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Leading
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SC allows govt appeal, stays
Hasina verdict
BDNEWS24, Dhaka
The Appellate Division has
stayed a High Court verdict that quashed Azam J
Chowdhury’s extortion case against former prime minister
Sheikh Hasina.
A full appellate bench headed by chief justice Md Ruhul
Amin stayed the High Court’s dismissal of the case on
Tuesday after accepting the government’s leave to appeal
against the verdict, and set March 16 for hearing to begin
on the appeal.
The Appellate Division also temporarily upheld the High
Court’s ban on proceedings of the extortion case in trial
court.
Additional attorney general Salahuddin Ahmed, standing for
the government, told bdnews24.com outside the court: "The
court has only stayed the case proceedings against Sheikh
Hasina in trial court."
"This has removed the barrier to conducting trials of
other cases under emergency powers rules."
Hasina’s lawyer Rafique-ul-Huq said during the hearing:
"The case filed against Sheikh Hasina refers to an
occurrence which dates back to the pre-emergency period.
Therefore, the case cannot be tried under the Special
Powers Act."
Appealing to the appeal court not to stay the High Court’s
dismissal of the case, barrister Rafique said: "The court
may accept the government appeal filed against the High
Court verdict, but cannot halt the efficacy of the
verdict."
"The verdict in question will be settled after hearing the
appeal."
Additional attorney general Salahuddin Ahmed, requesting
the stay order, told the court: "The High Court in its
verdict has raised questions concerning sections of the
Special Powers Act." "If the verdict is upheld, the
Special Powers Act would have to be annulled, jeopardising
the trial of all cases filed under the act."
Salahuddin also mentioned a High Court ruling by a
different bench, headed by Justice ABM Khairul Haque, that
cancelled a separate writ petition challenging the
validity of trying of another case under the Special
Powers Act. The High Court verdict in that case
contradicts the same court’s verdict in the Hasina case,
Salahuddin said.
"The Supreme Court should resolve such legal
contradictions," he said.
Security remained stepped up at the Supreme Court premises
Tuesday through the second day proceedings on the
government’s leave to appeal.
The government filed a motion with the Appellate Division
on Feb 18 seeking leave to appeal the High Court verdict.
On Feb 6, the High Court dismissed the extortion case
filed by Azam J Chowdhury against Hasina, after ruling
illegal its inclusion under emergency powers rules. The
ruling came on a writ petition filed by Hasina challenging
the case’s trial under EPR.
Businessman Azam J Chowdhury filed the Tk 3 crore
extortion case against Sheikh Hasina and Sheikh Selim with
Gulshan police on June 13, 2007. The case details said the
accused received a total of Tk 2.99 crore from the
litigant in 2001 in exchange for illegally awarding a
contract to build Siddhirganj Power Station.
Hasina was arrested on July 16, 2007. She was shown
arrested in the case later the same day after inclusion of
the case proceedings under EPR.
Charges were framed against the accused, including Sheikh
Hasina’s sister, Rehana, on
Jan 13.
News Analysis
CAS’s Commitment to the Indians
Mahmud ur Rahman Choudhury
On 26 February 2008, "The
Hindu", an Indian English daily published an article on
the visit of Gen Moeen U Ahmed, our CAS, where it is
claimed that the CAS has committed to honour Indian
martyrs of 1971 on 25th of March each year. If the CAS has
indeed made such a commitment, he has made grave errors on
a number of counts : firstly, the CAS can in no way be
taken to represent the people or the Government of
Bangladesh because the people have not elected him so;
secondly, he heads one of the many key institutions of our
State and is therefore a servant of the state not its
representative; thirdly and most importantly 25th or 26th
of March has nothing to do with Indian martyrs, this is
the day in which Pakistanis mounted a genocide on our
people and the day is remembered as a day of sorrow, as
the beginning of our fight for independence, it is purely
our own, not to be shared or compared with anything else.
Nobody is denying that the Indians have a great even a
decisive contribution towards our independence
particularly in its last phases in December 1971, when
India declared a war against Pakistan and when their
soldier fought and died alongside our people. We recognize
that contribution but not by commemorating on dates and
days which are historically, culturally and emotionally
significant to us and only to us as a Nation-State. The
people of Bangladesh are simply not going to countenance
such an act, least of all by the CAS of our Army. We only
hope that the news is not correct; if it is, the news and
the act is likely to generate a lot of protest and
outright hostility towards the Army and the CAS who heads
that Army. Therefore, the Army ought to immediately issue
a clarification in this regard.
The Hindu article further claims that : "For the long term
India is keen to improve ties with Bangladesh to an extent
that it gets transit rights for its goods ... and the
Chittagong port as well as a commitment on transit gas
from Myanmar ... For the immediate future, it favours a
commitment from the General to clamp down on anti-Indian
militants perceived to be camping on Bangladesh
territory." We hope that our CAS has not taken it upon
himself to discuss let alone commit Bangladesh to such
exceptionally sensitive issues which lie well beyond his
competence and duties as CAS. For long, India has been
trying to "improve relations" with Bangladesh in order to
get these facilities but each successive government of
Bangladesh has scrupulously avoided making such
commitments which would be perceived to be tantamount to
betraying the sovereignty of our State.
The agenda of the visit of our CAS to India has been kept
rather nebulous; neither the Government nor the Army has
seen it fit to inform our own citizens about the aim,
purpose and agenda of that visit. Unfortunately, we are
kept informed of that visit by Indian newspapers who we
daresay have their own interests and agendas to project.
That our own Government, our own Army and our own CAS do
not take us, the people of this country, into confidence
in a matter of such importance & concern is a sign of the
times of declining governance and government and of
declining answerability and responsibility of those in
power.
Hannan Shah blames EC for creating confusion
UNB, Gazipur
BNP chairperson’s adviser Brig Gen (retd) Hannan Shah on
Tuesday squarely blamed the Election Commission for
creating confusion over EC-BNP dialogue to hold back polls
and demanded immediate resolution of the issue.
Shah made the accusation when he went to appear before the
court of Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate in an
extortion case against him. The outspoken BNP leader said,
"The Election Commission can hold election much earlier
should it have that willingness. And the sooner the
election held, the better the countrymen will be
benefited."
He demanded release of all the political detainees,
including the two former premiers—BNP chairperson Khaleda
Zia and Awami League President Sheikh Hasina.
Hannan Shah hailed Monday’s speeches given by AL leaders
concerning the complications created over the withheld
dialogue between BNP and the Election Commission on
electoral reforms ahead of the polls. True to the dictum
that politics sometimes creates strange bedfellows,
district Awami League President and Gazipur poura Chairman
AKM Mozammel Haq accompanied the leader of their rival
party all the time after Shah reached the court in the
morning.
Denouncing government attitude towards Hannan Shah, who
has been arrested and released on bail thrice in the
interim period, the AL leader said, "The government is
behaving unfairly with him (Shah)."
EC-Jamaat Dialogue
Jamaat wants war criminals to be barred in polls
Staff Correspondent
Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh
on Tuesday supported the Election Commission’s (EC)
proposed electoral laws providing for barring the
convicted war criminals from participating in the polls.
It, however, warned the EC against any possible move to
ban the religious political parties saying, "such move
might thwart democratic atmosphere in the country." "There
is much religious political parity in all democratic
countries including India and UK," said Jamaat Secretary
General Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed during its second
round talks with the EC on electoral reforms. Referring to
the proposals of different political parties for not
allowing religious political parties to be registered with
EC, Mojaheed said, "it is tantamount to an attack on
religious beliefs and is against the spirit of country’s
constitution." He also alleged that "a handful of
political parties, which have no popular support, are
trying to catch fish in the troubled waters by raising
irrational and illogical demands."
Although the EC has proposed law to bar convicted war
criminals from participating in the polls, not opposing
this clause Jamaat complied with almost all EC’s
proposals. It only opposed some issues including
introduction of transparent ballot box and introduction of
‘no vote’. It also warned the EC against taking any steps
going beyond its jurisdiction.
Like all other political parties, Jamaat also raised their
doubt about the holding of elections on time. "To dispel
all confusion, the election schedule specifying the poll
date should be announced immediately," Mojaheed said,
adding, "The EC’s first and foremost task is to hold the
parliamentary election so it will have to exert all
efforts to hold that poll not going for local elections."
Mojaheed cautioned, "The EC’s as well as this caretaker
government’s success hinges on holding a credible and
timely election."
Barriaster Abdur Rajjak said, "We have no doubt over the
cordiality of the EC in holding poll, but we are
apprehending other factors which might thwart the election
process. So in this case the EC will have to take tough
stand in favour of holding election." In response, the
Chief Election Commissioner, ATM Shamsul Huda, said, "We
are firm on our road map." "We do not know who are behind
making such confusion," Huda added.
Later talking to newsmen, Mojaheed said, "We asked the EC
to expedite their task so the stalled parliamentary
election can be held as per the announced road map. They
will have to take immediate steps to bring BNP in the
dialogue process to make it meaningful." Earlier, The EC
held dialogue with Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal-Inu (JSD-Inu)
and National Awami Party-Mojaffar (NAP-Mojaffar).
JSD President Hasanul Haque lodged a demand for not
allowing the political parties having involvement in war
crimes and run on the basis of religion to be registered
with EC.
Jute goods in high demand in global markets
Rabiul Islam
The neglected jute sector
may regain the country’s lost glory as the jute products
being environment-friendly are now in high demand in
global markets. Although the Government ignored the jute
sector over the years on the plea of multifarious reasons
including the decline of jute goods in international
market and huge loss, it has recently earned Tk.267 crore
from export of jute goods in the last six months. "We have
earned Tk. 267 crore foreign currency from export of jute
products in six months of the current financial year
because the government allocated Tk. 150 crore in time to
buy raw jute", said a high official of the Jute and
Textile Ministry. He also said demands for jute goods have
increased on global market as the jute products are
bio-degradable and environment friendly. The Ministry
sources informed that more Tk. 239 crore can be earned
from jute goods as the Government in its stock has jute
products worth Tk. 36 crore and raw jute of Tk. 60 crore
from which jute goods of Tk. 203 can be produced.
Sources said the jute sector has begun to obtain profit as
idle hours and production cost in state-owned jute mills
have declined simultaneously and there is no disturbance
from Combined Bargaining Agents (CBA). As a result, the
production has gone up. The Jute and Textile Ministry
reveals that the Government incurred a loss of Tk. 229
crore in the year 2005-2006 and Tk. 385 crore in
2006-2007.
Experts opined that delay in disbursing budgetary money
for jute purchase, the Governments’ indifference towards
public sector mills, power outage, posting of corrupt
people in the management and no drive for grasping market
potentials or creating demand caused huge loss in jute
sector over the past years. Without identifying the causes
of loss in jute sector, the Government has ignorantly shut
down the state-owned jute mills one after another or
privatised those, bringing down the number of jute mills
to 14 from 77. Now only 14 state-owned jute mills are
running under the Bangladesh Jute Mills Corporation (BJMC).
EPZ-FDI-Investments
Sheikh Didarul Islam
The Export Processing Zones (EPZ) of the country are
playing a significant role in industrialization through
facilitating the transfer of technology and development of
forward and backward linkage industries in Bangladesh.
Currently, some 264 industries are carrying out their
operational activities in the eight EPZs, making an actual
investment of around 1.29 billion US dollars.Two
state-owned enterprises (SOE) has also been included in
the EPZs. The eight EPZs have been contributing to the
country’s national economy for several years. Laying
stress on the expansion of country’s export processing
zones, the present caretaker government has already
approved two more EPZs in the districts of Munshigonj and
Feni.
As part of the mission of the present caretaker government
to facilitate economic development of the country through
promoting foreign direct investment (FDI) and local
investment and employment generation, the Bangladesh
Export Processing Zone Authority (BEPZA) is considering
creating new EPZs in order to keep pace with the present
day need of the entrepreneurs from home and abroad.
Now-a-days the export processing zones are no more a
traditional narrow enclave rather it is becoming more
integrated with the economic development process of the
entire Country, sources said. Besides, with the changing
global trade and investment scenario, the BEPZA has
revised its expansion strategy by making investment
incentives and facilities more market-oriented and
flexible with a view to accommodating diversified
investors ranging from manufacturing to service sectors
along with giant infrastructure projects, sources said.
Despite lesser growth in the last few years, the EPZs have
attained an accelerated growth rate in investment and
export in recent times. In the fiscal year 2005-06, a
total of US 112.89 million dollars were invested in the
EPZs. During the last fiscal (2006-07), the amount of FDI
investment rose to 152.37 million US dollars which is 34
percent higher that in the previous financial year.
Back Page
One stop passport
Firoz Mamun
Giving wrong and false
information, people who have become passport-holders under
the two-hour long "one stop" instant service, are not
being allowed to go abroad.
"To ease the people's sufferings and harassment and to get
passport within two hours instantly without police
clearance, Dhaka central passport office on September 23
of last year introduced one stop service. Taking the
opportunity, foreign bound people in association with
cheats and travel agencies provided false information in
favour of them for getting passport instantly. But when
police verification report was submitted to the passport
office, the authority detected that many people furnished
false information and even some of them totally avoided
their real identities and whereabouts. So, the authority
has already cancelled around 1,940 such passports based on
false and fabricated information and informed the
immigration and civil aviation authorities of the matter.
Some 2,500 fabricated passports are now under process of
cancellation. Besides, the immigration authority sent back
49 persons from the Zia International Airport as their
passports were cancelled due to false information.
Meanwhile the passport authority issued 18,625 passports
so far under the one stop service", talking to The
Bangladesh Today on Tuesday, a high official of Agargaon
passport office told.
He further said on the basis of information when the
concerned police officials tried to contact the people for
verification, they failed to identify the whereabouts of
the people. Talking to this correspondent, a person whose
passport has been cancelled alleged, if police are not
bribed, they do not actually submit correct information
about the passport-seekers.
Meanwhile, the sufferings of the passport-seekers are yet
to be reduced as cheats, touts and a section of
unscrupulous officials of the passport office are still
active in and around the passport office. Officials and
employees of passport office, cheats and middlemen start
pestering people as soon as they come to the Agargaon
passport office for getting passports or other related
works.
An organised gang staying inside a market adjacent to the
passport office is engaged in producing fake passports and
other documents using computers, machines and emboss
seals. New comers to the office premises are their main
targets. If anybody wants to avoid the gang, he is
manhandled by them. At one stage, the thugs snatch his
money, cell phone set and other valuables under the very
nose of law enforcers and passport office officials,
sources alleged.
On the other hand, people entering office for passport
related works regularly become victims of harassment by a
section of unscrupulous passport officials who maintain
good relations with the cheats and middlemen. Such
misbehaviour of passport officials and employees and the
presence of such goons create a suffocating atmosphere
everyday leading to harassment of the people. Most of the
passport officials do not work for the clients unless they
are paid extra money.
Sitting on chairs in every room, officials and employees
start unnecessary questioning as soon as a client enters
the room for his work. At the same time, a group of
employees ask the person to come to them for work in
exchange for extra money otherwise he will have to wait
for an indefinite period.
"Several times earlier, I tried to get my passport through
proper channel but I failed. At last I had to pay extra Tk
1,000 to an employee of the passport office for getting my
passport," expressing resentment Haider Ali, a banker,
told this correspondent. During a visit to the passport
office, this correspondent found an anarchic situation
prevailing there. A section of officials and employees
were found crowding different corners of the office
building and taking money from passport-seekers.
SME & Women Entrepreneurs
Staff Correspondent
Finance Adviser Dr AB Mirza Azizul Islam on Tuesday said
Bangladesh could be a member of the middle-income group by
the year 2020 if it can ensure the participation of women
in its economical activities. Besides, he said the
Government is now under tremendous economic pressure ahead
of the next budget as it has to spend a big amount of its
budget as subsidy to fuel and food sector. He was
addressing as chief guest at a seminar on 'Strengthening
Capacity of Women Entrepreneurs' organized by Bangladesh
Women Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BWCCI) at the
National Press Club yesterday with its President Selima
Ahmad in the chair. The Adviser said, "the country's
banking sector will have to update its loan allocation
system to expedite the loans to its consumers and it
should strengthen its monitoring system to ensure proper
loan allocation to the SME and women entrepreneurs." He
also said the Government would need to take immediate
steps to ensure women representation in the boards of the
state banks to look after the problems of the women
entrepreneurs.
Speaking as the special guest, eminent economist Dr Atiur
Rahman said, "there is a need for change in the policies
of institutions for longevity of its policies and that's
why all the entrepreneurs should raise their voice
demanding institutional reforms of the banks."
He also urged the finance adviser to ensure the women
representation in the board of the public banks to help
the bank to identify potential women entrepreneurs. Atiur
Rahman also said, "the BWCCI should identify the potential
entrepreneurs and it should suggest the banks for their
loan allocation." He urged the Government to give
incentives to the women entrepreneurs saying, " if the
Government wants to show social responsibility to its
women, then it should give the incentives to some weak
sectors of the country like the women entrepreneurs."
Senior researcher of Bangladesh Institute of Development
Studies (BIDS) presented keynote paper on ' Bringing Women
Entrepreneurs in Policy Focus for SME development in
Bangladesh' where he made some recommendations including
reducing the existing rates of bank interests for the
women entrepreneurs and setting up SME unit in commercial
banks and financial institutions. She also urged the
Government to create women-friendly environment in banks
and financial institutions, and fix SME friendly tax, duty
and VAT structure. BWCCI President Selima Ahmad in her
address of welcome said, "The Government should establish
knowledge centre in every district to ensure that
information needed for the women entrepreneurs are readily
available."
Trail of War Criminals
Case filed against 12 persons
UNB, Chapainawabganj
Twelve persons were accused
in a case filed on Tuesday of shooting down 12 innocent
villagers during the liberation war in 1971 at remote
Parchowk village of Shibganj upazila.
Additional chief judicial magistrate Ratneswar
Bhattacharya after hearing the petitioner sent the case to
Shibganj Thana for investigation and report.
Badiur Rahman, son of one of the victims Muslem Uddin,
filed the case against Fazlu, Kubed, Murtaza, Aynal, Zafar
Ali, Yasin, Mohsen Ali, Habu, Zillur Rahman, Deen
Mohammad, Ilyas and Deen Mohammad - all now aged between
60 and 70 and hail from different villages of Shibganj.
The petitioner said the accused were Rajakars
collaborating with Pakistani occupation forces during the
liberation war. On October 7, 1971 they rounded up his
father and 11 other innocent villagers, who were brutally
killed in brush fire near Monakasha Humayun Reza High
School.
Crime Watch
3 agyan party men netted
Crime Watch Desk, TBT
A team of DB police arrested three members of Agayan Party
and recovered medicine used by the gang to make people
unconscious and different books from their possession on
Monday.
Acting on tip-off, a team of DB police conducted a drive
in Motijheel commercial area and arrested three members of
Agayan party. The arrestees are Harun-r-Rashid (32), Akkas
Ali (30) and Atikur Rahman (29). The arrestees are the
members of a organised Agayan party, police source said.
Two commit suicide
UNB, Dhaka
A newly-wed housewife and a teenaged boy allegedly
committed suicide on Monday in Thakurgaon and Jamalpur
district.
In Thakurgaon, newly married Champa Rani (20), committed
suicide by hanging herself at Singia village in Sadar
upazila.
Family sources said Champa Rani (20), daughter of Khagen
Mohan of Basdebpur village, was married to Satyen Barman
of the village 15 days ago. The reason behind the suicide
could not be known immediately.
In Jamalpur, a candidate of SSC examination was committed
suicide by hanging at Jamuna Fertilizer Factory housing
colony in Sarishabari upazila Monday morning.
Police said Tushar, 16, son of Jamuna Fertilizer Factory
employee Azizur Rahman took his own life by hanging
himself from the ceiling fan at his room.
On information police recovered the body and sent to
hospital morgue for autopsy.
Seven hijackers, muggers arrested in city
UNB, Dhaka
Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) members, in separate drives,
arrested four taxicab hijackers and three muggers from the
city's Bijoynagar and Motijheel areas Monday midnight.
RAB sources said a patrol team of RAB-3 chased four
hijackers when they were running away after hijacking a
taxicab.
As the hijackers reached Bijoynagar area, the elite force
members arrested Shahjahan, 33, Foyez Islam Raju, 25,
Badrul Alam, 27, and Rafiqul Islam, 40, along with the
taxicab at about 11:00 pm.
Later, the RAB men searched the cab and recovered four
sharp weapons and some gold ornaments.
In another drive, RAB personnel arrested Kajol, 20, Mithu,
19, and Sabuj, 21, from the city's commercial area
Mothijheel for their alleged involvement in mugging.
A number of sharp weapons were also seized from their
possession.
Separate cases were filed with Paltan and Mothijheel
police stations.
BDR seizes smuggled garlic
BSS, Sunamganj
Members of Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) seized 104 sacks of
garlic while being smuggled out of the country by 13 small
boats through the bordering Konimara river under
Doarabazar upazila on Monday.
Sources said a team of BDR jawans from Sonalichela BOP
seized the garlic while on patrol duty. Sensing the
presence of the border guards the smugglers left the place
leaving behind the boats loaded with garlic.
BDR sources said the seized 8,008 kg garlic valued Tk
3,23,440 and the boats worth about Tk 1,95,000 were handed
over to Chhatak customs office.
Businessman stabbed, robbed
UNB, Sylhet
Snatchers stabbed a businessman and took away about Tk 2
lakh from him at Kanaighat Bazar in Kanaighat upazila on
Sunday night.
Local sources said Alauddin Chowdhury, 55, also a former
UP member came under attack at about 11pm on way home from
his business centre. The muggers stabbed him severely and
looted Tk 1.83 lakh from him. Hearing Alauddin's
screaming, police rushed in and rescued Alauddin. They
admitted him to Kanaighat Upazila Health Complex. Later,
he was shifted to Sylhet Osmani Medical College Hospital
as his condition deteriorated. Victim's wife filed a case
with the police.
Mobile court realizes Tk 63,000
BSS, Kushtia
A mobile court here realized fine Tk 63,000 from a bakery
in the town for adulterating food on Sunday.
Official sources said the court found adulterated food and
food ingredients at the Shahin Bakery during an
anti-adulteration drive and fined the amount. First class
magistrate M Azadur Rahman was present during the drive,
sources said.
Forrester, gardener nabbed
for timber smuggling
UNB, Jamalpur
Sarishabari Upazila Forest Officer and his gardener were
arrested on Sunday night on charge of smuggling of timber.
Police said local people caught forest officer Abdur Rouf
and his gardener Mozammel Huq from the Station Road in the
upazila headquarters at about 9pm while lifting timber,
worth over Tk 1 lakh, by a van.
Later, they were handed over to police. The seized timber
were deposited with local police station. A case was filed
in this connection.
3 terrorists held with firearms
UNB, Sylhet
RAB members arrested three terrorists along with two
firearms and five bullets from Mirapara area in the city
Sunday night.
Acting on secrete information a team of RAB-9 raided Uzzal
restaurant in the area and arrested Shaheen Ahmed (26),
Manikur Rahman alias Kala Maink (27), and Abdul Matin
(26), along with 2 revolvers and the bullets.
RAB sources said the terrorists were wanted in several
cases.
Another report from Jhenidah said: Police arrested five
snatchers along with five knives from Paglakanai and
Bepari para areas of the town early Monday.
3 get life-term in Sirajganj
A Correspondent, Sirajganj
The court in Sirajganj sentenced life-term to three men
with Rigorous Imprisonment (RI) in a kidnap-murder case on
Tuesday.
The court also fined the convicts Tk 20,000 each, in
default, to suffer another one year RI.
The convicts are: Md. Ahsan Habib (30), son of Afsar Ali,
of village Biaraghat in Gurudashpur upazila under Natore,
Md. Nasim (27), son of Naosher Ali and Abul Kalam (29),
son of Refat Ali, of village Magura-Benod, under Taras
upazila of the district.
Satendra Nath, the additional district and session
judge-1, pronounced the verdict. According to the
prosecution, the convicts kidnapped a minor boy, Md.
Aminul Islam (7), son of Md. Sekander Ali, of Magura-Benod
village on January 3, 2002 and demanded Tk. 50,000 as
ransom from his parents. After refusal, they killed the
boy and threw the body in a canal.
Later, deceased's father lodged a case with Taras police
station accusing eight persons. The others five of the
case were acquitted as the charges against them not
proved.
Editorial
Misgivings About
Elections
On
24 February 2008, the CEC while speaking at the 2nd round of
dialogues with the political parties claimed that misgivings
about elections were being created by TV talk shows; he
actually suggested that people ought to stop watching these TV
talk shows in order not to be confused about different issues
relating to elections!
Well, the CEC is certainly entitled to his opinions and even
suggestions but so are other people which includes the
electronic and print media whose role it is to put up news,
project views and opinions which are of interest and concern
to the general public - how else would the citizenry be kept
informed about events which affect their lives and living. We
don't see the CEC shying away from the media while expressing
his views and opinions so why would he want others to stay
away from watching TV talk shows? We hope that the CEC is not
suggesting that he is the only source of truth as far as
elections are concerned. Already the Emergency Government has
come down hard on the TV, banning a couple of stations from
airing talk shows on political issues, further curbing of such
shows would be tantamount to denying the basic human right of
free expression and right to information.
Coming to the issue of elections, there is no denying that
there are indeed misgivings in the minds of the people
regarding the direction elections will be taking and these
misgivings are not created by the media but by the activities
and pronouncements of the Emergency Government and the EC. Two
advisers of the Government, Mr. Hassan Ariff and Maj Gen Matin
have already opined that there is no bar to holding elections
under the Emergency as some elections were held in the past
under emergencies and martial-law governments. Such opinions
are in direct contravention to the demands of every political
party as well as the general populace who all want to see the
Emergency go, the earlier, the better. Therefore, the first
point of confusion and misgiving which the Government and the
EC is unable and unwilling to clarify is : Are we to have
elections under the Emergency or not? Elections under the
Emergency and elections without the Emergency denote two
differing and contradictory sets of factors, conditions,
situations and constraints.
The EC has created conditions to keep the BNP out of any
dialogues, the BNP which is not only a major political party
but also a party which has formed two governments within the
last 15 years and the EC seems set to go the full way without
the BNP's participation. The matter is so glaring that even
the BNP's arch rival the AL has seen fit to not only voice its
opinion against it but has also raised doubts about the
fairness and validity of an election which keeps the BNP out
of the process and possibly out of elections too. Thus a
significant portion of our voting public are being
deliberately denied a representation in the process of
expressing their views through a dialogue with the EC.
Therefore, the second point of confusion and misgivings is :
Would any process, be they dialogues or elections, have any
validity, acceptance or indeed legitimacy from which the BNP,
one of the two major political parties, is kept out?
The EC seems to be obsessed with processes rather than
outcomes; the process of dialogue ought to have lead to an
outcome of broad consensus on how to hold a free, fair and
acceptable election at the shortest possible time. The process
is so important to the EC that it is willing and indeed going
ahead with its 2nd round of dialogues with political parties
who have received either no votes or miniscule percentages of
votes in elections over the last two decades, the only
exception being the AL. Emphasizing on process rather than
outcomes is typically the view point and preferred method of
operation of a hide-bound bureaucracy or civil service and is
not conducive to outcomes such as acceptable elections. So the
third and last point of confusion and misgiving is : Are these
dialogues leading us to legitimate and valid election within
this year?
If confusions and misgivings are to be avoided the EC ought to
answer the 3 questions, raised in this editorial, to the
satisfaction of major political parties and to the general
citizenry. Stopping people watching TV talk shows is not going
to allay people's confusions and misgivings.
Analysis
The Enduring Power of Ethnic
Nationalism
Ethnonationalism has played a more profound and lasting role
in modern history than is commonly understood.
Jerry Z. Muller
Projecting
their own experience onto the rest of the world, Americans
generally belittle the role of ethnic nationalism in politics.
After all, in the United States people of varying ethnic
origins lives cheek by jowl in relative peace. Within two or
three generations of immigration, their ethnic identities are
attenuated by cultural assimilation and intermarriage. Surely,
things cannot be so different elsewhere.
Americans also find ethnonationalism discomfiting both
intellectually and morally. Social scientists go to great
lengths to demonstrate that it is a product not of nature but
of culture, often deliberately constructed. And ethicists
scorn value systems based on narrow group identities rather
than cosmopolitanism.
But none of this will make ethnonationalism go away.
Immigrants to the United States usually arrive with a
willingness to fit into their new country and reshape their
identities accordingly. But for those who remain behind in
lands where their ancestors have lived for generations, if not
centuries, political identities often take ethnic form,
producing competing communal claims to political power. The
creation of a peaceful regional order of nation-states has
usually been the product of a violent process of ethnic
separation. In areas where that separation has not yet
occurred, politics is apt to remain ugly.
A familiar and influential narrative of twentieth-century
European history argues that nationalism twice led to war, in
1914 and then again in 1939. Thereafter, the story goes,
Europeans concluded that nationalism was a danger and
gradually abandoned it. In the postwar decades, western
Europeans enmeshed themselves in a web of transnational
institutions, culminating in the European Union (EU). After
the fall of the Soviet empire, that transnational framework
spread eastward to encompass most of the continent. Europeans
entered a postnational era, which was not only a good thing in
itself but also a model for other regions. Nationalism, in
this view, had been a tragic detour on the road to a peaceful
liberal democratic order.
This story is widely believed by educated Europeans and even
more so, perhaps, by educated Americans. Recently, for
example, in the course of arguing that Israel ought to give up
its claim to be a Jewish state and dissolve itself into some
sort of binational entity with the Palestinians, the prominent
historian Tony Judt informed the readers of The New York
Review of Books that "the problem with Israel ... [is that] it
has imported a characteristically late-nineteenth-century
separatist project into a world that has moved on, a world of
individual rights, open frontiers, and international law. The
very idea of a 'Jewish state' ... is an anachronism."
Yet the experience of the hundreds of Africans and Asians who
perish each year trying to get into Europe by landing on the
coast of Spain or Italy reveals that Europe's frontiers are
not so open. And a survey would show that whereas in 1900
there were many states in Europe without a single
overwhelmingly dominant nationality, by 2007 there were only
two, and one of those, Belgium, was close to breaking up.
Aside from Switzerland, in other words -- where the domestic
ethnic balance of power is protected by strict citizenship
laws -- in Europe the "separatist project" has not so much
vanished as triumphed. Far from having been superannuated in
1945, in many respects ethnonationalism was at its apogee in
the years immediately after World War II. European stability
during the Cold War era was in fact due partly to the
widespread fulfillment of the ethnonationalist project. And
since the end of the Cold War, ethnonationalism has continued
to reshape European borders.
In short, ethnonationalism has played a more profound and
lasting role in modern history than is commonly understood,
and the processes that led to the dominance of the
ethnonational state and the separation of ethnic groups in
Europe are likely to reoccur elsewhere. Increased
urbanization, literacy, and political mobilization;
differences in the fertility rates and economic performance of
various ethnic groups; and immigration will challenge the
internal structure of states as well as their borders. Whether
politically correct or not, ethnonationalism will continue to
shape the world in the twenty-first century.
THE POLITICS OF IDENTITY
There are two major ways of thinking about national identity.
One is that all people who live within a country's borders are
part of the nation, regardless of their ethnic, racial, or
religious origins. This liberal or civic nationalism is the
conception with which contemporary Americans are most likely
to identify. But the liberal view has competed with and often
lost out to a different view, that of ethnonationalism. The
core of the ethnonationalist idea is that nations are defined
by a shared heritage, which usually includes a common
language, a common faith, and a common ethnic ancestry.
The ethnonationalist view has traditionally dominated through
much of Europe and has held its own even in the United States
until recently. For substantial stretches of U.S. history, it
was believed that only the people of English origin, or those
who were Protestant, or white, or hailed from northern Europe
were real Americans. It was only in 1965 that the reform of
U.S. immigration law abolished the system of national-origin
quotas that had been in place for several decades. This system
had excluded Asians entirely and radically restricted
immigration from southern and eastern Europe.
Ethnonationalism draws much of its emotive power from the
notion that the members of a nation are part of an extended
family, ultimately united by ties of blood. It is the
subjective belief in the reality of a common "we" that counts.
The markers that distinguish the in-group vary from case to
case and time to time, and the subjective nature of the
communal boundaries has led some to discount their practical
significance. But as Walker Connor, an astute student of
nationalism, has noted, "It is not what is, but what people
believe is that has behavioral consequences." And the central
tenets of ethnonationalist belief are that nations exist, that
each nation ought to have its own state, and that each state
should be made up of the members of a single nation.
The conventional narrative of European history asserts that
nationalism was primarily liberal in the western part of the
continent and that it became more ethnically oriented as one
moved east. There is some truth to this, but it disguises a
good deal as well. It is more accurate to say that when modern
states began to form, political boundaries and ethnolinguistic
boundaries largely coincided in the areas along Europe's
Atlantic coast. Liberal nationalism, that is, was most apt to
emerge in states that already possessed a high degree of
ethnic homogeneity. Long before the nineteenth century,
countries such as England, France, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden
emerged as nation-states in polities where ethnic divisions
had been softened by a long history of cultural and social
homogenization.
In the center of the continent, populated by speakers of
German and Italian, political structures were fragmented into
hundreds of small units. But in the 1860s and 1870s, this
fragmentation was resolved by the creation of Italy and
Germany, so that almost all Italians lived in the former and a
majority of Germans lived in the latter. Moving further east,
the situation changed again. As late as 1914, most of central,
eastern, and southeastern Europe was made up not of
nation-states but of empires. The Hapsburg empire comprised
what are now Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and
Slovakia and parts of what are now Bosnia, Croatia, Poland,
Romania, Ukraine, and more. The Romanov empire stretched into
Asia, including what is now Russia and what are now parts of
Poland, Ukraine, and more. And the Ottoman Empire covered
modern Turkey and parts of today's Bulgaria, Greece, Romania,
and Serbia and extended through much of the Middle East and
North Africa as well.
Each of these empires was composed of numerous ethnic groups,
but they were not multinational in the sense of granting equal
status to the many peoples that made up their populaces. The
governing monarchy and landed nobility often differed in
language and ethnic origin from the urbanized trading class,
whose members in turn usually differed in language, ethnicity,
and often religion from the peasantry. In the Hapsburg and
Romanov empires, for example, merchants were usually Germans
or Jews. In the Ottoman Empire, they were often Armenians,
Greeks, or Jews. And in each empire, the peasantry was itself
ethnically diverse.
Up through the nineteenth century, these societies were still
largely agrarian: most people lived as peasants in the
countryside, and few were literate. Political, social, and
economic stratifications usually correlated with ethnicity,
and people did not expect to change their positions in the
system. Until the rise of modern nationalism, all of this
seemed quite unproblematic. In this world, moreover, people of
one religion, language, or culture were often dispersed across
various countries and empires. There were ethnic Germans, for
example, not only in the areas that became Germany but also
scattered throughout the Hapsburg and Romanov empires. There
were Greeks in Greece but also millions of them in the Ottoman
Empire (not to mention hundreds of thousands of Muslim Turks
in Greece). And there were Jews everywhere -- but with no
independent state of their own.
THE RISE OF ETHNONATIONALISM
Today, people tend to take the nation-state for granted as the
natural form of political association and regard empires as
anomalies. But over the broad sweep of recorded history, the
opposite is closer to the truth. Most people at most times
have lived in empires, with the nation-state the exception
rather than the rule. So what triggered the change?
The rise of ethnonationalism, as the sociologist Ernest
Gellner has explained, was not some strange historical
mistake; rather, it was propelled by some of the deepest
currents of modernity. Military competition between states
created a demand for expanded state resources and hence
continual economic growth. Economic growth, in turn, depended
on mass literacy and easy communication, spurring policies to
promote education and a common language -- which led directly
to conflicts over language and communal opportunities.
Modern societies are premised on the egalitarian notion that
in theory, at least, anyone can aspire to any economic
position. But in practice, everyone does not have an equal
likelihood of upward economic mobility, and not simply because
individuals have different innate capabilities. For such
advances depend in part on what economists call "cultural
capital," the skills and behavioral patterns that help
individuals and groups succeed. Groups with traditions of
literacy and engagement in commerce tend to excel, for
example, whereas those without such traditions tend to lag
behind.
As they moved into cities and got more education during the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, ethnic groups with
largely peasant backgrounds, such as the Czechs, the Poles,
the Slovaks, and the Ukrainians found that key positions in
the government and the economy were already occupied -- often
by ethnic Armenians, Germans, Greeks, or Jews. Speakers of the
same language came to share a sense that they belonged
together and to define themselves in contrast to other
communities. And eventually they came to demand a nation state
of their own, in which they would be the masters, dominating
politics, staffing the civil service, and controlling
commerce.
Ethnonationalism had a psychological basis as well as an
economic one. By creating a new and direct relationship
between individuals and the government, the rise of the modern
state weakened individuals' traditional bonds to intermediate
social units, such as the family, the clan, the guild, and the
church. And by spurring social and geographic mobility and a
self-help mentality, the rise of market-based economies did
the same. The result was an emotional vacuum that was often
filled by new forms of identification, often along ethnic
lines.
Ethnonationalist ideology called for congruence between the
state and the ethnically defined nation, with explosive
results. As Lord Acton recognized in 1862, "By making the
state and the nation commensurate with each other in theory,
[nationalism] reduces practically to a subject condition all
other nationalities that may be within the boundary. . . .
According, therefore, to the degree of humanity and
civilization in that dominant body which claims all the rights
of the community, the inferior races are exterminated, or
reduced to servitude, or outlawed, or put in a condition of
dependence." And that is just what happened.
THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION
Nineteenth-century liberals, like many proponents of
globalization today, believed that the spread of international
commerce would lead people to recognize the mutual benefits
that could come from peace and trade, both within polities and
between them. Socialists agreed, although they believed that
harmony would come only after the arrival of socialism. Yet
that was not the course that twentieth-century history was
destined to follow. The process of "making the state and the
nation commensurate" took a variety of forms, from voluntary
emigration (often motivated by governmental discrimination
against minority ethnicities) to forced deportation (also
known as "population transfer") to genocide. Although the term
"ethnic cleansing" has come into English usage only recently,
its verbal correlates in Czech, French, German, and Polish go
back much further. Much of the history of twentieth-century
Europe, in fact, has been a painful, drawn-out process of
ethnic disaggregation.
Massive ethnic disaggregation began on Europe's frontiers. In
the ethnically mixed Balkans, wars to expand the nation-states
of Bulgaria, Greece, and Serbia at the expense of the ailing
Ottoman Empire were accompanied by ferocious interethnic
violence. During the Balkan Wars of 1912-13, almost half a
million people left their traditional homelands, either
voluntarily or by force. Muslims left regions under the
control of Bulgarians, Greeks, and Serbs; Bulgarians abandoned
Greek-controlled areas of Macedonia; Greeks fled from regions
of Macedonia ceded to Bulgaria and Serbia.
World War I led to the demise of the three great
turn-of-the-century empires, unleashing an explosion of
ethnonationalism in the process. In the Ottoman Empire, mass
deportations and murder during the war took the lives of a
million members of the local Armenian minority in an early
attempt at ethnic cleansing, if not genocide. In 1919, the
Greek government invaded the area that would become Turkey,
seeking to carve out a "greater Greece" stretching all the way
to Constantinople. Meeting with initial success, the Greek
forces looted and burned villages in an effort to drive out
the region's ethnic Turks. But Turkish forces eventually
regrouped and pushed the Greek army back, engaging in their
own ethnic cleansing against local Greeks along the way. Then
the process of population transfers was formalized in the 1923
Treaty of Lausanne: all ethnic Greeks were to go to Greece,
all Greek Muslims to Turkey. In the end, Turkey expelled
almost 1.5 million people, and Greece expelled almost 400,000.
Out of the breakup of the Hapsburg and Romanov empires emerged
a multitude of new countries. Many conceived of themselves as
ethnonational polities, in which the state existed to protect
and promote the dominant ethnic group. Yet of central and
eastern Europe's roughly 60 million people, 25 million
continued to be part of ethnic minorities in the countries in
which they lived. In most cases, the ethnic majority did not
believe in trying to help minorities assimilate, nor were the
minorities always eager to do so themselves. Nationalist
governments openly discriminated in favor of the dominant
community. Government activities were conducted solely in the
language of the majority, and the civil service was reserved
for those who spoke it.
In much of central and eastern Europe, Jews had long played an
important role in trade and commerce. When they were given
civil rights in the late nineteenth century, they tended to
excel in professions requiring higher education, such as
medicine and law, and soon Jews or people of Jewish descent
made up almost half the doctors and lawyers in cities such as
Budapest, Vienna, and Warsaw. By the 1930s, many governments
adopted policies to try to check and reverse these advances,
denying Jews credit and limiting their access to higher
education. In other words, the National Socialists who came to
power in Germany in 1933 and based their movement around a "Germanness"
they defined in contrast to "Jewishness" were an extreme
version of a more common ethnonationalist trend.
The politics of ethnonationalism took an even deadlier turn
during World War II. The Nazi regime tried to reorder the
ethnic map of the continent by force. Its most radical act was
an attempt to rid Europe of Jews by killing them all -- an
attempt that largely succeeded. The Nazis also used ethnic
German minorities in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and elsewhere to
enforce Nazi domination, and many of the regimes allied with
Germany engaged in their own campaigns against internal ethnic
enemies. The Romanian regime, for example, murdered hundreds
of thousands of Jews on its own, without orders from Germany,
and the government of Croatia murdered not only its Jews but
hundreds of thousands of Serbs and Romany as well.
POSTWAR BUT NOT POSTNATIONAL
One might have expected that the Nazi regime's deadly policies
and crushing defeat would mark the end of the ethnonationalist
era. But in fact they set the stage for another massive round
of ethnonational transformation. The political settlement in
central Europe after World War I had been achieved primarily
by moving borders to align them with populations. After World
War II, it was the populations that moved instead. Millions of
people were expelled from their homes and countries, with at
least the tacit support of the victorious Allies.
Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin all
concluded that the expulsion of ethnic Germans from non-German
countries was a prerequisite to a stable postwar order. As
Churchill put it in a speech to the British parliament in
December 1944, "Expulsion is the method which, so far as we
have been able to see, will be the most satisfactory and
lasting. There will be no mixture of populations to cause
endless trouble. . . . A clean sweep will be made. I am not
alarmed at the prospect of the disentanglement of population,
nor am I alarmed by these large transferences." He cited the
Treaty of Lausanne as a precedent, showing how even the
leaders of liberal democracies had concluded that only
radically illiberal measures would eliminate the causes of
ethnonational aspirations and aggression.
Between 1944 and 1945, five million ethnic Germans from the
eastern parts of the German Reich fled westward to escape the
conquering Red Army, which was energetically raping and
massacring its way to Berlin. Then, between 1945 and 1947, the
new postliberation regimes in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland,
and Yugoslavia expelled another seven million Germans in
response to their collaboration with the Nazis. Together,
these measures constituted the largest forced population
movement in European history, with hundreds of thousands of
people dying along the way.
The handful of Jews who survived the war and returned to their
homes in eastern Europe met with so much anti-Semitism that
most chose to leave for good. About 220,000 of them made their
way into the American-occupied zone of Germany, from which
most eventually went to Israel or the United States. Jews thus
essentially vanished from central and eastern Europe, which
had been the center of Jewish life since the sixteenth
century.
Millions of refugees from other ethnic groups were also
evicted from their homes and resettled after the war. This was
due partly to the fact that the borders of the Soviet Union
had moved westward, into what had once been Poland, while the
borders of Poland also moved westward, into what had once been
Germany. To make populations correspond to the new borders,
1.5 million Poles living in areas that were now part of the
Soviet Union were deported to Poland, and 500,000 ethnic
Ukrainians who had been living in Poland were sent to the
Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Yet another exchange of
populations took place between Czechoslovakia and Hungary,
with Slovaks transferred out of Hungary and Magyars sent away
from Czechoslovakia. A smaller number of Magyars also moved to
Hungary from Yugoslavia, with Serbs and Croats moving in the
opposite direction.
As a result of this massive process of ethnic unmixing, the
ethnonationalist ideal was largely realized: for the most
part, each nation in Europe had its own state, and each state
was made up almost exclusively of a single ethnic nationality.
During the Cold War, the few exceptions to this rule included
Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia. But these
countries' subsequent fate only demonstrated the ongoing
vitality of ethnonationalism. After the fall of communism,
East and West Germany were unified with remarkable rapidity,
Czechoslovakia split peacefully into Czech and Slovak
republics, and the Soviet Union broke apart into a variety of
different national units. Since then, ethnic Russian
minorities in many of the post-Soviet states have gradually
immigrated to Russia, Magyars in Romania have moved to
Hungary, and the few remaining ethnic Germans in Russia have
largely gone to Germany. A million people of Jewish origin
from the former Soviet Union have made their way to Israel.
Yugoslavia saw the secession of Croatia and Slovenia and then
descended into ethnonational wars over Bosnia and Kosovo.
The breakup of Yugoslavia was simply the last act of a long
play. But the plot of that play -- the disaggregation of
peoples and the triumph of ethnonationalism in modern Europe
-- is rarely recognized, and so a story whose significance is
comparable to the spread of democracy or capitalism remains
largely unknown and unappreciated.
DECOLONIZATION AND AFTER
The effects of ethnonationalism, of course, have hardly been
confined to Europe. For much of the developing world,
decolonization has meant ethnic disaggregation through the
exchange or expulsion of local minorities. The end of the
British Raj in 1947 brought about the partition of the
subcontinent into India and Pakistan, along with an orgy of
violence that took hundreds of thousands of lives. Fifteen
million people became refugees, including Muslims who went to
Pakistan and Hindus who went to India. Then, in 1971, Pakistan
itself, originally unified on the basis of religion, dissolved
into Urdu-speaking Pakistan and Bengali-speaking Bangladesh.
In the former British mandate of Palestine, a Jewish state was
established in 1948 and was promptly greeted by the revolt of
the indigenous Arab community and an invasion from the
surrounding Arab states. In the war that resulted, regions
that fell under Arab control were cleansed of their Jewish
populations, and Arabs fled or were forced out of areas that
came under Jewish control. Some 750,000 Arabs left, primarily
for the surrounding Arab countries, and the remaining 150,000
constituted only about a sixth of the population of the new
Jewish state. In the years afterward, nationalist-inspired
violence against Jews in Arab countries propelled almost all
of the more than 500,000 Jews there to leave their lands of
origin and immigrate to Israel. Likewise, in 1962 the end of
French control in Algeria led to the forced emigration of
Algerians of European origin (the so-called pieds-noirs), most
of whom immigrated to France. Shortly thereafter, ethnic
minorities of Asian origin were forced out of postcolonial
Uganda. The legacy of the colonial era, moreover, is hardly
finished. When the European overseas empires dissolved, they
left behind a patchwork of states whose boundaries often cut
across ethnic patterns of settlement and whose internal
populations were ethnically mixed. It is wishful thinking to
suppose that these boundaries will be permanent. As societies
in the former colonial world modernize, becoming more urban,
literate, and politically mobilized, the forces that gave rise
to ethnonationalism and ethnic disaggregation in Europe are
apt to drive events there, too.
(Continued on page-5)
Viewpoints
The Enduring Power
of Ethnic Nationalism
(Continued
from page-4)
THE BALANCE SHEET
Analysts of ethnic disaggregation typically focus on its
destructive effects, which is understandable given the direct
human suffering it has often entailed. But such attitudes can
yield a distorted perspective by overlooking the less obvious
costs and also the important benefits that ethnic separation
has brought.
Economists from Adam Smith onward, for example, have argued
that the efficiencies of competitive markets tend to increase
with the markets' size. The dissolution of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire into smaller nation-states, each with
its own barriers to trade, was thus economically irrational
and contributed to the region's travails in the interwar
period. Much of subsequent European history has involved
attempts to overcome this and other economic fragmentation,
culminating in the EU.
Ethnic disaggregation also seems to have deleterious effects
on cultural vitality. Precisely because most of their citizens
share a common cultural and linguistic heritage, the
homogenized states of postwar Europe have tended to be more
culturally insular than their demographically diverse
predecessors. With few Jews in Europe and few Germans in
Prague, that is, there are fewer Franz Kafkas.
Forced migrations generally penalize the expelling countries
and reward the receiving ones. Expulsion is often driven by a
majority group's resentment of a minority group's success, on
the mistaken assumption that achievement is a zero-sum game.
But countries that got rid of their Armenians, Germans,
Greeks, Jews, and other successful minorities deprived
themselves of some of their most talented citizens, who simply
took their skills and knowledge elsewhere. And in many places,
the triumph of ethnonational politics has meant the victory of
traditionally rural groups over more urbanized ones, which
possess just those skills desirable in an advanced industrial
economy.
But if ethnonationalism has frequently led to tension and
conflict, it has also proved to be a source of cohesion and
stability. When French textbooks began with "Our ancestors the
Gauls" or when Churchill spoke to wartime audiences of "this
island race," they appealed to ethnonationalist sensibilities
as a source of mutual trust and sacrifice. Liberal democracy
and ethnic homogeneity are not only compatible; they can be
complementary.
One could argue that Europe has been so harmonious since World
War II not because of the failure of ethnic nationalism but
because of its success, which removed some of the greatest
sources of conflict both within and between countries. The
fact that ethnic and state boundaries now largely coincide has
meant that there are fewer disputes over borders or expatriate
communities, leading to the most stable territorial
configuration in European history.
These ethnically homogeneous polities have displayed a great
deal of internal solidarity, moreover, facilitating government
programs, including domestic transfer payments, of various
kinds. When the Swedish Social Democrats were developing plans
for Europe's most extensive welfare state during the interwar
period, the political scientist Sheri Berman has noted, they
conceived of and sold them as the construction of a folkhemmet,
or "people's home."
Several decades of life in consolidated, ethnically
homogeneous states may even have worked to sap
ethnonationalism's own emotional power. Many Europeans are now
prepared and even eager, to participate in transnational
frameworks such as the EU, in part because their perceived
need for collective self-determination has largely been
satisfied.
NEW ETHNIC MIXING
Along with the process of forced ethnic disaggregation over
the last two centuries, there has also been a process of
ethnic mixing brought about by voluntary emigration. The
general pattern has been one of emigration from poor, stagnant
areas to richer and more dynamic ones.
In Europe, this has meant primarily movement west and north,
leading above all to France and the United Kingdom. This
pattern has continued into the present: as a result of recent
migration, for example, there are now half a million Poles in
Great Britain and 200,000 in Ireland. Immigrants from one part
of Europe who have moved to another and ended up staying there
have tended to assimilate and, despite some grumbling about a
supposed invasion of "Polish plumbers," have created few
significant problems.
The most dramatic transformation of European ethnic balances
in recent decades has come from the immigration of people of
Asian, African, and Middle Eastern origin, and here the
results have been mixed. Some of these groups have achieved
remarkable success, such as the Indian Hindus who have come to
the United Kingdom. But in Belgium, France, Germany, the
Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere, on
balance the educational and economic progress of Muslim
immigrants has been more limited and their cultural alienation
greater.
How much of the problem can be traced to discrimination, how
much to the cultural patterns of the immigrants themselves,
and how much to the policies of European governments is
difficult to determine. But a number of factors, from official
multiculturalism to generous welfare states to the ease of
contact with ethnic homelands, seem to have made it possible
to create ethnic islands where assimilation into the larger
culture and economy is limited.
As a result, some of the traditional contours of European
politics have been upended. The left, for example, has tended
to embrace immigration in the name of egalitarianism and
multiculturalism. But if there is indeed a link between ethnic
homogeneity and a population's willingness to support generous
income-redistribution programs, the encouragement of a more
heterogeneous society may end up undermining the left's
broader political agenda. And some of Europe's libertarian
cultural propensities have already clashed with the cultural
illiberalism of some of the new immigrant communities.
Should Muslim immigrants not assimilate and instead develop a
strong communal identification along religious lines, one
consequence might be a resurgence of traditional ethnonational
identities in some states -- or the development of a new
European identity defined partly in contradistinction to Islam
(with the widespread resistance to the extension of full EU
membership to Turkey being a possible harbinger of such a
shift).
FUTURE IMPLICATIONS
Since ethnonationalism is a direct consequence of key elements
of modernization, it is likely to gain ground in societies
undergoing such a process. It is hardly surprising, therefore,
that it remains among the most vital -- and most disruptive --
forces in many parts of the contemporary world.
More or less subtle forms of ethnonationalism, for example,
are ubiquitous in immigration policy around the globe. Many
countries -- including Armenia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Finland,
Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Serbia, and Turkey --
provide automatic or rapid citizenship to the members of
diasporas of their own dominant ethnic group, if desired.
Chinese immigration law gives priority and benefits to
overseas Chinese. Portugal and Spain have immigration policies
that favor applicants from their former colonies in the New
World. Still other states, such as Japan and Slovakia, provide
official forms of identification to members of the dominant
national ethnic group who are noncitizens that permit them to
live and work in the country. Americans, accustomed by the
U.S. government's official practices to regard differential
treatment on the basis of ethnicity to be a violation of
universalistic norms, often consider such policies
exceptional, if not abhorrent. Yet in a global context, it is
the insistence on universalistic criteria that seems
provincial.
Increasing communal consciousness and shifting ethnic balances
are bound to have a variety of consequences, both within and
between states, in the years to come. As economic
globalization brings more states into the global economy, for
example, the first fruits of that process will often fall to
those ethnic groups best positioned by history or culture to
take advantage of the new opportunities for enrichment,
deepening social cleavages rather than filling them in.
Wealthier and higher-achieving regions might try to separate
themselves from poorer and lower-achieving ones, and
distinctive homogeneous areas might try to acquire sovereignty
-- courses of action that might provoke violent responses from
defenders of the status quo.
Of course, there are multiethnic societies in which ethnic
consciousness remains weak, and even a more strongly developed
sense of ethnicity may lead to political claims short of
sovereignty. Sometimes, demands for ethnic autonomy or
self-determination can be met within an existing state. The
claims of the Catalans in Spain, the Flemish in Belgium, and
the Scots in the United Kingdom have been met in this manner,
at least for now. But such arrangements remain precarious and
are subject to recurrent renegotiation. In the developing
world, accordingly, where states are more recent creations and
where the borders often cut across ethnic boundaries, there is
likely to be further ethnic disaggregation and communal
conflict. And as scholars such as Chaim Kaufmann have noted,
once ethnic antagonism has crossed a certain threshold of
violence, maintaining the rival groups within a single polity
becomes far more difficult.
This unfortunate reality creates dilemmas for advocates of
humanitarian intervention in such conflicts, because making
and keeping peace between groups that have come to hate and
fear one another is likely to require costly ongoing military
missions rather than relatively cheap temporary ones. When
communal violence escalates to ethnic cleansing, moreover, the
return of large numbers of refugees to their place of origin
after a cease-fire has been reached is often impractical and
even undesirable, for it merely sets the stage for a further
round of conflict down the road.
Partition may thus be the most humane lasting solution to such
intense communal conflicts. It inevitably creates new flows of
refugees, but at least it deals with the problem at issue. The
challenge for the international community in such cases is to
separate communities in the most humane manner possible: by
aiding in transport, assuring citizenship rights in the new
homeland, and providing financial aid for resettlement and
economic absorption. The bill for all of this will be huge,
but it will rarely be greater than the material costs of
interjecting and maintaining a foreign military presence large
enough to pacify the rival ethnic combatants or the moral cost
of doing nothing.
Contemporary social scientists who write about nationalism
tend to stress the contingent elements of group identity --
the extent to which national consciousness is culturally and
politically manufactured by ideologists and politicians. They
regularly invoke Benedict Anderson's concept of "imagined
communities," as if demonstrating that nationalism is
constructed will rob the concept of its power. It is true, of
course, that ethnonational identity is never as natural or
ineluctable as nationalists claim. Yet it would be a mistake
to think that because nationalism is partly constructed it is
therefore fragile or infinitely malleable. Ethnonationalism
was not a chance detour in European history: it corresponds to
some enduring propensities of the human spirit that are
heightened by the process of modern state creation, it is a
crucial source of both solidarity and enmity, and in one form
or another, it will remain for many generations to come. One
can only profit from facing it directly.
(JERRY Z. MULLER is Professor of History at the Catholic
University of America. Source: www.foreignaffairs.org).
Pakistan after Polls
The Feb 18 election was a
victory of the democratic process and moderation in Pakistan
and would serve as a stabilizing factor.
Dr. Abdul Ruff Colachal
The
February 18 poll in Pakistan has left none of Pakistan's
parties with a majority in the National Assembly and
negotiations are continuing between rivals keen to forge a
coalition big enough to hold power in the 342-seat parliament.
Though PPP and PML-N have agreed to form a coalition
government, they're talking about a national-consensus
government. It remains to be seen whether they can carry on
their much-lauded effort to get along with one another for a
long time because both want to be the most popular parties and
have their own agendas. Sharif's party had yet to decide
whether to join a PPP-led government or support it without
being part of it. "Either is possible. It is being worked
out," said party chairman Raja Zafar-ul-Haq. In another sign
of looming trouble for Musharraf, Sharif said he and Zardari
had agreed in principle to restore judges Musharraf fired when
he imposed emergency rule in November. The judges, if
reinstated, can be expected to take up the question of the
eligibility of Musharraf to stand for re-election as president
while still army chief last October. They were expected to
rule against Musharraf when he imposed the emergency.
Pakistan's opposition election winners were already trying to
forge a coalition on 22 Feb, raising the prospect of a
government intent on forcing U.S. ally President Pervez
Musharraf from power. A coming together of opposition parties
are leaving the president vulnerable to a hostile parliament.
U.S. President George W. Bush's administration has urged the
next government to work with Musharraf and says Washington
needs Pakistan -- which borders Afghanistan where U.S. and
NATO forces are fighting Islamist militants -- as an ally.
Nawaz Sharif, the Prime Minister Musharraf overthrew in 1999
and whose PML-N came second in the vote, told a news
conference after his meeting with Zardari that the two parties
would work together to form a government. Zardari, whose PPP
won the most seats but not an overall majority, said he wanted
a broad government but one excluding the main party that backs
Musharraf.
Sharif met Asif Ali Zardari, former Prime Minister Benazir
Bhutto's widower in Islamabad on Feb. 21 evening for their
first face-to-face talks since the election. If they forge a
coalition, it will be the first time in Pakistan's history the
two main parties have come together. Musharraf's 1999 coup
ended a chaotic decade of civilian rule alternating between
Bhutto and Sharif governments. Zardari and Sharif also
separately met with leaders of the Awami National Party, a
Pashtun nationalist party set to join them in a coalition
after sweeping Islamists out of power in North West Frontier
Province.
The Election Commission is expected to issue official results
on March 1. Musharraf should then convene an inaugural session
of the National Assembly. But how soon after may depend on
whether there is a government-in-waiting, as the president has
to invite a member commanding the confidence of the majority
to become prime minister.
President Pervez Musharraf is overwhelmed by the fact that his
government could successfully conduct a free and fair poll to
put in place a new government, said the Feb 18 election was a
victory of the democratic process and moderation in Pakistan
and would serve as a stabilizing factor. As President,
Musharraf is expected to guide and counsel the new government
which he has volunteered. The President emphasized the need to
continue with the goals of political stability, economic
growth and the need for fighting terrorism. President Pervez
Musharraf said that he desires a healthy and improved
relationship between the President and Prime Minister for a
better democratic system in the country.
President Musharraf, who never had been under illusion about
PMLQ winning a landslide victory and was the worst sufferer of
the assassination of Benazir Bhutto with whose PPP he wanted
to forge an alliance to form a government, said that he has
fulfilled his promise to the nation as well as the
international community for holding of peaceful, transparent
and fair general elections. He said that he is committed to
making Pakistan a fully democratic state and he would ensure a
workable environment with the Prime Minister the winning party
chooses. He expressed his hope that the new PM and he would
develop a close working relation as he did with ex Prime
Minister Shaukat Aziz. The president said that he does not
believe in politics of confrontation and would accept the
mandate of the party, which forms the government and is ready
to facilitate government formation.
It has been agreed that the PPP would designate the next prime
minister. Officials from both parties said the frontrunner to
be prime minister was Makhdoom Amin Fahim, the widely
respected vice president of slain former PM Benazir Bhutto's
Pakistan People's Party (PPP). "There is an agreement that
Fahim should be the parliamentary leader and candidate for PM
but the announcement is unlikely to be made public before the
parliament is convened into session, most probably in the
first week of March," a senior PPP official told AFP.
The commoners think some of these people who've been elected
were corrupt during the previous regimes and therefore one
should be a bit wary about the future. PPP-P, PML-N and ANP
agreed to form a coalition government after winning elections.
Asif Zardari and Nawaz Sharif agreed on a common agenda. This
includes the restoration of democracy, end of military
intervention and reinstatement of the deposed judges and
independence of the judiciary. PPP and PML-N won a lion's
share of seats in the National Assembly, but it has yet to be
seen if the coalition enjoying a two-thirds majority in
Parliament can get enough support to oust President Pervez
Musharraf from power.
USA congratulated the President for holding free and fair
elections which they said would lead to stable political
environment in the country. The President appreciated the US
assistance to Pakistan. Pakistan has been made an attractive
destination for investment by pursuing liberal policies, US
seems to be trying for cooperative coalition between Musharraf
and the opposition parties in the future course.
PPP and PML-N want to sideline Pervez Musharraf from the whole
process. If both the parties stay united and succeed in
getting the support of MQM which is supportive of, then
opposition would restrain the power of President Musharraf
and, if possible, they would also construe that Musharraf's
days would be numbered. If the opposition stays together on
national issues and if Musharraf is ousted, the politicians
will have complete command on the affairs to run the state.
Nawaz Sharif has been persistently demanding that the
president step down peacefully; other options, including his
impeachment through Parliament, remain open. PTI Chairman
Imran Khan and Pakistan Bar Council have warned that if the
judiciary is not restored, anarchy will creep up and the
popular parties will have to face agitation. In the presence
of a vibrant civil society and an aggressive media, the public
opinion is likely to be respected. Pakistan Bar Council has
already given the March 9 deadline for the restoration of
judiciary to pre-November 3 status. It is most likely that a
constitutional package will be tabled in Parliament by the new
government to amend the Constitution under the heading of 18th
Amendment and the main expected clauses are restoration and
independence of the judiciary, change of name of NWFP,
abolition of the National Security Council, dissolution of
local governments and reversion of the Constitution to the
status of October 12, 1999, keeping intact the women seats'
clause. That might ignite further turmoil in the country.
It seems people do expect another poll pretty soon. Pervez
Musharraf shed his uniform as per the demand of the opposition
before he was elected to presidency as per constitution and
his efforts to get a new Parliament elected does not mean he
has lost his presidency. As such the demand by the opposition
on the strength of poll offered by Musharraf, cannot talk of
his removal from presidency. In stead of creating an
anarchical situation in the country, already in turmoil for
quite some time, the opposition should form the government and
pursue pro-people policies to uplift the poor and advance the
legitimate national interests. Mainly, Pakistan should not
give a chance to its neighbor India, ill-focused on Pakistan's
progress in any manner, to belittle Pakistan. Democracy is
what the leaders and people perceive it to be and certainly
not what the anti-Islamic world prescribes to Pa |