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Rice price decreases while edible
oil goes up slightly
F.M. Masum
The prices of both coarse and fine rice has started coming
down by Tk 1-2 per kg at different retail and wholesale
markets in the capital yesterday while price of edible oil
has gone up further in the capital and elsewhere the
country.
Traders said that the price would come down continuously
in the coming days as the arrival of much anticipated Boro
rice would help the price to decline and the sufferings of
the people would be relieved. But defying the government
measures the price of edible oil has gone up further in
the city markets. The prices of vegetables have come down
sharply and prices of other of other daily commodities
remain unchanged.
Meanwhile, in the retail markets the price is coming down
slowly while in the whole sale market the price has gone
down significantly and the price of fine rice also came
down slightly in both retail and wholesale market.
Yesterday, coarse rice like Lata was selling between Tk 32
and Tk 33 per kg, Pari Tk 32 and Tk 33 per kg, fine
quality Najirshail Tk 39 and Tk 43, miniket at Tk 38 and
Tk 43 per kg. Besides, a kg of coarse rice like Swarna,
Parija and BR 28 was selling for Tk 33 to Tk 37 on Friday
while in the last week the price was between Tk 34 to Tk
38 per kg.
Visiting different kitchen markets in the capital
yesterday, the price of coarse rice came down by Tk 100
per maund and that of fine rice also went down by Tk 60-Tk
70 per maund. Meanwhile, the price of edible oil and
lentils also rose as yesterday lentils was selling at Tk
95 per kg and in the retail markets, Soyabean was selling
at Tk 103 per litre.
But the price of chicken (broiler) has set a new record as
yesterday it was selling at Tk 120 per kg. When contacted
with a chicken traders by this correspondent to know the
reason behind the sudden abnormal price hike of chicken
broiler, he said, " the supply is not enough against the
huge demand and people have started buying chicken in
large number after the recovery of the industry which was
damaged by the recent bird flue."
Yesterday, Green chilli was selling at Tk 10 per kg. The
price of various items of fish is still at their high as
yesterday Ruhi was selling at Tk 180-220 per kg, Hilsha at
Tk 300 per kg. Beef was selling at Tk 180 per kg.
Yesterday, both imported and local onion was selling at Tk
per kg, imported lentils at Tk 85, flour at Tk 43 per kg.
Potato was selling at Tk 13, cucumber at Tk 14, Patal at
Tk 24 per kg tomato at Tk 16, Korola at tk 20 per kg, bean
at Tk 24 per kg.
Home Adviser’s remark about Hasina’s release will
affect the formal dialogue
Indoor movement will spread on the street across country,
says AL leaders
Staff Correspondent
Following Home Adviser's remark about the release of
detained Awami League President Sheikh Hasina, the AL on
Friday said if the government does not release her, the
formal dialogue between government and the party would not
bring any fruitful result and next general election would
not be held in a free, fair and impartial manner.
Awami League presidium members Amir Hossain Amu, Abdur
Razzak, Tofael Ahmed, Suranjit Sen Gupta and Matia
Chowdhury said there is no alternative to release Sheikh
Hasina. They said this while inaugurating the mass
signature campaign at Bangabandhu Avenue in the city
organized by Jubo League, a front organisation of Awami
League.
"After the informal dialogue with the government, we had
hoped that the stalled parliament election would be held
as per Election Commission's road map. But Home Adviser
Matin's comment regarding release of our party president
created confusion and uncertainty. If the government does
not clear its stand about detained Hasina, no initiative
taken by the government for defusing gap between political
party and the government for holding general election,
will come into force," they added.
They said through such campaign, demand for release of
Sheikh Hasina will be turned into a mass demand.
"There is no alternative to free Sheikh Hasina. If the
government does not release Sheikh Hasina, the movement
from the indoor will spread on the street across the
country. The people would no longer tolerate the
government's dithering over the release of the former
prime minister. Don't do anything that people are
compelled to go for mass movement. The sooner Sheikh
Hasina is released from prison, the more the nation will
benefit from it," they cautioned.
"While the government is not taking action against the
leaders of the four-party alliance responsible for
inviting January 11 in 2007, known as 1/11, the government
is hatching conspiracy by filing false cases against
Sheikh Hasina in bid to keep her behind bars," they
alleged.
About price hike of essentials especially food grain, they
said the country is passing famine like situation as many
people are starving.
Hafiz
likely to face show cause notice as to ‘why he should not
be expelled’
Hannan calls him to step down
Taib Ahmed
The dissident BNP leader Maj (retd) Hafiz Uddin Ahmed, who
is now leading the reformist camp as the acting Secretary
General, is likely to face a show cause notice as to "why
he should not be expelled for his anti-party activities."
According to competent sources, the jailed Begum Khaleda
Zia has very much been aggrieved with the activities as
well as the statements of Maj (retd) Hafiz. Towards the
beginning, Begum Zia thought that Hafiz might return to
the right track with normalcy in the political environment
in the country. But now she is tossing up an idea of
whether Hafiz can be expelled.
"His (Hafiz) arrogant statements and defiant attitude and
thus his activities have irritated Begum Khaleda Zia and
she through her counsel or through the party secretary
general can soon serve him with a show-cause notice as to
why he should not be expelled," one of the counsels of
Begum Khaleda Zia told this correspondent.
Party workers of different level have also started raising
their demand for expulsion of Saifur and Hafiz. In all
recent meetings at the Nam residence of Khandoker Delwar
Hossain the issue of expelling Hafiz was discussed whereas
outside the meeting venue, hundreds of party workers
chanted slogans demanding expulsion of Saifur Rahman and
Hafiz Uddin Ahmed from their respective party posts.
Sources, however, said, Begum Zia is not in favour of
expelling Saifur Rahman right now.
Two counsels of Begum Zia, --Nawshad Zamir and Masud
Talukder-are likely to meet the detained BNP Chairperson
any time today (Saturday) where they might discuss the
issue.
Meanwhile, BNP Chairperson's Adviser Brig (retd) ASM
Hannan Shah on Friday called upon M Saifur Rahman and Maj
(retd) Hafiz to step down from their respective posts to
pave the way for reuniting the party.
"If they are willing to reunite the party, I would urge
Hafiz to stay away from his "non-
existent" post of acting secretary general" Hannan Shah
said, adding, "Ailing Saifur Rahman cannot afford to lead
the party." "If the proposal is accepted, reformist
leaders will return to the mainstream of BNP," he said.
About the progress of the party unity, Hannan Shah said,
"M Saifur Rahman over phone proposed to me to form a new
committee other than existing two committees to run the
party in absence of Begum Khaleda Zia."
However, Hafiz denied any possibility of stepping down
from his posts saying, "Hannan Shah cannot order to do so
as he is not senior to me. Only Khandoker Delwar can order
me as he is my senior."
He said everyone in BNP wants unity and it is possible if
all could sit together across the table without setting
pre-conditions saying, "We want unconditional unity of the
party".
Government's
hard-line against ICM forces them to cancel protests
Staff Correspondent
Following the government's hard-line against staging
demonstration and bringing out procession around the
national mosque, Islamic Constitution Movement (ICM) and
other Islamic political parties suspended its agitation
programme.
However, around two thousand activists of different
Islamic political parties started gathering at the north
gate of the national mosque after Jumma prayer for
bringing out a procession protesting the national women
development policy 2008. But when they saw a heavy
contingent of law enforcers equipped with firearms and
water cannons roaming around the mosque, they didn't dose
to march ahead.
Meanwhile, Law Adviser Major General MA Matin (Retd)
warned the Islamic political parties that stern action
would be taken against any unlawful activities.
Earlier on April 11, Islamic political parties after
offering Juma prayers asked the devotees to offer special
prayer after Juma on Friday, April 18 for immediate fall
of some advisers of present caretaker government and stage
demonstration and bring out procession demanding
cancellation of the government's decision to ensure equal
inheritance of the parents' property by the women. They
also announced the holding of a grand rally of "Ulema
Mashaikh" at Engineers Institute of Bangladesh on May 4.
Soon after the deployment of law enforcers, Shaikhul Hadis
Allama Azizul Haque Ameer of Khelafat-e-Majlish, Syed
Rejaul Karim Ameer of Islami Shansontantra Andolon and
Shah Ahmed Ullah Ashraf Ameer of Khelafat Andolon at an
emergency press briefing suspended their scheduled
programme and demanded immediate removal of Women and
Children Affairs Adviser Rasheda K Chowdhury.
They said if the government wants to amend the law it will
have to be on the basis of the Holy Quran. "If the
government doesn't follow the Holy Quran we will go for a
tougher movement against the women's development policy,"
they added.
Finance
Adviser suggests factory owners to look after workers’
welfare
Staff Correspondent
Finance Adviser AB Mirza Aziz on Friday requested the
entrepreneurs to come forward for helping the workers and
introduce rationing system to overcome the food crisis.
The Finance Adviser was speaking at the inaugural ceremony
of the Alumni Day of Institute of Business Administration
of Dhaka University held at the Radisson Water Garden
Hotel in city.
"You (entrepreneurs) can make contribution by promoting
culture by corporate social responsibility particularly a
culture of looking after the welfare of workers.
Government can't provide ration only for industrial
workers, provide for whole social group. Many of the
enterprise who has the significant profit can assume
greater responsibility in the area of workers welfare. So
you should introduce rationing system for the workers,"
Aziz said.
When asked about Aziz comment about introducing of
rationing system, the entrepreneurs said government should
introduce the rationing system.
"Responding to the government call, the owners of three
garments industry came forward to introduce ration. But
centering the rationing system, the owners of other
garments industry had to face various problems. While the
big entrepreneurs can continue the system in a particular
time but it is impossible for the small entrepreneurs to
introduce rationing system" they said, adding only it is
possible for the government to introduce the rationing
system.
Tributes
paid to Hazrat Abdul Kader Jilani
BSS, Dhaka
Speakers at a discussion on
Friday paid rich tributes to Hazrat Abdul Kader Zilani
(RA0 calling him the pioneering figure in Muslim
resurrection in the middle age as Fateha-e-Yazhaham was
observed in the country marking the death anniversary
great Muslim saint.
"The Islamic spirit witnessed its revival with the
preaching of Hazrat Abdul Kader Zilani," said leading
spiritual personality Syed Mainuddin Ahmed Maizbhandari at
one of the functions in the capital organized to mark the
day.
Syed Mainuddin, also a descendent of Prophet Muhammad (SM)
and Abdul Kader Zilani reviewed the life and works of the
Muslim saint and said, "The entire Muslim world is
indebted to him." "He is a source of inspiration for the
distressed humanity and people who are in pursuit of
knowledge," Syed Mainuddin told the function also featured
by a milad mahfil, zikr and discussions.
Anjuman-e-Rahmania Maizbhandaria organized the function at
Rahmania Mainia Khanka Sharif at Uttar Khan while it was
also addressed, among others, by Shahjada Syed Saifuddin
Ahmed Maizbhandari and Maulana Nurul Islam Jamalpuri.
Special prayers were offered at the function seeking
eternal blessings for peace and progress of the country,
unity of Muslim community and fraternity among the
mankind.
Nor’wester
damages boro
Staff Correspondent
A 65 to 70 kilometer nor'wester on Thursday night battered
many villages of Kurigram and Shariatpur districts
including sadar and left more than 100 people injured,
destroyed over 8000 houses including educational
institutions, damaged boro crops and uprooted trees.
Hundreds of storm-hit people are now living under the open
sky. The storm left a trail of devastation at Kurigram and
Shriatpur. The nor'wester started at about 9.20 pm and
lasted for around 15 to 20 second, Met office sources
said.
Due to the nor'wester, power supply was cut off plunging
the whole area into darkness. People of the region are
still without electricity till filing of the report on
Friday night.
Besides road communication from the affected areas to
other districts came to a halt as hundreds of roadside
trees fell down on the highways. A good number of long
distance buses remained stranded on the highways.
Back Page
Unemployment
Creating frustrations among educated young
Amena Khatun Urmee
Frustrations and uncertainty
grip the higher educated youths of the country as they are
failing to engage themselves in work due to serious job
crisis in recent days.
On the other hand, many educated persons have already
crossed their age eligibility for jobs. During the last
one year hundreds of thousands higher educated youth after
completing Bachelor and Masters degree are either
unemployed or underemployed and their numbers are
increasing alarmingly as there is but little opportunity
for creating new jobs.
Indicating the present job crisis Shumi, a fresh post
graduate from Dhaka University told TBT correspondent that
"I need a job to sustain in the city. Soon after my
result, I have been applying for various jobs but I am yet
to get any response from any organistion. On the other
hand, my certificate age is going to expire as days go by.
As I obtained the highest degree, I want to do something.
But now I am frustrated. What can I do? What should I do?
I don't know."
"The numbers of graduates are increasing every year but
employment opportunities are not being created
proportionately causing frustration, moral degradation
among us as we are trying our best to be self dependent.
If employment opportunity is not created, many of us will
be involved in various anti-social and criminal
activities" expressing utter resentment a group of job
aspirants told The Bangladesh Today yesterday.
In search of jobs, educated persons in large scale from
across the country are streaming to different metropolitan
cities including capital Dhaka but new employment
opportunity is not these as the government and
non-government organizations can hardly absorb one-third
of the new job seekers due to low investment level, low
employment generation and poor economic growth.
According to sources as one million job seekers are
entering into the job markets every year, but employment
opportunities are not being created. As a result problems
are becoming more and more acute. There are no indications
of employment scenario improving in the immediate future.
Shopping
malls mushroom in city
Economists suggest decentralising
wealth, power, investments
UNB, Dhaka
Dhaka, one of the world's worst mega city of over 10
million people, continues to see a chaotic growth of its
skyline with multistoried shopping malls added to the old
ones almost every month targeting the neo middle class.
There is hardly any locality in the city where there is no
multistoried shopping complex although only a handful of
people has the money to go shopping. A good number of
multistoried markets have sprung up from Malibagh to
Moghbazar intersections while some others are under
construction. There are also some schools and residential
apartments on Eskaton Road, a busy commercial street where
there should not be any apartments or educational
institutions. "Once there was only one prominent shopping
complex, 'Mouchak Market', in the area. Seeing its success
in attracting huge middle-class shoppers everyday, another
multistoried shopping complex, 'Century Arcade', was
constructed a few blocks west off Mouchak Market only to
be marked by failure," said a permanent resident of Bara
Moghbazar. "Even then more multistoried shopping complexes
were built from Malibagh to Moghbazar, including one on a
land owned by a former President."
He went on: "Let alone Malibagh-Moghbazar area, posh
Dhanmondi, Gulshan and Banani, which were developed as
residential areas, have also turned out to be either
commercial or semi-commercial areas, denying the residents
a peaceful civic life." Visits to a number of roads in
Dhanmondi, including roads no. 5, 6, 11, 12, 13, 14 and
15, reveal that there are nearly 20 schools, 12 hospitals
and an umpteen number of commercial establishments and NGO
offices in the area. A former Rajuk official, wishing
anonymity, said such multistoried buildings were being
built in increasing numbers in flagrant violation of the
rules and the builders often encroach upon nearby
footpaths.
However, there are cases against many builders for
violating the rules. Sources said several thousand such
cases are pending with the High Court as the defenders
went to the court seeking stay orders. Rajuk and PWD rules
require builders to set aside a 23-sqm parking space for a
200-sqm commercial building and in case of shopping
complexes 23 sqm for every 100 sqm.
According to a study conducted by Consumers' Association
of Bangladesh (CAB), the lifestyle expenditure of the
people increased by 16.78 percent in 2007 against 13.52
percent in the previous year.
Private educational institutions not following Govt
Regulations
Staff Correspondent
The authorities of thousands of non-government English
medium schools and colleges are running the educational
institutions, defying government rules in this regard.
Despite government instruction to strictly follow the
relevant rules and regulations, almost all of the private
English medium educational institutions are not abiding by
the rules properly, sources in the Secondary and Higher
Secondary Education Department said.
As per rules, it is compulsory for all the private
educational institutions, including English medium schools
and colleges, to get registered with the relevant
government office. But a huge number of English medium
educational institutions are not complying with this rule
over the last several years. According to sources, there
are around 40,000 non-government kindergartens, primary
schools, secondary schools and colleges in the country.
But the number of registered private educational
institutions is very thin. About 300 private schools and
colleges are registered so far. There are allegations that
almost all the unregistered private English medium
educational institutions are plagued with widespread
corruption and irregularities as these institutions are
outside the purview of government rules.
Sources said, in the absence of any government initiative
to implement the rules, the private English medium school
and college authorities seem reluctant to follow the rules
properly. There was no regulation to control the
activities of the country's non-government schools and
colleges for long. So, the educational institutions were
being run in accordance with the will of their
authorities.
In a bid to ensure discipline in all the private English
medium schools and colleges, the government issued a
gazette notification titled " Non-government (English
Medium) Schools ' Registration Rules, 2007 " in November
2007. As per rules, it is mandatory for all the private
schools and colleges, including nurseries and
kindergartens, to get registered with the government
office concerned. According to the rules, the private
educational institutions have to prepare their educational
curriculum and booklists, fix tuition fees, form managing
committees, create funds, ensure teacher-student ratio and
transparent recruitment policy and set up libraries in
order to ensure quality education.
Since the issuance of the notification in November last,
only a few non-government educational institutions
responded in this regard. Only a handful of private
schools are officially registered. According to relevant
rules, no educational institution is allowed to teach
their students any subject if it is inconsistent with the
national history of Bangladesh.
According to the rules, there will be at least one teacher
for 15 students in the nurseries, kindergartens and
primary schools, one teacher for 25 students in secondary
schools and one teacher for 30 students in the higher
secondary educational institutes, sources said, but these
rules are not followed.
Crime
Man gets
life time RI in rape case
UNB, Kishoreganj
A tribunal here Thursday convicted a man and sentenced him
to life term Rigorous Imprisonment (RI) for violating a
girl in 2005.
The Women and Children Repression Prevention Tribunal also
fined the convict M Maksud Alam, 29, son of Momtajuddin of
Charpakundia village in Pakundia upazila, Tk 3 lakh, in
default, to suffer five years more rigorous imprisonment.
According to the prosecution, Maksud Alam forcibly took
his co-villager's teenaged daughter to a shop in the area
when she came to the local market on June 2, 2005 and
violated her. Later, the girl became pregnant and her
parents filed a case with the local police station against
Maksud as his parents failed to keep the promise to
solemnize their marriage. During the trial the girl also
gave birth to a baby girl.
After examining the records and witnesses Tribunal Judge
GMS Farid pronounced the verdict in the crowed courtroom.
UP chairman jailed; three held
UNB, Jhakurgaon
Chairman of Haripur Union Parishad Nazrul Islam when
appeared in the district Judicial Magistrate Court in a
case was sent to jail hajat on Thursday.
Sources said UP member Abdur Rouf filed an extortion case
against four persons including the chairman with Haripur
police station on March 10 this year. Later, the four
accused went into hiding. Police after investigation
submitted charge sheet against them in absentia.
Nazrul appeared in the court at noon and the magistrate
rejecting his bail prayer sent him to jail hajat.
UNB Naogaon correspondent adds: three people were arrested
along with 86 bottles of phensidyl syrup and a stolen
motorbike from Bhorotatoraya area in Atrai upazila on
Thursday.
Acting on a tip-off, police raided the area and arrested
Rafiqul Islam, Farook Hossain and Rubel and recovered the
drug and the motorbike from their possession.
A case was filed with the police.
Housewife killed for dowry
UNB, Sirajganj
A woman was killed by her husband at Char Koijuri village
in Shahjadpur upazila Thursday night for her failure to
pay dowry money. Police said Jahangir Khan of the village
used to torture his wife Rozina Khatun, 18, over dowry
money since their marriage 20 days back.
As Jahangir failed to realize the dowry money, he hit his
wife with stick and strangulated her at his house at about
10:30 pm.
All the inmates, including Jahangir, went into hiding
following the incident. On information, police recovered
the body on Friday morning and sent to hospital morgue for
autopsy. A case was filed with thana.
Employee beaten to death, girl's body recovered
UNB, Savar
A shop employee, who was beaten up by unknown assailants
at his shop in front of Buribazar Diamond Factory near
Ashulia thana Wednesday night, succumbed to his injuries
when taken to Gonoshyasthya Hospital on Thursday morning.
Police said some miscreants beat Shahin, 19, employee of a
scrap shop, with hammer indiscriminately while he was
sleeping in his shop, leaving him critically injured. In
the following morning, local people rescued him in an
unconscious state and admitted him to the hospital where
the attending doctors declared him dead.
UNB Chandpur correspondent adds: Decompose body of an
unidentified adolescent girl was recovered from a ditch
under Mithania Bridge in Hajiganj Upazila on Thursday
morning.
Local people found the body, kept in a luggage and
informed the police. Later, police recovered the body that
bore some injury marks and sent it to hospital morgue for
autopsy. Police suspected that miscreants might have
killed the girl after rape.
Youth slaughtered
UNB, Rajbari
A young man was found slaughtered at Doulatdia area in
Goalanda upazila here on Thursday morning.
Police said local people found the slaughtered body of the
unidentified young man, aged around 32, lying on the
ground behind Doulatdia Model High School in the morning.
Later, police on information recovered the body and sent
it to Sadar hospital morgue for autopsy. A case was filed.
Project manager, assistant of Govt fish farm held
A Correspondent, Rangpur
Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) of Rangpur camp arrested
project manager of Sattibari government Fish Farm Bodiul
Bari and its office assistance Shafiqul Islam Safi while
allegedly selling pollen of fish at higher rate illegally.
RAB commander of Rangpur camp Saiful Islam said, acting on
secret information a number of RAB personnel in the guise
of fish farmers bought one kg of siblings from the farm at
Tk 25000 against the real price of Tk 1300 and caught the
project manager and office assistance instantly on charge
of fraud.
Saiful said, a number of farmers complained to RAB that
they were harassed when they protested the illegal price
hike.
RAB sources said, they also recovered a huge number of
receipts from office of the farm which were primarily
detected as forged.
Daring dacoity Wolves in sheep’s clothing
A Correspondent, Barisal
A gang of armed dacoits went to the house of Jahangir
Kaviraj, recently back from Saudi Arabia, at Char Diashur
village under Gournadi upazila of Barisal at about 2:00 am
on Friday night.
Identifying them as police they asked the residents to
open the door and entering house made the residents
hostages under arms. Then the miscreants looted properties
worth Tk 4 lakh including 600 Saudi Rials, demand draft of
Tk 2 lakh, 4 costly mobile sets, gold ornaments and other
valuables. Jahangir and his son Kabir became severely
injured by beating and chopping and admitted at Gournadi
upazila health complex.
Police visited the spot and a case was lodged in this
connection with Gournadi police station.
Live bomb recovered
BSS, Chuadanga
Police recovered a powerful bomb near from local poura
college last night at 9:20 O'clock.
Police said police was informed that a powerful live bomb
has been found in front of the residence of one Mohiuddin
near at local poura college.
Being informed a team of police rushed to the spot and
recovered the bomb which was covered by a white tape.
Later, the bomb was made inactive at the sadar police
station.
Firearms recovered
BSS, Barisal
Members of Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) recovered one
foreign made revolver and one pipe-gun from Kashipur
intersection in the city on Thursday.
RAB sources said, acting on a tip-off, a team of the RAB
raided the area and recovered the firearms from under
soil. None was arrested in this connection.
Two sisters arrested
BSS, Mongla
Police arrested two sisters along with four kilogram ganja
from Mongla Bazar area of the district on Thursday. The
arrested were identified as Beauty, 40 and Nasima, 37.
Police said, police searched them for suspicious movement
at Mongla Bazar area and recovered four-kg ganja.
10 held, scrap materials, drugs seized
BSS, Rajshahi
Members of Rapid Action Battalion (RAB)-5, in different
anticrime drives, arrested 10 suspected criminals
including six drug- peddlers and seized scrap materials,
phensidyl and heroin from different areas in four northern
districts during the last 24 hours till on Thursday
afternoon, RAB sources said.
Editorial
Perceptions of the current food crisis
The
picture is always rosy because we are told to smile before the
camera. Some have therefore retorted rightly that pictures can
lie. The television channels and the media have their
constraints, with their need to balance truth and 'rosyness'.
Nevertheless, the reality or rather the picture of reality
that we perceive through the television and the media are what
the common person perceives as his (national) situation
together with his immediate reality. The perception too can
vary in accordance with various individual factors in
conjunction with the ability and perception capabilities of
the individual. Moreover, realities can too be constructed.
However, the current concern with the 'food crisis' affects
all of us to an approximately same degree, because food is a
basic human need.
For the last couple of months various UN agencies, WB, IMF,
ADB and a host of other "think tanks" are predicting social
and political unrests in developing and low-per capita income
countries consequent to global food shortages and high food
prices. All of these predictions of "doom and dire
consequences" must be considered with great care and
circumspection because these global-agencies are all ready
with "prescriptions" along with their predictions. Our as well
as other nation's experiences leave no room for doubts that
such prescriptions are worse than the problems which these
prescriptions are intended to cure; more often then not, the
programs suggested and often imposed by these agencies,
exacerbate already existing economic, social and political
problems. When WB, IMF, ADB and other such agencies "suggest"
measure to improve economic conditions, they intend to
increase their business of money lending tied to
conditionalities which maximize their business but which do
not take into consideration the prevailing national social and
political conditions thus accelerating a slide into conflict
and chaos.
We have witnessed in our political history that, matters of
real necessity have always been dealt with behind shut doors
and decisions passed on to the people like orders or
commandments of the party in power. The culture of open
discussion has never been practiced properly. If friction
arose things would tend to be addressed through 'hartals' and
matters being violently dealt with on the streets. It is an
important issue to note with the praxis of so called
'democracy' in Bangladesh.
With the current reality of the threat of 'food crisis', the
people have a legitimate expectation that the Emergency
Government shall deal more pragmatically and with an openness
about the true reality facing the nation, the options the
government has before it, and what measures they propose to
adopt in actuality to solve the problems. This is not only to
firmly ground the praxis and political culture of open
discussions with a more pro-active people's participation and
establishing it as a way of unwritten governmental convention,
but to respect and uphold the dignity of the people of our
country which have hitherto been unashamedly neglected.
Spitting venom against media
It
is surprising as well as shocking that the food secretary
Mollah Wahiduzzaman has blamed the media for rice price hike
saying frequent media reports on the increase in price of rice
created negative impact. He also claimed that there was no
food crisis in the country, nor was there any famine. But a
certain quarter has desperately tried to create a crisis of
food. The food secretary is amazingly on record as saying: "It
is true that rice price had increased slightly, but it
resulted in no crisis. At this time, talking over mobile
phones did not fall and consequent upon the rise in rickshaw
fare, the rickshaw pullers could puff out cigarettes
comfortably. So, it is not true that there was a disaster for
want of food."
The venom spit out against the media by the food secretary at
a press conference on Wednesday is very unfortunate, but such
baseless blame game is nothing new. In the past the ruling
political leaders, specially those belonging to BNP, were fond
of shifting the responsibility of their failure to the media.
They are out of power now, but the food secretary's accusation
shows that their 'loyal followers' are still there in the
administration to blame the media for the crises the
administration failed to tackle properly.
The then finance minister Saifur Rahman launching the campaign
against the media said on 14 May 2006 that the reports of
price hike of essentials were not correct and that the
newspapers had caused the price escalation. A number of other
ministers also had joined this campaign against the media.
Among them were Matiur Rahman Nizami who had denied the
existence of militant leader Banglabhai saying, ' Banglabhai
is the creation of media' and energy adviser Mahmudur Rahman
who accused the media of treason. And even the then Prime
Minister Khaleda Zia had claimed during the final days of her
tenure that there was no price escalation and that it was the
propaganda of the media. But the reality was that the rulers
made false statements while the media did the objective
reporting.
It is an open secret that the government was unable to foresee
the looming food crisis and take urgent steps to avert it. The
administration had no idea about how to assess correctly the
food situation and arrange for immediate imports to meet the
deficit. The unusual delay in initiating negotiations with
India for importing 5 lakh tons of rice after the commitment
made in December by Indian Foreign Minister speaks amply of
the incompetence of those who are now blaming the media for
the crisis.
Thus we find that it has become a tradition for a section of
the ministers and bureaucrats to conceal the reality and make
baseless assertions to shift the responsibility of their
failure to the media. This was quite common during successive
political regimes and remains so even during this
non-political government. This is deplorable. All those
concerned should keep it in mind that spitting of venom
against the media will never be able to force them to refrain
from telling the truth.
Analysis
U.S. torture- when can the
prosecutions start?
What argument could the Bush principals argue
in their defense? Do they know how isolated they are?
Jonathan Power
If
the U.S. prosecution system wasn't so generally competent I
would advocate referring the U.S. to the International
Criminal Court so that senior figures in the Bush
Administration could be arrested and tried for crimes against
humanity, in particular the use of torture.
But it is competent, although it has been hamstrung by the
clever legal footwork of the Bush administration plus the use
of the presidential veto- as with the recent veto of
legislation that would have required the CIA and all
intelligence services to abide by the restrictions contained
in the U.S. Army Field Manual on holding and interrogating
prisoners.
We all know that the U.S. practices torture against terrorist
suspects - water boarding or simulated drowning is clearly
that - and we all know that when a new president is elected,
given the clear statements of the remaining three candidates,
the practice will stop. What we don't know is if a new
president will have the guts to open the windows in the
Justice Department and allow the fresh air of the rule of law
to blow into every corner. If he or she does, unless Congress
declares an amnesty, then senior figures in the Bush
administration will be hauled into court, just as senior
figures in the Nixon administration were hauled into court and
sent to prison in the wake of the Watergate scandal.
An Associated Press story last week on the decision making
that led to torture being authorized appears to suggest that
the net of culpability will be spread wide- not only embracing
hard liners such as Vice President Dick Cheney and former
Attorney General John Ashcroft but more liberal figures
including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her
predecessor, Colin Powell.
These were the participants in White House Situation Room
meetings that led to the infamous memos of the Office of the
Legal Council of the Justice Department that in 2002 and 2003
laid out the justification for tough interrogation tactics.
According to AP, "At times CIA officers would demonstrate some
of the tactics to make sure that the principals could
understand what they planned to do". ABC television, covering
the same story, quoted Ashcroft as saying at the time, "Why
are we talking about this in the White House?...History will
not judge this kindly."
History won't. And neither will the U.S. military. Even under
Bush the U.S. military has investigated hundreds of service
members for abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. military
takes great pride in teaching its soldiers civilized rules of
war. Career military commanders and lawyers have consistently
opposed the White House lead on reinterpreting the Geneva
Conventions. Most of them are old enough to remember that it
was President Ronald Reagan and his conservative counterpart
in Britain, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who led the way
in asking their legislatures to ratify the UN Convention
Against torture in 1988. These leaders were not so naive as to
think that western civilization would never face again
unscrupulous opponents but they became convinced, as Professor
Steven Ratner eloquently put it in Foreign Policy magazine,
that without these legal protections the West would "invite a
world of wars in which laws disappear. And the horrors of such
wars would far surpass anything the war on terror could
deliver."
What argument could the Bush principals argue in their
defense? Do they know how isolated they are? Britain and Spain
have had to deal with the trials of those accused of major
bombings. The prosecutors have managed to win convictions
without abrogating the tough European human rights treaties,
which constrain them even more than the Geneva Conventions.
Can they even prove torture works? There is no General
Accounting Office report that weighs the results of torture
against other forms of intelligence gathering. The most recent
investigations of the value of torture have been done in the
wake of the so called Battle of Algiers in the 1950s by the
many French official torturers who have written memoirs
describing what they did. Their conclusion was that the
intelligence torture produced was inferior to work done by
informers and other policing activities. According to Darius
Rejali in his monumental work, 'Torture and Democracy', "if we
go through the entire battle event by event, we find only two
instances in which one could say that torture generated true,
critically timely information." General Jacques Massu, the top
French commander in Algeria, when asked later if torture was
indispensable in war time, replied "No, it grieves me. We
could have done things differently."
The French government managed to silence the debate at the
time. Today's America is a much more open society. Let us see,
once free of the Bush administration, what it can do to punish
those involved in this grevious wrong.
(Jonathan Power is an internationally renowned freelance
columnist. Copyright Jonathan Power. April 17th 2008.
E-mail: JonatPower@aol.com or phone: +46 706 51 08 79)
Double standards and dialogue
The fact that numerous
potentates exploit it in order to preserve their power is not
the fault of the religion.
Mona Sarkis
Bonn,
Germany - Georges Corm is convinced that as long as the West
pursues double moral standards and applies international law
unequally, its attempts to establish dialogue with the Muslim
world cannot be taken seriously. Mona Sarkis, a freelance
journalist, spoke to the social scientist and former Lebanese
Finance Minister:
Mr. Corm, in your most recent book, Histoire du Moyen Orient
(History of the Middle East) you devote a lot of attention to
what you refer to as the geographic "arabesque" that
historically characterizes the Middle East, by which you mean
the present Arab territories, the Mashriq, Turkey, and Iran.
Why devote so much space to this concept?
Georges Corm: Because talk of "Muslim society" - as if it were
one unified ethnic or national body - is out of touch with
reality and I just wanted to show the diversity that has
existed at the geographical level since ancient times.
Persians, Turks and Arabs are not a homogenous group that is
held together by religion. It is absurd to view Moroccan and
Iranian society as one and the same. This presupposes that
Islam is a living, unified being that exists in a precisely
defined territory.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, authors like Bernard
Lewis and Samuel Huntington have done their best to make the
world believe in the existence of mega identity blocks such as
"Islam" and "the West" - and unfortunately their efforts have
been quite successful - but that is precisely the reason why
reality must be quoted again and again.
In fact, Islam is - as scholars of the calibre of Michael
Hodgson, Jacques Berque, Maxime Rodinson, or Ernest Gellner
have demonstrated - only one aspect of the development of what
is referred to as "Muslim societies". The fact that numerous
potentates exploit it in order to preserve their power is not
the fault of the religion.
Among these potentates I not only count dictators or
emblematic Muslim fundamentalist leaders, but also the
successive governments of the United States. In the final
stages of the Cold War, a young generation of radical Arab
Marxists made the United States worry that the resource-rich
region might fall under Soviet control. To prevent this, they
encouraged the political Islamic activists, thereby setting in
motion a dynamic development that can no longer be stopped.
Yet you disagree with the concept of "re-Islamicisation"...
Corm: Because it underpins the notion that Islam is a
monolithic block. Until the 1960s, Iraq, Egypt and Syria all
promoted secular nationalism, but they failed altogether with
the collapse of pan-Arabism. Pan-Arabism was then replaced by
varieties of pan-Islamism that were not uniform, but were
shaped by either Shi'ism or Sunnism. The difference between
the two was responsible for the devastating eight-year war
between Iraq and Iran in the 1980s.
This in itself reveals the limitations of Huntington's concept
of a "civilisation" as a coherent political and military unit.
Nevertheless, the West continues to address the "Muslim
region" with this concept. The United States, for example,
classifies Iraq, Iran, Syria, and North Korea as the "axis of
evil" despite the radical differences between these very
different countries, political regimes, and cultures.
(Mona Sarkis is a freelance writer based in Berlin. This
article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service.
Source: Qantara.de, 1 April 2008, www.qantara.de.
Copyright permission is granted for publication.)
The real debate we need
Europe is in a transition between its past, which it is
seeking to overcome, and a future that it has not yet reached.
Henry Kissinger
THE
long-predicted national debate about national security policy
has yet to occur. Essentially tactical issues have overwhelmed
the most important challenge a new administration will
confront: how to distil a new international order from three
simultaneous revolutions occurring around the globe.
These are (a) the transformation of the traditional state
system of Europe; (b) the radical Islamist challenge to
historic notions of sovereignty; and (c) the drift of the
centre of gravity of international affairs from the Atlantic
to the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
Conventional wisdom holds that disenchantment with President
Bush's alleged unilateralism is at the heart of
European-American disagreements. But it will become apparent
soon after the change of administrations that the principal
difference between the two sides of the Atlantic is that
America is still a traditional nation-state whose people
respond to calls for sacrifices on behalf of a much wider
definition of the national interest than Europe's.
The nations of Europe, having been drained by two World Wars,
have agreed to transfer significant aspects of their
sovereignties to the European Union. Political loyalties
associated with the nation-state have proved not to be
automatically transferable, however. Europe is in a transition
between its past, which it is seeking to overcome, and a
future that it has not yet reached.
In the process, the nature of the European state has been
transformed. With the nation no longer defining itself by a
distinct future and with the cohesion of the European Union as
yet untested, the capacity of most European governments to ask
their people for sacrifices has diminished dramatically.
The disagreement over the use of NATO forces in Afghanistan is
a case in point. In the aftermath of September 11, the North
Atlantic Council, acting without any request by the United
States, invoked Article 5 of the NATO Treaty calling for
mutual assistance. But when NATO set about to assume military
responsibilities, domestic constraints obliged many allies to
limit the number of troops and to constrict the missions for
which lives could be risked. As a result, the Atlantic
Alliance is in the process of evolving a two-tiered system -
an alliance la carte whose capability for common action does
not match its general obligations. Over time, one of two
adaptations must take place: either a redefinition of the
general obligations or a formal elaboration of a two-tiered
system in which political obligations and military
capabilities are harmonised. This might be accomplished by
assigning out-of-area projects to a European reaction force,
which would then create an ad hoc alliance of the willing.
While the traditional role of the state in Europe is
diminished by the choice of its governments, the declining
role of the state in the Middle East is inherent in the way
they were founded. The successor states of the Ottoman Empire
were established by the victorious powers at the end of the
First World War. Unlike the European states, their borders did
not reflect ethnic principles or linguistic distinctiveness
but the balances achieved by the European powers in their
contests outside the region.
Today it is radical Islam that threatens the already brittle
state structure via a fundamentalist interpretation of the
Koran as the basis of a universal political organisation.
Radical Islam rejects claims to national sovereignty based on
secular state models, and its reach extends to wherever
significant populations profess the Muslim faith. Since
neither the international system nor the internal structure of
existing states has legitimacy in Islamist eyes, its ideology
leaves little room for Western notions of negotiation or of
equilibrium in a region of vital interest to the security and
well-being of the industrial states. That struggle is endemic;
we do not have the option of withdrawal from it. We can
retreat from any one place like Iraq but only to be obliged to
resist from new positions, probably more disadvantageously.
Even advocates of unilateral withdrawal speak of retaining
residual forces to prevent a resurgence of Al Qaeda or
radicalism.
These transformations take place against the backdrop of a
third trend, a shift in the centre of gravity of international
affairs from the Atlantic to the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
Paradoxically, this redistribution of power is to a part of
the world where the nation still possesses the characteristics
of traditional European states. The major states of Asia -
China, Japan, India and, in time, possibly Indonesia - view
each other the way participants in the European balance of
power did, as inherent competitors even when they occasionally
participate in cooperative ventures.
In the past, such shifts in the structure of power generally
led to war, as happened in the case of the emergence of
Germany in the late 19th century. Today the rise of China is
assigned that role in much alarmist commentary. True, the
Sino-American relationship will inevitably contain classical
geopolitical and competitive elements. These must not be
neglected. But there are countervailing elements. Economic and
financial globalisation, environmental and energy imperatives,
and the destructive power of modern weapons impose a major
effort at global cooperation - especially between the United
States and China. An adversarial relationship would leave both
countries in the position of Europe after the two World Wars
through self-destructive conflict with each other, while other
societies achieved the pre-eminence they sought.
No previous generation has had to deal with different
revolutions occurring simultaneously in separate parts of the
world. The quest for a single, all-inclusive remedy is
chimerical. In Europe, the civil society is congruent with the
political structure of states but not - at least yet - with
the political structure of the European Union. In the Middle
East, civil society is being shaped by transnational forces at
odds with the internal structure of many states. In the
Atlantic area, the challenge is how to evolve institutions
that bring the willingness to sacrifice for the future into
balance with the requirements of international order. In the
Islamic world, the jihadists are prepared to sacrifice all
notions of civil society to the pursuit of an apocalyptic
utopia. In Asia, in terms of classical diplomacy, two kinds of
adjustments will define 21st-century diplomacy: the
relationship between the great Asian powers, China, India,
Japan and possibly Indonesia, and how America and China deal
with each other.
In a world in which the sole superpower is a proponent of the
prerogatives of the traditional nation-state, where Europe is
stuck in a halfway status, where the Middle East does not fit
the nation-state model and faces a religiously motivated
revolution, and where the nation-states of South and East Asia
still practice the balance of power, what is the nature of the
international order that can accommodate these different
perspectives? Are existing international organisations
adequate for this purpose? If not, which changes would be
desirable? What goals can America set realistically for itself
and the world community? Can we make the transformation of
major countries a condition for reliable progress, or need we
concentrate on a less crusading purpose? What objectives must
be sought in concert, and what are the extreme circumstances
that would justify unilateral action? What is the style of
leadership most likely to achieve these aims? This is the kind
of debate we need, not slogans driven by focus groups for
daily headlines.
Dr. Henry Kissinger is a
former US Secretary of State.
Source: www.khaleejtimes.com
Viewpoints
The
Case Against the West
The West is understandably reluctant to accept
that the era of its domination is ending and that the Asian
century has come.
Kishore Mahbubani
There
is a fundamental flaw in the West's strategic thinking. In all
its analyses of global challenges, the West assumes that it is
the source of the solutions to the world's key problems. In
fact, however, the West is also a major source of these
problems. Unless key Western policymakers learn to understand
and deal with this reality, the world is headed for an even
more troubled phase.
The West is understandably reluctant to accept that the era of
its domination is ending and that the Asian century has come.
No civilization cedes power easily, and the West's resistance
to giving up control of key global institutions and processes
is natural. Yet the West is engaging in an extraordinary act
of self-deception by believing that it is open to change. In
fact, the West has become the most powerful force preventing
the emergence of a new wave of history, clinging to its
privileged position in key global forums, such as the UN
Security Council, the International Monetary Fund, the World
Bank, and the G-8 (the group of highly industrialized states),
and refusing to contemplate how the West will have to adjust
to the Asian century.
Partly as a result of its growing insecurity, the West has
also become increasingly incompetent in its handling of key
global problems. Many Western commentators can readily
identify specific failures, such as the Bush administration's
botched invasion and occupation of Iraq. But few can see that
this reflects a deeper structural problem: the West's
inability to see that the world has entered a new era.
Apart from representing a specific failure of policy
execution, the war in Iraq has also highlighted the gap
between the reality and what the West had expected would
happen after the invasion. Arguably, the United States and the
United Kingdom intended only to free the Iraqi people from a
despotic ruler and to rid the world of a dangerous man, Saddam
Hussein. Even if George W. Bush and Tony Blair had no
malevolent intentions, however, their approaches were trapped
in the Western mindset of believing that their interventions
could lead only to good, not harm or disaster. This led them
to believe that the invading U.S. troops would be welcomed
with roses thrown at their feet by happy Iraqis. But the
twentieth century showed that no country welcomes foreign
invaders. The notion that any Islamic nation would approve of
Western military boots on its soil was ridiculous. Even in the
early twentieth century, the British invasion and occupation
of Iraq was met with armed resistance. In 1920, Winston
Churchill, then British secretary for war and air, quelled the
rebellion of Kurds and Arabs in British-occupied Iraq by
authorizing his troops to use chemical weapons. "I am strongly
in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes,"
Churchill said. The world has moved on from this era, but many
Western officials have not abandoned the old assumption that
an army of Christian soldiers can successfully invade, occupy,
and transform an Islamic society.
Many Western leaders often begin their speeches by remarking
on how perilous the world is becoming. Speaking after the
August 2006 discovery of a plot to blow up transatlantic
flights originating from London, President Bush said, "The
American people need to know we live in a dangerous world."
But even as Western leaders speak of such threats, they seem
incapable of conceding that the West itself could be the
fundamental source of these dangers. After all, the West
includes the best-managed states in the world, the most
economically developed, those with the strongest democratic
institutions. But one cannot assume that a government that
rules competently at home will be equally good at addressing
challenges abroad. In fact, the converse is more likely to be
true. Although the Western mind is obsessed with the Islamist
terrorist threat, the West is mishandling the two immediate
and pressing challenges of Afghanistan and Iraq. And despite
the grave threat of nuclear terrorism, the Western custodians
of the nonproliferation regime have allowed that regime to
weaken significantly. The challenge posed by Iran's efforts to
enrich uranium has been aggravated by the incompetence of the
United States and the European Union. On the economic front,
for the first time since World War II, the demise of a round
of global trade negotiations, the Doha Round, seems imminent.
Finally, the danger of global warming, too, is being
mismanaged.
Yet Westerners seldom look inward to understand the deeper
reasons these global problems are being mismanaged. Are there
domestic structural reasons that explain this? Have Western
democracies been hijacked by competitive populism and
structural short-termism, preventing them from addressing
long-term challenges from a broader global perspective?
Fortunately, some Asian states may now be capable of taking on
more responsibilities, as they have been strengthened by
implementing Western principles. In September 2005, Robert
Zoellick, then U.S. deputy secretary of state, called on China
to become a "responsible stakeholder" in the international
system. China has responded positively, as have other Asian
states. In recent decades, Asians have been among the greatest
beneficiaries of the open multilateral order created by the
United States and the other victors of World War II, and few
today want to destabilize it. The number of Asians seeking a
comfortable middle-class existence has never been higher. For
centuries, the Chinese and the Indians could only dream of
such an accomplishment; now it is within the reach of around
half a billion people in China and India. Their ideal is to
achieve what the United States and Europe did. They want to
replicate, not dominate, the West. The universalization of the
Western dream represents a moment of triumph for the West. And
so the West should welcome the fact that the Asian states are
becoming competent at handling regional and global challenges.
THE MIDDLE EAST MESS
Western policies have been most harmful in the Middle East.
The Middle East is also the most dangerous region in the
world. Trouble there affects not just seven million Israelis,
around four million Palestinians, and 200 million Arabs; it
also affects more than a billion Muslims worldwide. Every time
there is a major flare-up in the Middle East, such as the U.S.
invasion of Iraq or the Israeli bombing of Lebanon, Islamic
communities around the world become concerned, distressed, and
angered. And few of them doubt the problem's origin: the West.
The invasion and occupation of Iraq, for example, was a
multidimensional error. The theory and practice of
international law legitimizes the use of force only when it is
an act of self-defense or is authorized by the UN Security
Council. The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq could not be justified
on either count. The United States and the United Kingdom
sought the Security Council's authorization to invade Iraq,
but the council denied it. It was therefore clear to the
international community that the subsequent war was illegal
and that it would do huge damage to international law.
This has created an enormous problem, partly because until
this point both the United States and the United Kingdom had
been among the primary custodians of international law.
American and British minds, such as James Brierly, Philip
Jessup, Hersch Lauterpacht, and Hans Morgenthau, developed the
conceptual infrastructure underlying international law, and
American and British leaders provided the political will to
have it accepted in practice. But neither the United States
nor the United Kingdom will admit that the invasion and the
occupation of Iraq were illegal or give up their historical
roles as the chief caretakers of international law. Since
2003, both nations have frequently called for Iran and North
Korea to implement UN Security Council resolutions. But how
can the violators of UN principles also be their enforcers?
One rare benefit of the Iraq war may be that it has awakened a
new fear of Iran among the Sunni Arab states. Egypt, Jordan,
and Saudi Arabia, among others, do not want to deal with two
adversaries and so are inclined to make peace with Israel.
Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah used the opportunity of the
special Arab League summit meeting in March 2007 to relaunch
his long-standing proposal for a two-state solution to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Unfortunately, the Bush
administration did not seize the opportunity -- or revive the
Taba accords that President Bill Clinton had worked out in
January 2001, even though they could provide a basis for a
lasting settlement and the Saudis were prepared to back them.
In its early days, the Bush administration appeared ready to
support a two-state solution. It was the first U.S.
administration to vote in favor of a UN Security Council
resolution calling for the creation of a Palestinian state,
and it announced in March 2002 that it would try to achieve
such a result by 2005. But here it is 2008, and little
progress has been made.
The United States has made the already complicated
Israeli-Palestinian conflict even more of a mess. Many
extremist voices in Tel Aviv and Washington believe that time
will always be on Israel's side. The pro-Israel lobby's
stranglehold on the U.S. Congress, the political cowardice of
U.S. politicians when it comes to creating a Palestinian
state, and the sustained track record of U.S. aid to Israel
support this view. But no great power forever sacrifices its
larger national interests in favor of the interests of a small
state. If Israel fails to accept the Taba accords, it will
inevitably come to grief. If and when it does, Western
incompetence will be seen as a major cause.
NEVER SAY NEVER
Nuclear nonproliferation is another area in which the West,
especially the United States, has made matters worse. The West
has long been obsessed with the danger of the proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons. It
pushed successfully for the near-universal ratification of the
Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, the Chemical Weapons
Convention, and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).
But the West has squandered many of those gains. Today, the
NPT is legally alive but spiritually dead. The NPT was
inherently problematic since it divided the world into nuclear
haves (the states that had tested a nuclear device by 1967)
and nuclear have-nots (those that had not). But for two
decades it was reasonably effective in preventing horizontal
proliferation (the spread of nuclear weapons to other states).
Unfortunately, the NPT has done nothing to prevent vertical
proliferation, namely, the increase in the numbers and
sophistication of nuclear weapons among the existing nuclear
weapons states. During the Cold War, the United States and the
Soviet Union agreed to work together to limit proliferation.
The governments of several countries that could have developed
nuclear weapons, such as Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Japan,
and South Korea, restrained themselves because they believed
the NPT reflected a fair bargain between China, France, the
Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States (the
five official nuclear weapons states and five permanent
members of the UN Security Council) and the rest of the world.
Both sides agreed that the world would be safer if the five
nuclear states took steps to reduce their arsenals and worked
toward the eventual goal of universal disarmament and the
other states refrained from acquiring nuclear weapons at all.
So what went wrong? The first problem was that the NPT's
principal progenitor, the United States, decided to walk away
from the postwar rule-based order it had created, thus eroding
the infrastructure on which the NPT's enforcement depends.
During the time I was Singapore's ambassador to the UN,
between 1984 and 1989, Jeane Kirkpatrick, the U.S. ambassador
to the UN, treated the organization with contempt. She
infamously said, "What takes place in the Security Council
more closely resembles a mugging than either a political
debate or an effort at problem-solving." She saw the postwar
order as a set of constraints, not as a set of rules that the
world should follow and the United States should help
preserve. This undermined the NPT, because with no teeth of
its own, no self-regulating or sanctioning mechanisms, and a
clause allowing signatories to ignore obligations in the name
of "supreme national interest," the treaty could only really
be enforced by the UN Security Council. And once the United
States began tearing holes in the fabric of the overall
system, it created openings for violations of the NPT and its
principles. Finally, by going to war with Iraq without UN
authorization, the United States lost its moral authority to
ask, for example, Iran to abide by Security Council
resolutions.
Another problem has been the United States' -- and other
nuclear weapons states' -- direct assault on the treaty. The
NPT is fundamentally a social contract between the five
nuclear weapons states and the rest of the world, based partly
on the understanding that the nuclear powers will eventually
give up their weapons. Instead, during the Cold War, the
United States and the Soviet Union increased both the quantity
and the sophistication of their nuclear weapons: the United
States' nuclear stockpile peaked in 1966 at 31,700 warheads,
and the Soviet Union's peaked in 1986 at 40,723. In fact, the
United States and the Soviet Union developed their nuclear
stockpiles so much that they actually ran out of militarily or
economically significant targets. The numbers have declined
dramatically since then, but even the current number of
nuclear weapons held by the United States and Russia can wreak
enormous damage on human civilization.
The nuclear states' decision to ignore Israel's nuclear
weapons program was especially damaging to their authority. No
nuclear weapons state has ever publicly acknowledged Israel's
possession of nuclear weapons. Their silence has created a
loophole in the NPT and delegitimized it in the eyes of Muslim
nations. The consequences have been profound. When the West
sermonizes that the world will become a more dangerous place
when Iran acquires nuclear weapons, the Muslim world now
shrugs.
India and Pakistan were already shrugging by 1998, when they
tested their first nuclear weapons. When the international
community responded by condemning the tests and applying
sanctions on India, virtually all Indians saw through the
hypocrisy and double standards of their critics. By not
respecting their own obligations under the NPT, the five
nuclear states had robbed their condemnations of any moral
legitimacy; criticisms from Australia and Canada, which have
also remained silent about Israel's bomb, similarly had no
moral authority. The near-unanimous rejection of the NPT by
the Indian establishment, which is otherwise very conscious of
international opinion, showed how dead the treaty already was.
From time to time, common sense has entered discussions on
nuclear weapons. President Ronald Reagan said more
categorically than any U.S. president that the world would be
better off without nuclear weapons. Last year, with the NPT in
its death throes and the growing threat of loose nuclear
weapons falling into the hands of terrorists forefront in
everyone's mind, former Secretary of State George Shultz,
former Defense Secretary William Perry, former Secretary of
State Henry Kissinger, and former Senator Sam Nunn warned in
The Wall Street Journal that the world was "now on the
precipice of a new and dangerous nuclear era." They argued,"
Unless urgent new actions are taken, the U.S. soon will be
compelled to enter a new nuclear era that will be more
precarious, psychologically disorienting, and economically
even more costly than was Cold War deterrence." But these
calls may have come too late. The world has lost its trust in
the five nuclear weapons states and now sees them as the NPT's
primary violators rather than its custodians. Those states'
private cynicism about their obligations to the NPT has become
public knowledge.
Contrary to what the West wants the rest of the world to
believe, the nuclear weapons states, especially the United
States and Russia, which continue to maintain thousands of
nuclear weapons, are the biggest source of nuclear
proliferation. Mohamed El Baradei, the director general of the
International Atomic Energy Agency, warned in The Economist in
2003, "The very existence of nuclear weapons gives rise to the
pursuit of them. They are seen as a source of global
influence, and are valued for their perceived deterrent
effect. And as long as some countries possess them (or are
protected by them in alliances) and others do not, this
asymmetry breeds chronic global insecurity." Despite the Cold
War, the second half of the twentieth century seemed to be
moving the world toward a more civilized order. As the
twenty-first century unfurls, the world seems to be sliding
backward.
IRRESPONSIBLE STAKEHOLDERS
After leading the world toward a period of spectacular
economic growth in the second half of the twentieth century by
promoting global free trade, the West has recently been
faltering in its global economic leadership. Believing that
low trade barriers and increasing trade interdependence would
result in higher standards of living for all, European and
U.S. economists and policymakers pushed for global economic
liberalization. As a result, global trade grew from seven
percent of the world's GDP in 1940 to 30 percent in 2005.
But a seismic shift has taken place in Western attitudes since
the end of the Cold War. Suddenly, the United States and
Europe no longer have a vested interest in the success of the
East Asian economies, which they see less as allies and more
as competitors. That change in Western interests was reflected
in the fact that the West provided little real help to East
Asia during the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98. The entry
of China into the global marketplace, especially after its
admission to the World Trade Organization, has made a huge
difference in both economic and psychological terms. Many
Europeans have lost confidence in their ability to compete
with the Asians. And many Americans have lost confidence in
the virtues of competition.
There are some knotty issues that need to be resolved in the
current global trade talks, but fundamentally the negotiations
are stalled because the conviction of the Western "champions"
of free trade that free trade is good has begun to waver. When
Americans and Europeans start to perceive themselves as losers
in international trade, they also lose their drive to push for
further trade liberalization. Unfortunately, on this front at
least, neither China nor India (nor Brazil nor South Africa
nor any other major developing country) is ready to take over
the West's mantle. China, for example, is afraid that any
effort to seek leadership in this area will stoke U.S. fears
that it is striving for global hegemony. Hence, China is lying
low. So, too, are the United States and Europe. Hence, the
trade talks are stalled. The end of the West's promotion of
global trade liberalization could well mean the end of the
most spectacular economic growth the world has ever seen. Few
in the West seem to be reflecting on the consequences of
walking away from one of the West's most successful policies,
which is what it will be doing if it allows the Doha Round to
fail.
At the same time that the Western governments are
relinquishing their stewardship of the global economy, they
are also failing to take the lead on battling global warming.
The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to former U.S. Vice
President Al Gore, a longtime environmentalist, and the UN's
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confirms there is
international consensus that global warning is a real threat.
The most assertive advocates for tackling this problem come
from the U.S. and European scientific communities, but the
greatest resistance to any effective action is coming from the
U.S. government. This has left the rest of the world confused
and puzzled. Most people believe that the greenhouse effect is
caused mostly by the flow of current emissions. Current
emissions do aggravate the problem, but the fundamental cause
is the stock of emissions that has accumulated since the
Industrial Revolution. Finding a just and equitable solution
to the problem of greenhouse gas emissions must begin with
assigning responsibility both for the current flow and for the
stock of greenhouse gases already accumulated. And on both
counts the Western nations should bear a greater burden.
When it comes to addressing any problem pertaining to the
global commons, such as the environment, it seems only fair
that the wealthier members of the international community
should shoulder more responsibility. This is a natural
principle of justice. It is also fair in this particular case
given the developed countries' primary role in releasing
harmful gases into the atmosphere. R. K. Pachauri, chair of
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, argued last
year, "China and India are certainly increasing their share,
but they are not increasing their per capita emissions
anywhere close to the levels that you have in the developed
world." Since 1850, China has contributed less than 8 percent
of the world's total emissions of carbon dioxide, whereas the
United States is responsible for 29 percent and Western Europe
is responsible for 27 percent. Today, India's per capita
greenhouse gas emissions are equivalent to only 4 percent of
those of the United States and 12 percent of those of the
European Union. Still, the Western governments are not clearly
acknowledging their responsibilities and are allowing many of
their citizens to believe that China and India are the
fundamental obstacles to any solution to global warming.
Washington might become more responsible on this front if a
Democratic president replaces Bush in 2009. But people in the
West will have to make some real concessions if they are to
reduce significantly their per capita share of global
emissions. A cap-and-trade program may do the trick. Western
countries will probably have to make economic sacrifices. One
option might be, as the journalist Thomas Friedman has
suggested, to impose a dollar-per-gallon tax on Americans'
gasoline consumption. Gore has proposed a carbon tax. So far,
however, few U.S. politicians have dared to make such
suggestions publicly.
TEMPTATIONS OF THE EAST
The Middle East, nuclear proliferation, stalled trade
liberalization, and global warming are all challenges that the
West is essentially failing to address. And this failure
suggests that a systemic problem is emerging in the West's
stewardship of the international order -- one that Western
minds are reluctant to analyze or confront openly. After
having enjoyed centuries of global domination, the West has to
learn to share power and responsibility for the management of
global issues with the rest of the world. It has to forgo
outdated organizations, such as the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development, and outdated processes, such as
the G-8, and deal with organizations and processes with a
broader scope and broader representation. It was always
unnatural for the 12 percent of the world population that
lived in the West to enjoy so much global power.
Understandably, the other 88 percent of the world population
increasingly wants also to drive the bus of world history.
First and foremost, the West needs to acknowledge that sharing
the power it has accumulated in global forums would serve its
interests. Restructuring international institutions to reflect
the current world order will be complicated by the absence of
natural leaders to do the job. The West has become part of the
problem, and the Asian countries are not yet ready to step in.
On the other hand, the world does not need to invent any new
principles to improve global governance; the concepts of
domestic good governance can and should be applied to the
international community. The Western principles of democracy,
the rule of law, and social justice are among the world's best
bets. The ancient virtues of partnership and pragmatism can
complement them.
Democracy, the foundation of government in the West, is based
on the premise that each human being in a society is an equal
stakeholder in the domestic order. Thus, governments are
selected on the basis of "one person, one vote." This has
produced long-term stability and order in Western societies.
In order to produce long-term stability and order worldwide,
democracy should be the cornerstone of global society, and the
planet's 6.6 billion inhabitants should become equal
stakeholders. To inject the spirit of democracy into global
governance and global decision-making, one must turn to
institutions with universal representation, especially the UN.
UN institutions such as the World Health Organization and the
World Meteorological Organization enjoy widespread legitimacy
because of their universal membership, which means their
decisions are generally accepted by all the countries of the
world.
The problem today is that although many Western actors are
willing to work with specialized UN agencies, they are
reluctant to strengthen the UN's core institution, the UN
General Assembly, from which all these specialized agencies
come. The UN General Assembly is the most representative body
on the planet, and yet many Western countries are deeply
skeptical of it. They are right to point out its
imperfections. But they overlook the fact that this imperfect
assembly enjoys legitimacy in the eyes of the people of this
imperfect world. Moreover, the General Assembly has at times
shown more common sense and prudence than some of the most
sophisticated Western democracies. Of course, it takes time to
persuade all of the UN's members to march in the same
direction, but consensus building is precisely what gives
legitimacy to the result. Most countries in the world respect
and abide by most UN decisions because they believe in the
authority of the UN. Used well, the body can be a powerful
vehicle for making critical |