricket tour never took place.

At an Anti-Apartheid Movement Trafalgar Square meeting addressed by Rev Trevor Huddleston and John Garnett (among others), a giant MANDALA decorated the balcony of the National Gallery. Each letter was a banner held by one student. ‘M’ was held by Robin Poulton, and ‘A’ was held by Michelle Elcoat: the beginning of a 50-year relationship that may yet celebrate a golden wedding.

CAREER

1970 : After his post-graduate studies in Oxford, Poulton was recruited by UNA as a volunteer to work with the United Nations Development Programme in Afghanistan.

1972 : Two years later, now married, R & M Poulton were hired as a couple to work in a Unicef research-action program designing rural programs for Unicef to reach children most at need. They spent a year in a snow-bound village in the Hindu Kush Koh-i-Baba mountains of Balkh Province, in Northern Afghanistan. Their project was frozen in July 1973 by a Soviet-inspired coup d’état removing the King. Their field work would inspire two doctoral theses and – 20 years later – Unicef programs in Afghanistan.

1973 : back in Europe, Poulton and his agricultural economics degree were hired by Beecham Pharmaceuticals. He moved to Brittany in agri-business and veterinary medicine, as Beecham marketing manager. This allowed him and his wife to prepare their doctoral theses at the EHESS in Paris (completed in 1979).

1980 : recruited by the non-governmental consortium ACORD to direct drought-relief in the Sahel, Poulton ran programs in Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu, in northern Mali. While learning management, African project management had been the career strategy.

1984 : recruited by ActionAidThe Gambia, Robin was equipped by work in Mali + Sierra Leone to function in Banjul. He inherited an unauthorized $2 million overdraft and a team without structure or budgets. He set out a training program and financial strategy that turned the program around. AATG became the country’s biggest private sector employer and a continent-wide reference. Poulton put an end to several scams inside AATG (fuel-theft, protection rackets and a revolutionary political movement), forcing him to fire a few people. Marabouts were hired to kill him. Their magic failed.

1988 : Michelle was appointed Director of Save the Children in Mali. For the next 8 years, Robin Poulton developed civil society and NGOs in Mali and West Africa: as an unpaid trainer for the CCA-ONG (NGO coordinating committee), and later as project manager of a $50 million United States program for private voluntary organizations (PVO) partnering with Malian civil society organizations (CSO). The PVO Co-Financing Project received the best USAID evaluation in West African history.

The 1990-92 popular revolution, with Mali’s transition to democracy, led Poulton into peace-building as he oversaw projects in Timbuktu, Kidal, Menaka and Gao. Through shared objectives, he joined UNDP peacemakers in Bamako: Tore Rose, Ivor Fung, Marie Kagaju and Ibrahim ag Youssouf were preparing the Peace of Timbuktu (the name of our future book) and Africa’s first-ever Flame of Peace (on March 27th 1996).

1995 : Geneva was a wonderful place to live. Michelle was now European Director of Child Fund International (CFI then called Christian Children’s Fund) and leading the Unicef NGO Committee. Sven Loodegaard, Director of UNIDIR - UN Institute for Disarmament Research – offered Robin a desk and a computer at the Palais des Nations, without salary but with a view of Mont Blanc. With income from paid consultancies (Swiss, UN, EU), UNIDIR provided the perfect platform for research, books and for transforming UNIDIR into the world’s leading micro-disarmament research institute. UNIDIR led West African civil society to support the UN, UNDP and Mali’s President Alpha Oumar Konaré : the West African Moratorium on Small Arms was signed by all ECOWAS presidents (including Charles Taylor), contributing to peace in Liberia and Sierra Leone, and later becoming a legally-binding ECOWAS Convention limiting the circulation of illegal weapons.

1999 : Michelle became CFI Vice-President for International Programs in Richmond, Viginia. A non-resident Senior Fellow of UNDIR, Robin joined UNDIR Board Member General Henny van der Graaf in an EU security sector reform project in Cambodia. Robin’s job was to persuade Khmer Rouge villagers to believe in peace and to give up their firearms – people who for 30 years had known nothing but war and genocide. The EU project’s success led Poulton to create EPES Mandala Consulting, a mechanism for promoting peace and influencing international policy by applying Lessons Learned from the field. Alas! EEAS officials have little interest in learning lessons.

2002 : After the 9/11 attacks, Dr Poulton was invited by University of Richmond, Shepherd Center, Virginia Commonwealth University and the European Peace University (2002-2008 for graduates at M.A. level) to teach peace and terrorism studies. VCU also persuaded him to teach an undergraduate course on the Middle East called The Modern Arab World - thereby keeping clear of Israel and of American politics.

2005 : The Virginia Department of Education in 2003 created a Standard of Learning course on the medieval Empire of Mali. With 25 years of working in the area and several books on Mali, Dr Poulton created an education program called Teaching Timbuktu: a peace-based response to American aggression towards Muslims and Afghanistan after 9/11. He decided that teaching 3rd Grade students and teachers would bring added value, after organizing several Virginian museum exhibitions on Malian culture.

In Novermber 2005 Mali’s Ambassador Abdoulaye Diop and Prime Minister Ousmane Issoufi Maiga came to Richmond to meet children learning about Mali. At the end of a speech in VCU, the PM invited Rcihmond to become the Sister City of Ségou, second city of Mali. Dr Poulton founded Virginia Friends of Mali as a 501.c.3 non-profit, to support the Sister City program and teaching about Mali.

The book Sister Cities, written by Ana Edwards and Robin Poulton, traces fifteen years of citizen diplomacy with Ségou and Mali – the fruits of Teaching Timbuktu.

PERSONAL LIFE

Robin Poulton is a Life Member of the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society, a life-long dancer and singer, and a member of various African and Asian friendship associations. In 1972 he married Michelle Jeanne Elcoat in the British Embassy in Afghanistan. Michelle has both French and British nationalities, as do their two biological children Edward Elcoat Poulton (a lawyer specialized in international arbitration) and Catherine Leïla Poulton (a specialist in women and child protection, who works for UNICEF in New York). Robin and Michelle have three grandchildren.

HONORS

2013 : Honorary Citizen of the City of Ségou (Mali)

2009 : U.N. service medal (disarmament in Afghanistan)

2006 : « Kumatigi « or Master of Speech awarded by the Griots of Kela

2002 : Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Mali

2002 : Chevalier de l’Ordre Royal Cambodgien du Samotrei

1999 : Senior Fellow (non-resident) of UNIDIR, United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research

1995 : Elected Member of International PEN

PUBLICATIONS

Personal Memoirs :

2020 en préparation La France que J’aime – mémoire

2019 I Dance Therefore I Am – a Memoir of Scotland, America and Dancing Amazon

2013 OUR Island Story – Poulton-Garnett family memoir co-written and co-edited with Peter Jay, March and July 2013 (2nd edition Nov 2013, privately published)

2008 DDR or 3D4R – Lessons Learned from the Field on Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration – Series No 3 on the EPES Mandala website

2007 Civil Society organizations (CSO) compose the Second Pillar of the State, EPES Mandala Lessons Learned Series No 2 on the EPES Mandala website

1988 Putting people first: voluntary organisations and third world development co-edited with Michael Harris Macmillan, London, http://books.google.com/books?id=tXDaAAAAMAAJ&q=putting+people+first&dq=putting+people+first&hl=fr&sa=X&ei=wQmYUo3CIMvzoASQ6YGgCw&ved=0CEUQ6AEwAw

Books about Asia

2020 Peace is Possible: Echanging Weapons for Development and how we disarmed the Khmer Rouge with wit, bluff and balloons. on Amazon.

2010 (not yet published) Disarming Cambodia – land of beauty, land of smiles, land of hidden terror Building peace in Cambodia after 30 years of war – a book about how we collected weapons of war from the Khmer Rouge and helped produce peace.

1980 Afghanistan Que sais-je ? co-authored with Michelle Elcoat Poulton Presses Universitaires de France, Paris

1979 Village afghan dans le Hindou Kush: traditions sociales et économiques face au développement Robin Edward Poulton and Michelle Elcoat Poulton, thèses de Doctorat, 3 tomes, EHESS et UCI, Paris,

1975 Briefing sur L’Afghanistan – Radio France Internationale

Books about Africa

2021 The Limits of Democracy and the Postcolonial Nation State: Mali's democratic experiment falters, while jihad and terrorism grow in the Sahara. Poulton, Robin Edward and Rafaella Greco Tonegutti. (2016. Mellen Press: Lewiston NY & Lampeter, UK.) Second Edition, May 2021 on Amazon

2020 Sunjata – Children of the Mali Empire ~ Then and Now; Stories about Malian Children (some of whom grow up) Second Edition, February 2020 on Amazon

2019 Sister Cities: A story of friendship from Virginia to Mali: Richmond in America and Segou in West Africa: the first ten years of citizen diplomacy and international friendship Brandylane, Richmond, VA

2019 Paroles sur les Crises au Mali et Les Limites de la Démocratie - Expériences et Analyses pour Favoriser la Paix. Bamako : La Sahélienne and Amazon.

2013 Silenzio su Bamako. Il golpe del Mali e l'intervento armato, co-authors Raffaella Greco & Robin Poulton Rome: Eds Ruitini,

2013 Briefing on Mali and the Sahara at http://murteza.tumblr.com/post/27429522375/briefing-on-mali-and-the-sahara

2011 Djita, a Malian girl from Virginia (French & English) second edition AuthorHouse publications, Bloomington, Indiana.

2009 Djita, a Malian girl from Virginia (French & English) Virginia Friends of Mali, Richmond & Segou, Dec 2009

2006 Bound to cooperate – Conflict, Peace and People in Sierra Leone written by leaders of civil society in Sierra Leone, second edition; co-edited with Anatole Ayissi UNIDIR, Geneva,

2006 The role of women for peace building in Somalia: lessons learned and strategies proposed Essay written with Ms Kawther Elmi:; EPES Mandala Lessons Learned Series No 1

2003 (not yet published) Leila’s Love of Learning the story of a girl who wanted to go to school in Timbuktu - translated from the French/Bambara of El Haj Mamadou Haidara

2000 Bound to cooperate – Conflict, Peace and People in Sierra Leone written by leaders of civil society in Sierra Leone, co-edited with Anatole Ayissi UNIDIR, Geneva,

1999 Collaboration internationale et construction de la paix en Afrique de l’Ouest: l’exemple du Mali UNIDIR, Geneva, co-authored with Ibrahim ag Youssouf and Jacqueline Seck

1999 La Paix de Tombouctou: gestion démocratique, développement et la construction d'une paix africaine 2ème édition française (réactualisée) avec préface de Kofi Annan, UNIDIR, Geneva, 1999

1998 A Peace of Timbuktu: democratic governance, development and African peacemaking, with a preface by Kofi Annan, UNIDIR, Geneva,: launched by the Secretary-General 17 March 1998 in Geneva; co-authored with Ibrahim ag Youssouf

1989 Femmes, Entreprises et Développements ACTES d'un séminaire UCI co-edited with Guy Bédard, Hallassy Sidibé. ASSCOD - Archives des sciences sociales du développement 1989 vol 1, Collège Coopératif, Paris et Université Coopérative Internationale Paris,

1983 Expériences coopératives de Bourem, Mali co-edited with Hallassy Sidibé, AMRAD et UCI, pour ACORD, mai 1983

Publication basé sur une cassette d’entretiens avec les coopérateurs, émanent d’un processus de recherche-action dans la Région de Gao (Mali)

Association malienne de recherches-actions-développements (Bamako) Université Copérative Internationale (Paris); ONG ACORD (London)

Journalism

Starting in 1990, Poulton became a columnist in a number of newspapers :

The Guardian Weekly; Cauris (Bamako); Tarik (Bamako); The Analyst (Monrovia); The Nation (Lagos); The Comet (Lagos) ; and occasional other articles for Le Monde Diplomatique; West Africa; Jamana. I have been interviewd often on BBC, RFI, Al-Jazeera, NPR WRIR & WCVE, and African radio/TV stations.

Dr Poulton is a widely-read author specialising in peace, disarmament and development issues, as well as aspects of West European and West African culture. He is a member of the Malian and Swiss Romande centres of International PEN and of the TRANSCEND Peace Journalism network. Because of his professional obligations with governments and the UN, Poulton has used various pseudonyms including Wangrin, Tall, and – especially for the Guardian Weekly – Robert Lacville.

Major reports for UN, EU and other agencies

2015 : Re-enforcement of regional peace and democratic governance in Central Africa – EU Gabon

2014 : Design for civilian disarmament and a peace mouvement in Mali – UN / MINUSMA Bamako

2013 : Manuel pour La Recherche-Action – une méthodologie participative pour assurer la redevabilité externe dans le cadre de la Réforme de la Police Nationale Congolaise – DfID Kinshasa

2012 : Security Sector Reform and Sexual Violence in the Congolese Police in DRC – DfID Kinshasa

2011 : Results-Oriented Monitoring and Evaluation of peace/development projects in SE Nigeria - EU

2010 : €70 mil project design for Nigeria’s fight against drugs and organised crime – EU

2010 : Evaluator of ECOWARN early warning system for conflict prevention – ECOWAS /Austria

2010 : Evaluation of Assistance to Justice in post-conflict Burundi – Belgium / DfID

2009 : Program design for reducing trans-Atlantic arms and drug smuggling to Europe - EU

2009 : Evaluation of IANSA international action small arms control network - DfID

2009 : Evaluator of the DIAG program to disarm Afghan private militias – UNDP Kabul

2008 : Design of civil society projects to relaunch the peace economy of Liberia – UNDP Monrovia

2007 : Lessons Learned from the Afghan disarmament program 2003-2006 – UNDP / Japan

1999-2006 : EU-ASAC project for SSR, weapon managemnt and disarming the Khmer Rouge – EU

1998 : Assessment of small arms and risk of violence in Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast - UN

1994-1999 : Mali peace and ECOWAS arms and negotiations – UNIDIR / UNDP Geneva & Bamako

RESUME en français de la Biographie du Dr Robin Edward Poulton

POULTON a passé presque 40 ans à travailler pour et au Mali

Le Dr Poulton – dit Macky Tall - est arrivé au Mali en 1981 pour prendre la direction du programme ACORD dans les régions de Gao et Tombouctou, luttant contre les effets de la sécheresse. Elevé en Afrique (Egypte Nigéria, Ouganda, Sierra Leone) par un père britannique médecin des Nations Unies, il a passé une bonne partie de sa vie en Afrique. Il a toujours un domicile à Daoudabougou (Bamako) où il assure l’éducation d’enfants nés sous sa protection et de certains amis décédés.

Economiste rural ayant 37 années d’expérience professionnelle dans les projets de développement et dans la réinsertion des adultes et des jeunes en Afrique, M. Poulton a travaillé dans les secteurs privé (pharmaceutique; agri-business; bureau de consultation), publique (PNUD, USAID, Union Européenne, multiples évaluations et formations à travers l’Afrique) et social (ACORD, ActionAid, Oxfam et appui à de nombreuses ONG africaines et américaines). Plusieurs ONG maliennes l’ont eu comme parrain, formateur, conseiller. Il travaille toujours avec réalisme et dans un esprit de la recherche-action, cherchant à améliorer la condition humaine, la paix, l’harmonie communautaire et l’éducation des femmes.

Auteur d’une vingtaine de livres - et de deux cents articles sur le Mali - Poulton jouit d’une grande réputation en Afrique occidentale pour sa promotion de la paix et de la société civile. Il perçoit la Société Civile comme étant le Deuxième Pilier de l’Etat africain, celui qui assure un meilleur travail des quatre autres piliers: l’Exécutif, la Législature, la Justice et le Militaire. Spécialiste en gouvernance et en partenariats avec les organisations de la société civile (OSC), Macky Tall a pratiqué le dialogue en divers pays en voie de développement, de désarmement et en transformation des conflits. Il avait contribué à promouvoir le Moratoire de la CEDEAO sur les Armes légères et de petit calibre, renforçant la réputation du Mali comme tête-de-fil des pays africains pour la paix aux Nations Unies. Grâce en partie à ses éfforts à l’UNIDIR à Genève, le Mali avait été élu au Conseil de Sécurité de l’ONU en 2000-2001.

Le Dr Poulton a été nommé Chevalier de l’Ordre national du Mali pour son travail dans la professionalisation et la démocratisation des ONGs nationales pendant les années 1990, ainsi que pour sa contribution aux dialogues onusiens en faveur de la paix. Il a traduit les leçons de l’expérience malienne (le Modèle malien) aux Libéria, Sierra Leone, Guinée Bissau, Burundi, Cameroun, RDC, etc. sous étiquette onusienne.

Maitre de Recherches de l’UNIDIR – Senior Fellow à l’Institut des Nations Unies pour les recherches sur le désarmement - Poulton est reconnu comme expert en matière de micro-dèsarmement, DDR et la réforme du secteur sécuritaire. Il a pratiqué au Cambodge et en Afghanistan, de même qu’en Afrique. Il a été décoré par le Roi du Cambodge pour son travail dans la paix et le désarmement dans ce pays (1999-2006).

En novembre 2005, le Dr Poulton (alors associé à la Virginia Commonwealth University) deviendra Président-Fondateur d’une association aux USA appelée Virginia Friends of Mali (VFoM) – les Amis du Mali en Virginie. Ayant cédé la présidence, il reste membre du Bureau Exécutif.

Gràce aux efforts de la VFoM, en septembre 2009 la ville de Segou sera jumelée avec Richmond, Virginie: chaque année depuis 2009, Richmond reçoit la visite du Maire de Ségou avec sa délégation. De nombreux projets et publications ont été réalisés à Ségou comme à Richmond dans le cadre de ce partenariat…. La prolongation de 400 années d’histoire partagée.

Education et honneurs :

Institution et date QUALIFICATION OBTENUE

Mairie de SEGOU 2013 NOMME CITOYEN D’HONNEUR DE LA VILLE DE SEGOU

Haute société initiatique des griots de Kangaba (Mali), spécialistes de la transformation des conflits 2006 NOMME ‘KUMATIGI’ = MAITRE DE LA PAROLE pour son travail sur l’histoire de la paix au Mali.

European Peace University, Austria 2002-2008 VISITING PROFESSOR IN TERRORISM AND PEACE

Virginia Commonwealth University, USA 2002-2004 VISITING PROFESSOR IN INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

Présidence de la République du Mali 2002 NOMME CHEVALIER DE L’ORDRE NATIONAL DU MALI

Gouvernement royal du Cambodge 2002 NOMME CHEVALIER DE L’ORDRE ROYAL DE SAMOTREI

Université Coopérative Internationale (Paris) 1980-1996 PROFESSEUR-TUTEUR EN RECHERCHES-ACTIONS

Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Université de Paris, France (Collège coopératif de Paris) juin 1979 Doctorat du 3e Cycle en Sciences sociales du développement avec Mentions ‘très bien’ et ’félicitations’

Balliol College, Oxford University, Royaume Uni 1969-1970 MSc diplôme supérieur en économie agricole des pays en voie de développement

St Andrews University, Ecosse, R.Uni. 1965-1969 MA Hons Economie (1ere classe) et Histoire (2.1 classe)

Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone 1968 Certificat d’études pendant 1 semestre (économie)

Karl-Eberhardts Universität Tübingen, Allemagne 1865 Certificat d’études pendant 1 semestre (germanistik)