February 2010
Vol 10, No.2
CANCEL HAITI’S DEBT By Sarah van Gelder
We publish below two articles on Haiti. In the wake of the terrible catastrophe that has devastated Haiti and its people, a number of groups have called for the cancellation of Haiti’s debt to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The International Movement for a Just World (JUST) endorses that call wholeheartedly. Our first article focusses upon that call. Our second article provides a broad overview of Haiti’s history as a sort of backdrop to its present catastrophe. It alludes to Haiti’s socio-economic conditions and the need for long-term solutions. - Editor
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here’s a growing movement to cancel Haiti’s foreign debt as a way to return to the Haitian people the authority to rebuild their lives and their country. Haiti has a painful history with debt. When it won its independence in 1804 — just the second country in the hemisphere to do so — it was required to pay restitution to France. Haiti went millions of dollars (billions in today’s dollars) into debt to compensate the French for their loss of property — including the lost profits from slave trading. Only by paying this restitution could Haiti end a crippling embargo by the French, British, and Americans. Money that the new government might have invested in building a new nation poured into loan payments that continued until the loan was paid off in 1947. Today, in the wake of the earthquake that has flattened Port-au-Prince and killed more than 150,000, there is a quickly
growing movement to forgive Haiti’s nearly $1 billion debt, and to insure that aid to earthquake victims takes the form of grants, not more loans. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced this week that he is canceling Haiti’s $295 million debt to Petrocaribe, Venezuela’s energy regional energy distributor. “Haiti has no debt with Venezuela — on the contrary, it is Venezuela that has a historic debt with Haiti,” Chavez said. Chavez was referring to Haiti’s historic assistance to Simón Bolívar, who led Venezuela’s war of independence. Also this week, the anti-poverty group, One, handed over a petition with 150,000 signatures to the International Monetary Fund. The petition asks that the IMF cancel Haiti’s $165 million debt repayment obligation when the board meets later this week. “Swift action by the IMF would increase momentum and pressure on all creditors,” One said in a statement.
Noting that more than half of Haiti’s debt stemmed from loans extended to the “brutal father-son dictatorship of Francois (‘Papa Doc’) and Jean-Claude (‘Baby Doc’) Duvalier,” a WCC statement says: “Many of these loans did not benefit the people of Haiti. The Duvaliers appropriated tens of millions from the national treasury in their almost 30-year stay in power from 1957-1986.” The WCC also warned the IMF against “imposing detrimental economic policy conditions on the country such as the privatization of public services.” Such conditions are frequently part of IMF and World Bank lending, and advocates for the poor point out that those conditions frequently undermine democratic continued next page
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The head of the World Council of Churches (WCC), Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit, plans to bring a plea for debt cancellation to the World Economic Summit meeting in Davos, Switzerland, later this week.
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By Barry Grey ........................................... page 3
EARTH ITSELF HAS BECOME DISPOSABLE By George Monbiot .................................. page 4
CENTRAL ASIA’S WATER PROBLEM By Isobel Hilton ....................................... page 5 A NATIONAL CONSULTATIONAL CONSULTATIVE COUNCIL OF RELIGIOUS HARMONY By Chandra Muzaffar ............................... page 6
5 YEARS TO MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS DEADLINE By Wahyu Susilo ........................................ page 7
PROHIBITION OF INTEREST: DOES IT MAKE SENSE? By M. Umer Chapra ................................... page 8
THE QUESTION NO US OFFICIAL DARE ASK By William Pfaff ........................................ page 11
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not repayment,” the group said in a statement.
The New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, a brand new organization, has posted a petition that likewise calls for the cancellation of debt.
Natural disasters and human suffering should not be used to open doors to outside interference in Haitian affairs, which history tells us would extend the suffering. Debt is one of the key ways that such influence is often accomplished, along with military occupation and the “shock doctrine” author Naomi Klein so clearly describes.
Jubilee USA, a group that has led other debt cancellation efforts, called on President Obama to press international lending agencies to make grants, not loans, and to place a moratorium on all debt payments. “All of Haiti’s limited resources should be directed at recovery,
Dr. Joia Mukherjee, of Paul Farmer’s famous group, Partners in Health,
MAIN ARTICLES described what was needed during a conference call on Tuesday: The solutions to Haiti’s problems will come from the Haitian people and from the government they choose, she said. “The greatest resource of Haiti is the indomitable spirit of the Haitian people,” she said. But they must be unshackled from international debt. 31 January, 2010 Sarah van Gelder wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Sarah is executive editor of YES! Magazine.
THE LESSON OF HAITI By Fidel Castro Two days ago, at almost six o’clock in the evening Cuban time and when, given its geographical location, night had already fallen in Haiti, television stations began to broadcast the news that a violent earthquake – measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale – had severely struck Portau-Prince. The seismic phenomenon originated from a tectonic fault located in the sea just 15 kilometers from the Haitian capital, a city where 80% of the population inhabit fragile homes built of adobe and mud.
At midnight, there was still no mention of an approximate figure in terms of victims. High-ranking United Nations officials and several heads of government discussed the moving events and announced that they would send emergency brigades to help. Given that MINUSTAH (United Stabilization Mission in Haiti) troops are deployed there – UN forces from various countries – some defense ministers were talking about possible casualties among their personnel.
The news continued almost without interruption for hours. There was no footage, but it was confirmed that many public buildings, hospitals, schools and more solidly-constructed facilities were reported collapsed. I have read that an earthquake of the magnitude of 7.3 is equivalent to the energy released by an explosion of 400,000 tons of TNT.
It was only yesterday, Wednesday morning, when the sad news began to arrive of enormous human losses among the population, and even institutions such as the United Nations mentioned that some of their buildings in that country had collapsed, a word that does not say anything in itself but could mean a lot.
Tragic descriptions were transmitted. Wounded people in the streets were crying out for medical help, surrounded by ruins under which their relatives were buried. No one, however, was able to broadcast a single image for several hours.
For hours, increasingly more traumatic news continued to arrive about the situation in this sister nation. Figures related to the number of fatal victims were discussed, which fluctuated, according to various versions, between 30,000 and 100,000. The images are devastating; it is evident that the catastrophic event has been given widespread coverage around the world, and many governments, sincerely moved by the disaster, are making efforts to cooperate according to their resources.
The news took all of us by surprise. Many of us have frequently heard about hurricanes and severe flooding in Haiti, but were not aware of the fact that this neighboring country ran the risk of a massive earthquake. It has come to light on this occasion that 200 years ago, a massive earthquake similarly affected this city, which would have been the home of just a few thousand inhabitants at that time.
The tragedy has genuinely moved a significant number of people, particularly those in which that quality is innate. But perhaps very few of them have stopped to consider why Haiti is such a poor
country. Why does almost 50% of its population depend on family remittances sent from abroad? Why not analyze the realities that led Haiti to its current situation and this enormous suffering as well? The most curious aspect of this story is that no one has said a single word to recall the fact that Haiti was the first country in which 400,000 Africans, enslaved and trafficked by Europeans, rose up against 30,000 white slave masters on the sugar and coffee plantations, thus undertaking the first great social revolution in our hemisphere. Pages of insurmountable glory were written there. Napoleon’s most eminent general was defeated there. Haiti is the net product of colonialism and imperialism, of more than one century of the employment of its human resources in the toughest forms of work, of military interventions and the extraction of its natural resources. This historic oversight would not be so serious if it were not for the real fact that Haiti constitutes the disgrace of our era, in a world where the exploitation and pillage of the vast majority of the planet’s inhabitants prevails. Billions of people in Latin American, Africa and Asia are suffering similar shortages although perhaps not to such a degree as in the case of Haiti. Situations like that of that country should not exist in any part of the planet, where tens of thousands of cities and towns abound in similar or worse conditions, by virtue of an unjust international continued next page
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continued from page 2 economic and political order imposed on the world. The world population is not only threatened by natural disasters such as that of Haiti, which is a just a pallid shadow of what could take place in the planet as a result of climate change, which really was the object of ridicule, derision, and deception in Copenhagen. It is only just to say to all the countries and institutions that have lost citizens or personnel because of the natural disaster in Haiti: we do not doubt that in this case, the greatest effort will be made to save human lives and alleviate the pain of this long-suffering people. We cannot blame them for the natural phenomenon that has taken place there, even if we do not agree with the policy adopted with Haiti. But I have to express the opinion that it is now time to look for real and lasting solutions for that sister nation. In the field of healthcare and other areas, Cuba – despite being a poor and blockaded country – has been cooperating with the Haitian people for many years. Around 400 doctors and
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While many details of the attempted terror attack and the biography of the wouldbe suicide bomber remain sketchy, widelyreported facts that have been corroborated by US officials make clear that the near-destruction of the airliner was the result of a colossal and as yet unexplained security failure. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-yearold Nigerian, was overpowered by other passengers and crew members when he attempted to set off an explosive device he had taped to his person and smuggled onto Northwest Flight 253 from Amsterdam. In November, or six months ago (press accounts differ), Abdulmutallab’s father, a retired banker and former Nigerian government minister, told US Embassy officials in the Nigerian capital that he was concerned about his son’s extreme
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healthcare experts are offering their services free of charge to the Haitian people. Our doctors are working every day in 227 of the country’s 337 communes. On the other hand, at least 400 young Haitians have trained as doctors in our homeland. They will now work with the reinforcement brigade which traveled there yesterday to save lives in this critical situation. Thus, without any special effort being made, up to 1,000 doctors and healthcare experts can be mobilized, almost all of whom are already there willing to cooperate with any other state that wishes to save the lives of the Haitian people and rehabilitate the injured. Another significant number of young Haitians are currently studying medicine in Cuba. We are also cooperating with the Haitian people in other areas within our reach. However, there can be no other form of cooperation worthy of being described as such than fighting in the field of ideas and political action in order to put an end to the limitless tragedy suffered by a large number of nations such as Haiti.
DISTURBING QUESTIONS The nearly catastrophic attempt to blow up a US passenger jet during its final approach to Detroit Metro Airport on Christmas Day raises a number of serious questions.
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MAIN ARTICLES The head of our medical brigade reported: “The situation is difficult, but we have already started saving lives.” He made that statement in a succinct message hours after his arrival yesterday in Port-au-Prince with additional medical reinforcements. Later that night, he reported that Cuban doctors and ELAM’s Haitian graduates were being deployed throughout the country. They had already seen more than 1,000 patients in Port-au-Prince, immediately establishing and putting into operation a hospital that had not collapsed and using field hospitals where necessary. They were preparing to swiftly set up other centers for emergency care. We feel a wholesome pride for the cooperation that, in these tragic instances, Cuba doctors and young Haitian doctors who trained in Cuba are offering our brothers and sisters in Haiti! 17 January 2010 Fidel Castro is the former President of Cuba and the founder of its Revolution. Source: Countercurrents.org
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religious views and activities. The Washington Post on Sunday quoted a “senior administration official” as saying the father had warned of his son’s “radicalization and associations.” Some press reports say the father also spoke with US intelligence officials and Nigerian security agencies.
been innumerable reports of people being barred from flying by government security officials for no apparent reason. One of these was the late Senator Edward Kennedy, who in 2004 was placed on the Homeland Security Department’s “no-fly” list and prevented from boarding a shuttle from Washington DC to Boston.
The family had evidently lost contact with Abdulmutallab, who six months ago said he was breaking off relations. Family members reportedly said they believed he had gone to Yemen, the birthplace of his mother.
Yet despite being identified as a potential terrorist threat by his own father, a highly placed former Nigerian official, Abdulmutallab was allowed to retain his multi-entry US visa, board a plane to the US, and smuggle explosives on board.
US officials say that as a result of the father’s warning, Abdulmutallab was placed on a counter terrorism database in November, but they nevertheless had no actionable grounds for barring him from flying or subjecting him to any special pre-boarding search or questioning.
The incident is all the more disturbing and suspicious, coming just weeks after President Obama announced a major escalation of the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan and singled out Yemen and Somalia as alleged Al Qaeda bases where US military attack could be justified.
The media is dutifully and uncritically parroting these explanations, but they strain credulity. Since 9/11, there have
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continued from page 3 deliberately turning a blind eye than mere incompetence. The case of Abdulmutallab seems to follow a well-established pattern dating back to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. A number of the hijack-bombers were known to US intelligence and security officials as Al Qaeda operatives, and were nevertheless allowed to enter the country, train as pilots, and eventually board the doomed airliners on 9/11. Warnings of impending terror attacks involving the hijacking of airplanes went unheeded. None of this has ever been explained. No one has been held accountable. Instead, numerous government investigations were carried out, culminating in the 9/11 Commission report, which whitewashed government agencies and officials. Notwithstanding Obama’s pledge to investigate last week’s attempted terror attack, the 9/11 pattern will likely be repeated. The latest episode occurs within days of US air attacks against insurgents in Yemen, which US officials and the media are increasingly portraying as a center of Al Qaeda activity nearly on a par with the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region. The linking of Abdulmutallab to Yemen is an ominous sign that these attacks will
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increase, and the country may well become a new front in the expanding drive by the US to dominate oil-rich, strategic regions in the Middle East and Central Asia. This danger was underscored by statements from politicians and the media over the weekend. Jane Harman, the Democratic congresswoman from California who heads the House Homeland Security subcommittee, issued a statement declaring, “The facts are still emerging, but there are strong suggestions of a Yemen-Al Qaeda connection and an intent to blow up the plane over US airspace.” The New York Times wrote in its news account Sunday, “If corroborated, Mr. Abdulmutallab’s travel to Yemen for terrorist instruction and explosives underscores the emergence of that country as a major hub for Al Qaeda, perhaps beginning to rival the terror network’s base in Pakistan.” The attempted plane bombing is also being used for domestic propaganda purposes. Under conditions of popular opposition to the expanding war in Afghanistan, government officials and the media are already seeking to use it to cow and frighten the population so as to justify both foreign wars and increased attacks on democratic rights at home.
A R T I C L E S Once again, Al Qaeda is being summoned up to make the American people more willing to accept restrictions on their personal freedoms. That a Nigerian national was involved in last week’s attempted plane bombing underscores the global consequences of Washington’s militarist policies. While nothing can justify terrorist attacks against civilians, Washington’s neocolonial wars are responsible for creating the conditions for new recruits for terrorist operations. What has been reported about Adbulmutallab’s biography is evidence of this fact. The young student, from a privileged and wealthy family, seems to have been radicalized in tandem with the escalation of US military violence in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He left his family home in London’s West End, broke off relations and disappeared during the period when it had become clear that the Obama administration was continuing and intensifying the warmongering policies of Bush. 28 December 2010 Barry Grey is a is a regular contributor to the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) and is also a member of the WSWS, International Editorial Board Source: WSWS.org
EARTH ITSELF HAS BECOME DISPOSABLE By George Monbiot Who said this? “All the evidence shows that beyond the sort of standard of living which Britain has now achieved, extra growth does not automatically translate into human welfare and happiness.” Was it a) the boss of Greenpeace, b) the director of the New Economics Foundation, or c) an anarchist planning the next climate camp? None of the above: d) the former head of the Confederation of British Industry, who currently runs the Financial Services Authority. In an interview broadcast last Friday, Lord Turner brought the consumer society’s most subversive observation into the mainstream. In our hearts most of us know it is true, but we live as if it were not. Progress is measured by the speed at which we destroy the conditions that sustain life. Governments are deemed to succeed or fail by how well they make money go
round, regardless of whether it serves any useful purpose. They regard it as a sacred duty to encourage the country’s most revolting spectacle: the annual feeding frenzy in which shoppers queue all night, then stampede into the shops, elbow, trample and sometimes fight to be the first to carry off some designer junk which will go into landfill before the sales next year. The madder the orgy, the greater the triumph of economic management. As the Guardian revealed today, the British government is now split over product placement in television programmes: if it implements the policy proposed by Ben Bradshaw, the culture secretary, plots will revolve around chocolates and cheeseburgers, and advertisements will be impossible to filter, perhaps even to detect. Bradshaw must know that this indoctrination won’t make us happier, wiser, greener or leaner; but it
will make the television companies £140m a year. Though we know they aren’t the same, we can’t help conflating growth and wellbeing. Last week, for instance, the Guardian carried the headline “UK standard of living drops below 2005 level”. But the story had nothing to do with our standard of living. Instead it reported that per capita gross domestic product is lower than it was in 2005. GDP is a measure of economic activity, not standard of living. But the terms are confused so often that journalists now treat them as synonyms. The low retail sales of previous months were recently described by this paper as “bleak” and “gloomy”. High sales are always “good news”, low sales are always “bad news”, even if the product on offer is farmyard porn. I believe it’s time that the Guardian continued next page
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continued from page 4 challenged this biased reporting. Those who still wish to conflate welfare and GDP argue that high consumption by the wealthy improves the lot of the world’s poor. Perhaps, but it’s a very clumsy and inefficient instrument. After some 60 years of this feast, 800 million people remain permanently hungry. Full employment is a less likely prospect than it was before the frenzy began. In a new paper published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Sir Partha Dasgupta makes the point that the problem with gross domestic product is the gross bit. There are no deductions involved: all economic activity is accounted as if it were of positive value. Social harm is added to, not subtracted from, social good. A train crash which generates £1bn worth of track repairs, medical bills and funeral costs is deemed by this measure to be as beneficial as an uninterrupted service which generates £1bn in ticket sales. Most important, no deduction is made to account for the depreciation of natural capital: the overuse or degradation of soil, water, forests, fisheries and the atmosphere. Dasgupta shows that the total wealth of a nation can decline even as its GDP is growing. In Pakistan, for instance, his rough figures suggest that while GDP per capita grew by an average of 2.2% a year between 1970 and 2000, total wealth declined by 1.4%. Amazingly, there are still no official figures that seek to show trends in the actual wealth of nations. You can say all this without fear of punishment or persecution. But in its
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practical effects, consumerism is a totalitarian system: it permeates every aspect of our lives. Even our dissent from the system is packaged up and sold to us in the form of anti-consumption consumption, like the “I’m not a plastic bag”, which was supposed to replace disposable carriers but was mostly used once or twice before it fell out of fashion, or like the lucrative new books on how to live without money. George Orwell and Aldous Huxley proposed different totalitarianisms: one sustained by fear, the other in part by greed. Huxley’s nightmare has come closer to realisation. In the nurseries of the Brave New World, “the voices were adapting future demand to future industrial supply. ‘I do love flying,’ they whispered, ‘I do love flying, I do love having new clothes ... old clothes are beastly ... We always throw away old clothes. Ending is better than mending, ending is better than mending’”. Underconsumption was considered “positively a crime against society”. But there was no need to punish it. At first the authorities machine-gunned the Simple Lifers who tried to opt out, but that didn’t work. Instead they used “the slower but infinitely surer methods” of conditioning: immersing people in advertising slogans from childhood. A totalitarianism driven by greed eventually becomes self-enforced. Let me give you an example of how far this self-enforcement has progressed. In a recent comment thread, a poster expressed an idea that I have now heard a few times. “We need to get off this tiny little world and out into the wider universe ... if it takes the resources of the planet to get us out there, so be it.
A R T I C L E S However we use them, however we utilise the energy of the sun and the mineral wealth of this world and the others of our planetary system, either we do use them to expand and explore other worlds, and become something greater than a mudgrubbing semi-sentient animal, or we die as a species.” This is the consumer society taken to its logical extreme: the Earth itself becomes disposable. This idea appears to be more acceptable in some circles than any restraint on pointless spending. That we might hop, like the aliens in the film Independence Day, from one planet to another, consuming their resources then moving on, is considered by these people a more realistic and desirable prospect than changing the way in which we measure wealth. So how do we break this system? How do we pursue happiness and wellbeing rather than growth? I came back from the Copenhagen climate talks depressed for several reasons, but above all because, listening to the discussions at the citizens’ summit, it struck me that we no longer have movements; we have thousands of people each clamouring to have their own visions adopted. We might come together for occasional rallies and marches, but as soon as we start discussing alternatives, solidarity is shattered by possessive individualism. Consumerism has changed all of us. Our challenge is now to fight a system we have internalised. 5 January 2010 George Monbiot writes a weekly column for the Guardian newspaper. Visit his website at www.monbiot.com Source: http://countercurrents.org/ monbiot050110.htm
CENTRAL ASIA’S WATER PROBLEM By Isobel Hilton A regional crisis created mainly by disastrous Soviet policies will only be exacerbated by the challenges of climate change, a Kyrgyz water expert tells Isabel Hilton. At first glance, China’s neighbour Kyrgyzstan, with more than 40,000 rivers and streams, appears to enjoy abundant water supplies. But Ysmail Dairov, executive director of the Regional Mountain Centre of Central Asia, says appearances are deceptive. Rainfall
supplies only one-fifth of Kyrgyzstan’s water; the rest comes from the shrinking glaciers of the Tian Shan mountain range. Add to that the fact that the region is already highly water stressed, he says, and the outlines of an impending emergency are clear.
development policies destroyed the Aral Sea. From the 1940s onwards, Soviet planners had diverted the rivers that fed the Aral Sea primarily to irrigate Uzbekistan’s newly planted and thirsty cotton crops, considered by Moscow to be “white gold.”
The region’s difficulties go back to the time when all five central Asian states (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) were part of the USSR, and disastrous Soviet
Uzbekistan still produces high volumes of cotton, but the regional impact of the policy was devastating. Once the world’s fourth-largest salt water lake, the Aral Sea continued next page
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continued from page 5 shrank from a total of 68,000 square kilometres in 1960, to 10% of that by 2007. It has now split in two and suffered a fivefold increase in salinity, which has killed off most of its flora and fauna. The fishing industry – which once employed 40,000 people – has collapsed, and the Aral Basin is now a devastated saline landscape, heavily polluted with the aftermath of Soviet weapons testing and chemical residues. Its toxic dust is carried on the central Asian winds; the loss of such a vast body of water has led to hotter, drier summers in the region. “The principal water problems in our region are quite severe,” Dairov explained. “The central Asian states inherited the use of the water resources of the Aral Basin, which is an arid and semi-arid area, with severe water stress and low rainfall, especially limited in downstream countries.” Despite recent efforts to save the remnants, which have met with some success in the northern part, Dairov is pessimistic about its future. “The Aral Sea situation is worse than before,” he said. “We haven’t solved it. The cooperation is only rhetorical. I think it is going to die.” The problems don’t stop there. The region suffers tensions over water use between the upstream countries of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, and their downstream neighbours Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. “The upstream countries build hydro-projects, but in the summer the downstream countries want water for irrigation while the upstream countries want to accumulate it for winter power generation,” said Dairov. “In Soviet times there was a system of compensation for the upstream countries with oil and gas from the downstream countries. Now, all five pursue their own interests.” The region’s stress is likely to worsen, he believes, if Afghanistan’s internal political and military conflict diminishes.
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“Afghanistan is an upstream country for the region, but at present they are not making much use of their water resources because of their internal difficulties. If Afghanistan stabilises and begins to develop, they will want to use more.” More water use upstream will mean even less water available for the downstream countries. Existing tensions, Dairov fears, will increase further with climate change, as a rapidly increasing regional population stakes rival claims to a steadily diminishing water supply. The area of irrigated land in the Aral Basin has nearly doubled since 1960 to 80 square kilometres. Over the same period, the population that has grown from 18 million to 45 million. Now scientists are making alarming forecasts about the region’s water future. “Our scientists predict that by the end of the century we will have a 40% to 80% diminution of water supplies. In other words, we could be left with only 20% of what we now have,” said Dairov. “It’s a devastating prediction, and we have to begin now to adapt. All our rivers depend on snow and glaciers, so we need to base our regional cooperation policy on these dangerous trends. We need to take be more active in forestry conservation and reforestation. We have only 5% forest cover so we need to increase and protect our forests, to make new forest areas.” A second strategy he advocates is to build more dams, which many see as a controversial policy. Dairov defends dam building as a means of regulating diminishing supplies and reducing potential conflicts of interest. “We can adjust supplies for both irrigation and hydropower,” he said. “The president and government of Kyrgyzstan want to build new hydropower stations for environmental reasons and for adaptation.” It would only work, he stresses, in combination with greatly
A R T I C L E S improved conservation. “Both upstream and downstream countries should use more energy-saving and water-saving technologies for agriculture and industry. The strategic direction should be more rational and safer.” The new centre that he heads, he says, is an example of Kyrgyzstan’s willingness to try to address the threat. “We plan to use modern approaches, in particular integrated water resource management involving all users of water and land at regional, national and international level.” But none of the central Asian states, he believes, is currently equipped scientifically or technologically to deal with the crisis without assistance. “We are falling behind in glacier science. The Soviet Union studied the glaciers very actively but we lost that capacity after the fall of the USSR. We try to continue with our national science academies, but many of the scientists have gone abroad or to Moscow. What we are left with today is not strong,” he explained. And given the failure of regional cooperation to save the Aral Sea, he acknowledges that there is a long way to go before cooperation on the impending water crisis could be effective. “It is very hard to imagine how we will deal with an 80% loss of water resources,” he said. “The politicians do not understand what we are facing. There was a meeting of the presidents in Almaty in April – the five countries of the International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea. The Kyrgyz president raised the question of the long-term trends, but there has been little further action so far.” 29 September 2009 Isobel Hilton is a journalist based in London and is the editor of Chinadialogue Source: http://www.opendemocracy.net/ article/openeconomy/central-asias-waterproblem
A NATIONAL CONSULTATIONAL CONSULTATIVE COUNCIL OF RELIGIOUS HARMONY By Chandra Muzaffar Yayasan 1Malaysia proposes the establishment of a National Consultative Council on Religious Harmony— Majlis Perundingan Nasional tentang
Keharmonian Ugama— which will deliberate on all critical issues in interfaith relations in the country and suggest remedies for the consideration of the
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continued from page 6 Mohd Najib, and should include Ministers in charge of Religion and National Unity, Opposition leaders, representatives of the various religious communities, NGOs working towards religious harmony, and prominent personalities attempting to build bridges between Muslim and non-Muslim communities. The Council should not be too large, with perhaps a maximum of seventy members. It should meet behind closed doors and should work within a time frame. A Plan of Action should be formulated within six months of the
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launch of the Council. The proposed Council can be modelled on the National Consultative Council of 1969, headed by our second Prime Minister, the late Tun Abdul Razak, set up in the aftermath of the May 13th Incident, which played a major role in restoring inter-ethnic stability. Yayasan 1Malaysia hopes that the Prime Minster will give serious consideration to this proposal. Nothing is more important at this stage than an effective channel of communication among the
A R T I C L E S different religious communities which will attempt to assuage their fears and anxieties about the position on their religion in Malaysian society today. Through communication and interaction will emerge the solutions that will accommodate the interests and aspirations of the diverse communities that constitute our beloved nation. 11 January 2010 Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is Chairman of Yayasan 1Malaysia and is also President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST)
MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS DEADLINE By Wahyu Susilo
The 2015 deadline set by the United Nations Millennium Declaration to improve human development is fast approaching. Goals that 189 countries signed onto include eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating HIV/Aids, malaria and other diseases, and ensuring environmental sustainability by developing a global partnership. The commitments make up the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). There have been positive developments in the last nine years, but as the 2009 UN Millennium Report admits, the world is “moving too slowly to meet the goals”. The report specifically mentions regions that are slow in achieving MDGs: subSaharan Africa, the Middle East and South and Southeast Asia. Indonesia is one country with less than satisfactory levels of success in achieving MDGs. The country has committed to reducing the percentage of the total population living in poverty to 7.5 per cent by 2015. However, data from the Indonesian Central Statistic Bureau (BPS) as recently as 2008 shows 15.4 percent of the population living below the poverty line. The Asian Development Bank’s report “Key Indicators for Asia and the Pacific 2009” also shows an increase in the rate of maternal mortality and HIV/ Aids. One of the biggest challenges that Indonesia faces in achieving the MDGs is foreign debt. Other challenges include
corruption and inconsistencies between its macroeconomic policy and its measures to combat poverty. In August 2009, as reported by the Indonesian Central Bank (BI), Indonesia’s foreign debt reached about $165 billion. The recent budget statistics published by the Ministry of Finance show that the budget allocated to foreign debt is higher than either its education or health sector budgets: in 2009, Indonesia allocated approximately $10.4 billion to pay its foreign debt and interest (not including payment for domestic debt), but only $9 billion for education and $1.7 billion for health. Indonesia recognises the burden of foreign debt in financing its MDG efforts. During the Millenium+5 Summit in September 2005, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono called for the reduction or omission of foreign debt as a means of achieving its MDGs. And Indonesia has obtained debt reductions from countries such as Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States. However, they are not enough to lift the country’s debt burden. Yudhoyono also said that he would hold developed countries, particularly the G8, to their commitment to increase their budgets for poverty eradication. As reflected in the 2002 Monterrey Consensus, developed countries are expected to allocate 0.7 per cent of their GDP to helping developing countries achieve their MDGs. Unfortunately, according to the MDGs Gap Task Force
Report in 2008, only Scandinavian countries are fulfilling this commitment, while others are still far from reaching their expected contribution. In addition, the development assistance offered by developed countries often comes with conditions, requiring recipients to use consultants and goods from donor countries, meaning that the donor country reaps direct financial benefits from the aid money it gives. The fact that much of the money given by developing countries is in the form of loans creates further problems. Of the $29.6 million given to Indonesia by Japan, for instance, only $1.9 million–or approximately 6.55 per cent–is given as a grant; the remaining money takes the form of loans and technical assistance. With only five years before the 2015 deadline, developing countries are reaching out to remind their wealthier neighbours of their commitment to accelerate the achievement of MDGs, sometimes with creative suggestions. For example, one concrete step might be the establishment of a UN Trust Fund for the Achievement of MDGs. Meanwhile, Indonesia needs to continue its efforts to negotiate a debt omission or reduction program, to take advantage of global non-loan funding schemes, such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the Millennium Challenge Account, and to clean up internal impediments to achieving the MDGs, including continued next page
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continued from page 7 addressing corruption and revamping its economic policy. In the international diplomacy arena, Indonesia needs to work closely with
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developed countries, to remind them of their funding commitment made at the Monterrey Consensus and find creative, collaborative solutions for reducing poverty around the world. 6 October 2010
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A R T I C L E S Wahyu Susilo heads the Advocacy Division of the International NGO Forum on Indonesian Development (INFID). This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews). Source: Common Ground News Service.
MAKE SENSE?
By M. Umer Chapra It is not Islam alone which has prohibited interest. Other major religions like Judaism, Christianity and Hinduism have also done the same. The Bible disapproves of interest severely and makes no distinction between usury and interest.1 Those who took interest were branded as wicked 2 and could not, according to the Third Lateran Council (1179), be admitted to communion or receive Christian burial.3 The Qur’an also prohibits interest strictly and declares those who take interest to be at war with God and His Prophet (2:279). This raises the question of why there is such a harsh verdict against interest in all these religions. Is there any sound rationale behind it? Those who are against the prohibition assume that interest was prohibited mainly because of the injustice it inflicted on the poor, who were charged an exorbitant rate of interest for loans borrowed by them to satisfy some urgent need. This, they argue, led to exploitation and further impoverishment of the poor. They, therefore, conclude that the prohibition of interest is no longer valid because banks in modern times do not resort to such exploitation. The assumption on which this conclusion is based does not, however, reflect the historical realities. During the Prophet’s days, peace and blessings of God be on him, borrowing was not undertaken by the poor. This is because by the end of the Prophet’s life, when the prohibition of interest became strictly enforced, the needs of the poor were taken care of either by the rich or the bayt al-mal (the Public Treasury). Therefore, the poor did not have to borrow to fulfil their needs. This leads to the question of who borrowed and why? Borrowing was resorted to primarily by tribes and rich traders who operated as large informal partnership companies to conduct largescale trade. This was necessitated by the
prevailing circumstances. The difficult terrain, the harsh climate, and the slow means of communication made the task of trade caravans difficult and timeconsuming. It was not possible for them to undertake several business trips to the East and the West during a given year. Only a few trips could be undertaken. Hence, it was necessary for the caravans to muster a large volume of financial resources to purchase all the exportable products of their society, sell them abroad, and use the proceeds to bring back the entire import needs of their society. Before Islam such resources were mobilized on the basis of interest. This was not acceptable to Islam because it led to injustice. If there was a loss, it was the entrepreneur or the trader who had to bear the entire loss in spite of all the trouble he took. The financier, who did nothing more than providing finance, got a predetermined positive rate of return. Islam, therefore, tried to remove the injustice resulting from this. It abolished the interest-based nature of the financierentrepreneur relationship and reorganized it on the basis of profit-andloss-sharing. This enabled the financier to have a just share and the entrepreneur did not get crushed under adverse conditions, one of which could be the caravan being waylaid on the way. This shows that, although the extension of meaningful help to the poor carries a high priority in the Islamic value system, it was not the primary reason for the prohibition of interest. The primary reason was the realization of overall socio-economic justice, which is declared by the Qur’an to be the main mission of all God’s messengers (57:25). Justice, however, needs to be understood in a much wider context. Confining it merely to trade may not be able to take us far enough. Justice demands that the resources provided by God to mankind as a trust must be utilized in such a manner
that the universally-cherished humanitarian goals of general need fulfillment, full employment, equitable distribution of income and wealth, and economic stability are optimally realized. It is the contention of this paper that these humanitarian goals can be realized more effectively if there is also a humanitarian strategy. An important, though not the only, element of such a strategy is the abolition of interest. The following discussion tries to show briefly how the interest-based financial system frustrates the optional realization of these goals and how its reorganization in a way that increases the reliance on equity and reduces that on debt can help in their more effective realization.4 1. NEED FULFILLMENT Financial intermediation on the basis of interest tends to allocate financial resources among borrowers primarily on the basis of their having acceptable collateral to guarantee the repayment of principal and sufficient cash flow to service the debt. End-use of financial resources does not constitute the main criterion. Even though collateral and cash flow are both indispensable for ensuring repayment of loans, giving them undue weight leads to a relative disregard of the purpose for which borrowing takes place. Hence, financial resources go mainly to the rich, who have the collateral as well as the cash flow, and to governments who, it is assumed, will not go bankrupt. However, the rich borrow not only for productive investment but also for conspicuous consumption and speculation, while the governments borrow not only for development and public well-being, but also for chauvinistic defence buildup and white elephant projects. This does not only accentuate macroeconomic and external imbalances, but also squeezes the resources available for need fulfillment and development. This explains why even the richest countries in the world like the United States have been unable continued next page
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continued from page 8 to fulfil the essential needs of all their people in spite of their desire to do so and the abundant resources at their disposal. 2. FULL EMPLOYMENT The living beyond means which the interest-based financial intermediation has the tendency to promote through the easy availability of credit, has led to a decline in savings in almost all countries around the world. Gross domestic saving as a percent of GDP has registered a worldwide decline over the last quarter century form 26.2 percent in 1971 to 22.3 percent in 1998. The decline in industrial countries has been from 23.6 percent to 21.6 percent. That in developing countries, which need higher savings to accelerate development without a significant rise in inflation and debtservicing burden, has been even steeper from 34.2 percent to 26.0 percent over the same period.5 There are a number of reasons for this. One of these is the rise in consumption by both the public and the private sectors. This saving shortfall has been responsible for persistently high levels of real interest rates. This has led to lower rates of rise in investment, which have joined hands with structural rigidities and some other socio-economic factors to reduce the rates of growth in output and employment. Unemployment has hence become one of the most intractable problems of most countries, including those in the rich industrial world. Unemployment stood at 9.2 percent in the European Union in 1999, more than three times its level of 2.9 percent in 1971-736 It may not be expected to fall significantly below this level in the near future because the real rate of growth in these countries has been consistently lower than what is necessary to reduce unemployment significantly. Even more worrying is the higher than average rate of youth unemployment because it hurts their pride, dampens their faith in the future, increases their hostility towards society, and damages their personal capacities and potential contribution.7 A decline in speculation and wasteful spending along with a rise in saving and productive investment could be very helpful. But this may not be possible when the value system encourages both the public and the private sectors to live
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beyond their means and the interestbased financial intermediation makes this possible by making credit easily available without due regard to its end use. If, however, banks are required to share in the risks and rewards of financing and credit is made available primarily for real goods and services, which the Islamic system tries to ensure, the banks will be more careful in lending and credit expansion will be in step with the growth of the economy. Unproductive and speculative spending may consequently decline and more resources may become available for productive investment and development. This may lead to higher growth, a rise in employment opportunities, and a gradual decline in unemployment. 3. EQUITABLE DISTRIBUTION The inequitable allocation of financial resources in the conventional interestbased financial system is now widely recognized. According to Arne Bigsten, “the distribution of capital is even more unequal than that of land” and “the banking system tends to reinforce the unequal distribution of capital.”8 The reason is, as already indicated, interestbased financial intermediation tends to rely heavily on collateral and to give inadequate consideration to the strength of the project or the ultimate use of financing. Hence, while deposits come from a cross-section of the society, their benefit goes largely to the rich. As Mishan has rightly pointed out: “Given that differences in wealth are substantial, it would be irrational for the lender to be willing to lend much to the impecunious as to the richer members of society, or to lend the same amounts on the same terms to each”.9 The Morgan Guarantee Trust Company, one of the largest banks in the U.S., has admitted that the banking system has failed to “finance either maturing smaller companies or venture capitalists,” and “though awash with funds, is not encouraged to deliver competitively priced funding to any but the largest, most cash-rich companies.”10 In contrast with this, risk-reward sharing could be more conducive to the realization of equity. It would tend to compel the financier to give due consideration to the strength of the project, thus making it possible for competent entrepreneurs from even the
A R T I C L E S poor and the middle-classes to be at least considered for financing if they have worthwhile projects, adequate managerial ability, and a reputation for honesty and integrity. This may enable society to harness the pool of entrepreneurial ability from even the poor and middle classes. The rich contribution that such entrepreneurs can make to output, employment and need fulfillment could thus be tapped. There is no reason to be unduly apprehensive about loan losses from such financing. The experience of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is that credit provided to the most enterprising of the poor is quickly repaid by them from their higher earnings. 11 Other small-loan programmes have yielded similar results in several countries. Nevertheless, it may be desirable to arrange insurance of small loans to provide protection to financiers against fraud and mismanagement. 4. ECONOMIC STABILITY Economic activity has fluctuated throughout history for a number of reasons, some of which, like the natural phenomena, are difficult to remove. However, economic instability seems to have become exacerbated over the last three decades as a result of turbulence in the financial markets. One of the important reasons for this, according to Milton Friedman, a Nobel laureate, is the erratic behaviour of interest rates.12 The high degree of interest rate volatility injects great uncertainty into the investment market and makes it difficult for entrepreneurs to take long-term investment decisions with confidence. This drives borrowers and lenders alike into the shorter end of the financial market. The result is a steep rise in highly leveraged short-term debt, which plays an important role in destabilizing financial markets. One may wish to pause here to ask why a rise in short-term debt should accentuate instability. This is because short-term debt is easily reversible as far as the lenders are concerned. Its repayment is, however, difficult for the borrowers if the amount is locked up in medium- and long-term investments with a long gestation period. While there is nothing basically wrong in a reasonable amount of short-term debt, which Islam allows on the basis of its continued next page
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continued from page 9 sales-based modes of financing for real goods and services, an excess of it tends to get diverted to speculation in the foreign exchange, commodity and stock markets. The 1997 East Asia crisis has clearly demonstrated this. The Eastern tigers had healthy fiscal polices which could be the envy of a number of developing countries. However, the large inflow of short-term foreign funds led to rapid growth in bank credit to the private sector. This created speculative heat in the stock and property markets. It was the old mistake of lending on collateral without evaluating the underlying risks. As soon as there was a shock, there was a rapid outflow of funds, which had come primarily, on a short-term basis. This led to a precipitous fall in asset prices and exchange rates, making the borrowers unable to repay to the local banks, which could not in turn repay their short-term loans from foreign banks. There was thus a banking crisis. The IMF had to come to the help of these countries by arranging a huge amount of loans. What this ended up doing was to enable the foreign banks to get back their loans and go scot-free. The burden of the debt consequently shifted to the governments and, ultimately, to the taxpayers of these countries. The 1998 collapse of the hedge fund, LTCM (Long-term Capital Management), was also due to highly-leveraged shortterm lending. On the strength of their own equity, the hedge funds are able to borrow enormous amounts which they use to speculate in the international commodity, stock and foreign exchange markets, and thus end up destabilizing financial markets around the world. The leverage of LTCM was 25:1 before the crisis, but rose to 50:1, and ultimately to 167:1, after the crisis.13 If the Federal Reserve had not come to its rescue, the whole world economy could have been driven to the precipice of a serious financial crisis. The heavy reliance on short-term borrowing has injected a substantial degree of instability even in the international foreign exchange markets. Daily turnover in the international foreign exchange markets was $1,490 billion in April 199814, which was 49 times the daily volume of world merchandise trade.15 This indicates that a substantial volume
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of foreign exchange transactions is for speculative purposes. According to Andrew Crockett, General Manager of the Bank for International Settlement (BIS), “Our economies have thus become increasingly vulnerable to a possible breakdown in the payments system.”16 If it is not desirable to rely largely on short-term credit, then the more desirable thing to do would be to rely on long-term borrowing and equity. Of these two, equity financing is preferable because it would introduce greater health in the economy through a more careful scrutiny of the projects financed.17 A number of world-renowned scholars like Henry Simons, Hyman Minsky, Charles Kindleberger, Joan Robinson, G.L. Bach, and Kenneth Rogoff have hence concluded that an economy where there is greater reliance on equity would tend to be more stable than a debt-based economy.18 CONCLUSION Thus it may be seen that greater reliance on equity financing has to be an indispensable part of the strategy of any system which wishes to actualize the humanitarian goals of need fulfillment, full employment, equitable distribution of income and wealth, and economic stability. The reason why capitalism has not been able to realize these goals effectively is not because its goals are not humanitarian or the people in capitalist countries do not have the will and the resources needed for this purpose. The primary reason is the conflict that exists between its goals and its strategy. The goals are humanitarian, originating from its religious past, while the strategy is social-Darwinist, based on the concept of survival of the fittest. It relies primarily on the rate of interest for allocating financial resources. This gives an edge to the rich and leads to not only concentration of wealth but also a rise in conspicuous and wasteful consumption. This hurts the realization of goals. It also contributes substantially to the prevailing instability in the international financial markets. Mills and Presley are, therefore, right in concluding that: “There are sufficient grounds to wish that, in hindsight, the prohibition of usury had not been undermined in Europe in the sixteenth century. More practical wisdom was embodied in the moral stand against usury than was then
A R T I C L E S realized”.19 1. For the Babylonian, Jewish and Christian views on interest, see, Johns, et.al. in Hastings, Vol.12, pp. 548-58; and Noonan, 1957, p.20. For the Hindu view, see Bokare, 1993, p.168. 2. See the Bible - Ezekiel, 18:8, 13, 7; 22:12. See also Exodus, 22: 25-27; Leviticus, 25:3638; Deuteronomy, 23:19; and Luke, 6:35. 3. Johns, et.al, p.551. 4. The subject has been discussed in greater detail by the author in Chapra, 1985, pp.1929 and 107-145; 1992, pp. 327-34; and 2000 a and b. 5. Figures have been derived from the Table on “Consumption as percent of GDP” in IMF, 2000 Yearbook, pp.177-79. 6. OECD, Economic Outlook, December 1991, Table 2, p.7; and June 2000, Table 22, p.266. 7. A question may be raised here about the current low rate of unemployment in the U.S. in spite of a substantial decline in household saving. There are a number of reasons for this. One of the most important of these is the large inflow of foreign funds which “has helped to fund a pronounced increase in the rate of growth of the nation’s capital stock”(Peach and Steindel, September 2000, p.1). Once there is a reversal of, or even a decline in, this inflow, it may be difficult to sustain the high rate of growth in output and employment. In addition the stock market may also experience a steep decline. 8. Bigsten, 1987, p.156. 9. Mishan, 1971, p.205. 10. Morgan Guarantee Trust Company of New York, 1987, p.7. 11. The Economist, 16 February 1985, p.15. 12. Friendman, 1982, p.4. 13. IMF, World Economic Outlook, December 1998, p.55. Leverage indicates the extent of borrowing on the basis of equity. A leverage of 25:1 means a loan of $25 on the strength of a capital of $1. When the leverage is high, it is difficult for borrowers to repay their loans when asset prices fall. 14. See Table 1 of the BIS Press Release of 19 October 1998 which gives the preliminary results of the foreign exchange survey for April 1998. Such a survey is conducted by the BIS every three years. 15. World merchandise trade (imports plus exports) amounted to $908.7 billion in April 1998 (IMF, International Financial Statistics, November 1998). The average value of the daily world merchandise trade in April 1998 was thus only $ 30.3 billion. 16. BIS Press Release, 22 June 1994, p.3. 17. See IMF, World Economic Outlook, May 1998, p.82. 18. Simons, 1948, p.320; Minsky, 1975; see also the summary of Minsky’s argument cited by Joan Robinson, December 1977, p.1331; Kindleberger, 1978, p.16; Bach, 1977, p.182; and Rogoff, fall 1999, pp.211-46. 19. Mills and Presley, 1999, p.120.
2001 * This paper is a significantly revised and updated version of the paper, “A Matter of Interest: The Rationale of Islam’s Anti-Interest Stance,” published in the October 1992 issue of Ahlan wa Sahlan, pp.38-41. Dr. Chapra is Research Advisor at the Islamic Research and Training Institute of the Islamic Development Bank, Jeddah.
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THE QUESTION NO US OFFICIAL DARE ASK By William Pfaff It is time to ask a question that virtually no one in an official or political position in the United States is willing to contemplate asking. For a person in a responsible public position to pose this question would be to risk exclusion from the realm of “serious” policy discussion. It could be, as they say in the bureaucracies, “a career destroyer.” It would be like declaring that after long analysis you had come to the conclusion that the world is indeed flat, and not round. A round earth is merely an illusion, which everyone has accepted, and adapted to—and fears challenging. My question is the following. Has it been a terrible, and by now all but irreversible, error for the United States to have built a system of more than 700 military bases and stations girdling the world? Does it provoke war rather than provide security? Each of six world regions now has a separate U.S. commander with his staff and intelligence, planning and potential operational capabilities. Central Command, based in Florida, currently is responsible for America’s Middle Eastern and Central Asian wars.
Beyond them, “cooperative security locations” are established, shared with the forces of allies or clients. The hegemonic implications and intention of all this, which provides the military structure from which to conduct global interventions (or indeed a third world war), are readily acknowledged in Washington, and motivated by what Washington considers internationally valid and constructive reasons. The unthinkable question with which I began this article was whether all of this has been a ghastly mistake. Many Americans question or oppose this system, but ordinarily with antimilitarist motives, or because they see it as imperialist, or part of an interventionist or aggressive foreign policy outlook that they oppose. My reason for questioning it is that it generates apprehension, hostility and fear of the United States; frequently promotes insecurity; and has already provoked wars—unnecessary wars. It is an obstacle to peaceful long-term relations between the United States and other countries, and with the international community as a whole.
Each commander also makes contact with regional government military forces, so far as possible, cultivating good relations, professional exchanges and training. Each promotes training missions to the U.S. and military aid, and supports equipment purchases.
Today the United States is involved in two and a half—or even more—wars provoked by this system of global American military engagement. I say “more” than two wars because in addition to the Afghanistan war there still are more than 100,000 American troops in Iraq, in circumstances in which an outbreak of further fighting involving them is perfectly possible. The United States is also taking part in the fight against the Taliban inside Pakistan, and at the same time experiences serious tensions with the Pakistan government and public. Then there is Yemen.
Each regional commander controls “main operating bases” abroad, which in turn support fully manned “forward operating sites,” usually including permanently stationed American forces and an air base.
The 9/11 attacks on the United States in 2001, according to Osama bin Laden himself, were provoked by the presence of U.S. military bases in what Muslims consider the sacred territories of Saudi Arabia. U.S. forces went there
The other five commands—Atlantic, Pacific, Southern (for Latin America), Africa and Europe—oversee in detail what goes on in their assigned portions of the world, generating analyses, appreciations, and scenarios of possible reactions to a myriad of perceived or possible threats to the United States.
at the time of the Gulf War and were kept in place afterward by the U.S. against the objections of the Saudi Arabian government. (It is noteworthy that immediately following the invasion of Iraq the U.S. announced closure of the Saudi bases.) In the current discussion of a negotiated U.S. disengagement from the war in Afghanistan, one of America’s best experts on the region, Selig S. Harrison, writes that this would be possible only on a regional basis supported by Russia, Iran, China, Pakistan and certain other states. He writes: “All these neighboring countries are disturbed in varying degree by the expansion of U.S bases near their borders; they recognize that no Taliban faction is likely to negotiate peace until the United States and NATO set a timetable that covers both withdrawal of their forces and closure of U.S. bases. “Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s March 2009 proposal for a regional conference, revived recently by Henry Kissinger, has been ignored by potential participants because it assumes the indefinite continuance of a U.S. military presence.” American bases in Japan, an ally for a half-century, are today the subject of tension between Washington and the new Japanese government. What set the scene for Georgia’s attack on South Ossetia and Russian troops in August 2008 was U.S. pressure to bring Georgia into NATO. In Yemen there already are protests over the possibility of U.S. operations there. This evidence is that the U.S. global base system is a system of insecurity for the U.S., and for others as well. But what president would dare dismantle it? 11 January 2010 William Pfaff is an American author, op-ed columnist for the International Herald Tribune and frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. His website is www.williampfaff.com. Source: TruthDig.com
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