UN - Origin of Failed Culture?

There are two UN reports on Arab Human Development. I don't think they
are freely available online but the presskit summaries are linked
below. I've also included a link claiming the "AHDR team considers
culture "the soul of development,"", so it's possible I constructed
"failed culture" by combining the failure of development with it's
"soul". Still trying to find the term.

And two other links on failure.

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Arab Human Development Report 2002
Creating Opportunities for Future Generations:
http://www.undp.org/rbas/ahdr/englishpresskit2002.html

Arab Human Development Report 2003
Building a Knowledge Society:
http://www.undp.org/rbas/ahdr/englishpresskit2003.html

**

http://www.merip.org/mero/mero072602.html

"SOUL OF DEVELOPMENT"?

The AHDR team [2002 I think] considers culture "the soul of
development," but only one out of 178 pages discusses Islam, and there
is seemingly no one representing a religious background or perspective
on the research committee. There is no discussion of debates among
Muslims (and among Muslim women) on women, though women's status is
perhaps the main concern of the Report. Nor does the AHDR discuss the
crucial medical and educational services provided by religious
organizations, although it appears from press interviews that the
authors intended this omission to be a backhanded critique of them.

At the same time, the authors advocate that "all key stakeholders
should be represented in government and education." In many of the
countries of the Arab world, however, it is socio-religious movements
that offer the political alternative to the state and provide many
social services the state does not. Islamist movements, and the
reasons for their success, must be addressed in any attempt to forge
ahead with policies of reform advocated by the authors of the AHDR.

*

The following blog pointed me to the second link
http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2002/09/Whoisourenemy.shtml

Spotting the Losers: Seven Signs of Non-Competitive States
RALPH PETERS
http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/parameters/98spring/peters.htm

The Seven Factors

These key "failure factors" are:

1. Restrictions on the free flow of information.

2. The subjugation of women.

3. Inability to accept responsibility for individual or collective
failure.

4. The extended family or clan as the basic unit of social
organization.

5. Domination by a restrictive religion.

6. A low valuation of education.

7. Low prestige assigned to work.

**

It seems to me that anytime you place the role of women so high, the
critique, and thus the blame for failure, is inevitably and unarguably
cultural.

Of course most of the rest seem so too. And remember the UN report was
labelled a reprot by Arabs for Arabs. At some level then, isn't it the
Arabs themselves, and not us is the occident contra Said, who
constructed the terms of this debate?