Regardless of the very high hope and expectations of ICC enthusiasts, there is an intense debate going on between ICC’s opponents and proponents over its legitimacy and utility.

(Picture on front cover is courtesy of Thierry Falise.)

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Proponents describe the court as the most significant new international institution created in so many years. The ICC, they claim, will be a powerful new weapon in the fight to end the prevailing “culture of impunity”, deter atrocities, promote national reconciliation in divided societies, and trigger major progress in efforts to promote the rule of law.

Critics view the ICC as an undemocratic and unaccountable institution. They also see it as a forum for politicized prosecutions which impose a threat to their national security. Making such allegations, some key actors in international affairs such as the US, Russia, China, India and Israel are refusing to become parties to the ICC.

The Court’s opponents and proponents agree at least on one main issue: the ICC has a potential to influence states’ national politics so much that it may trespass on national sovereignty.

Moreover, in addition to its potential threats to states’ national sovereignty, ICC’s standing has been scrutinized, and debated upon, on a few other important issues such as _ whether ICC will be able to maintain a strict political neutrality, who ICC will hold responsible for collective wrongs of crimes against humanity, whether or not ICC will have deterrence effect on potential human rights abusers, how ICC’s indictments and prosecutions will affect other peaceful means of national reconciliation, etc.

As soon as international human rights activists’ attempts to get ICC Prosecutor’s attention on Burma’s human rights abuses start to gain significant momentum, the Burmese military leaders and their regional allies will start challenging the ICC’s investigations on Burma; by throwing the usual criticisms at ICC, they will try to discredit, and defy, any ICC’s investigations on Burma’s human rights abuses. The main issue which the regime will raise with all vigour is that the ICC imposing its jurisdiction on Burma amounts to an encroachment on Burma’s national sovereignty.

So, the book “Challenges ahead on Burma’s Road to ICC” examines the background history and the whole regime of ICC, comparing and contrasting it with other similar parallel international or supranational institutions wherever appropriate, with a view to assess whether advances towards universal jurisdiction over human rights protection jeopardise states’ national sovereignty; and if so, what measures are available to reduce such an adverse impact, but also highlighting the fact that states may exploit any restrictive measures limiting the ICC’s jurisdiction to render it virtually powerless.

And, the ultimate aim of international human rights activists, and also the aim of this book, is to argue that the ICC, despite all its actual and potential weaknesses, is a welcoming development in international quest for a universal Rule of Law. It so would imply that Burma needs to, and can safely, embrace ICC to get justice eventually brought to her indigent people long suffering under the heels of various forms of dictatorship.

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Proceeds from the sale of this book are all to be donated to non-governmental health-care charities in Burma.

Challenges ahead on Burma’s Road to ICC

Universal Jurisdiction versus National Sovereignty & other issues

(Picture on front cover is courtesy of Thierry Falise.)

Recently, human rights activists inside and outside of Burma are calling the International Criminal Court to investigate human right crimes being committed, and have been committed, by Burma’s brutal rulers on the long suffering people of Burma.

But, as Burma is not a signatory of Rome statute of ICC, Burma’s dictators may just ignore any indictment by the ICC. To make matters worse, the ICC itself is neither perfect nor powerful. It has its own problems_ the ICC has been criticised by many statesmen and academics on quite a number of issues. And big democracies like the USA and India are refusing to sign the Rome Statute of ICC, making it look like a lame-duck.

This book tries to be of use in human rights activists’ quest to take Burma’s case to the International Criminal Court by looking at the debates and controversies surrounding the ICC from a positive point of view and arguing that the ICC is a welcoming development for the Rule of Law in the whole world including Burma.

This book is written in a way to give basic knowledge about the ICC to an ordinary casual reader while at the same time raising some important debate starting points for more serious readers, learners and activists.

All proceeds from the sale of this book will go to non-governmental healthcare charities inside Burma.

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World is politics and politics is money. This is what majority of ignorant Burmese people have to discover lately. What are more they also have to be patient to let foreign governments and organizations come to comprehend a bit about true disposition of the military junta. Burmese dissidents are categorized as immature folks just telling and yelling how bad the generals are. So America imposed the first sanctions in 2003 after an American diplomat was allowed to examine where Aung San Suu Kyi was deliberately attacked. EU took one more year to adopt the Common Position on Burma. Australia took 3 years to terminate controversial human rights training for military officers. Canada waited till 2007 to impose some sanctions after monks were cruelly crushed. But other governments seem to be waiting forever.

Burmese pro-democracy movement was not equipped with useful tools to prove the world of 3,000 deaths during 1988 uprising. Thanks to absence of BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera and no visa for any journalist. But mobile phone cameras became useful in the monk-led movement in 2007. However media is still ineffective to influence most of the governments. Unfortunately some media cores work in line with the grand strategy and pay-off by the rich and the power.

At the highest international forum UN Security Council, it was visible when Russia and China exercised veto power on Burma resolution. However there are many other hidden powers pulling the strings.. Business interest, energy security, arms sale and drugs trade are much superior to moral stuff – democracy and human rights.

The occasional visitors who will spend less than two weeks at tourist spots like Pagan, Inlay and beaches of Burma come back and report how sweet the smiling people of Burma are and how nice the picturesque views are. Average listeners and readers quickly interpret business as usual in Burma. Those commentators have had no access to dining tables of the people living in satellite towns and the hardships of long rangers who are traveling from home towns to the remotest jails where their beloved ones are being held for the cause of democracy. No question about a glimpse of the most helpless ethnic peripheral areas.

Once the rice bowl of Asia and still has abundance of god-given natural resources, Burma is unable to come out of the least developed countries (LDC) list after two decades of so-called open market economy which captivated billions of foreign direct investment (FDI), millions of soft loans and millions of Official Development Assistance (ODA).

In effect a high share of overall FDIs went into capital-intensive sectors. There was little investment in the productive and labor-intensive sectors that can generate a positive spillover into the economy. Investment-led growth potential is thus lacking. Moreover Oil and Gas sector got massive 33.55% while Agriculture got tiny 0.44% of FDI. But Burma is a country of 59% of employment in Agriculture, 5% in construction and 1% in mining sector. So what an open market economy under this regime is all about? Evaluating that state of Economy, the 59% of Burmese population will say no thanks to foreign companies and investments.

Please watch the “Diamond Wedding” video of the first daughter (2006), look around unnecessary 5-star constructions around Naypyiday, and listen to Burmese language radios, BBC, VOA, RFA and DVB. The true story of Burma is the country desperately poor and the regime extremely rich. The military junta spends 40 cents per citizen each year on health care as health budget (3%) is the minimum and defense allotment (40%) is the maximum. Those who really need the valid first-hand news should have facility to translate the RSS feeds of Burmese language radios. Maybe your newspapers will naturally defend the policy and approach of your government and you can be half-blind.

10 years ago, Chinese and Indian security officials might have drawn an imaginary line over the map of small Burma that will divide the country for respective influence. Now two pipe lines made of steel will be running across Burma – one from Yadana field of the Gulf of Martaban to western Thailand and one from Shwe field off Arakan peninsula to Yunnan province of China.

In the battle for gas from Burma the three neighbors have been contending. As per the world natural gas proven reserves, the 15th China and the 39th Thailand are getting gas from the 40th Burma while the 24th India lost the bid. This also shows that rulers of Burma will not use gas reserve for domestic public utilization while the electricity consumption rate of Burma is only 5% of that of Thailand. In July this year the state-own Myanmar Electric Power Enterprise (MEPE) announced that electrical power will be rationed to six hours a day in Rangoon. At the same time, every day is Diwali season in Naypyidaw, the new capital.

The Shwe Gas Project is a project of the Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE) in partnership with the Daewoo International of South Korean (60%), the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) of India (20%), the Gas Authority of India Ltd. (GAIL) (10%) and the Korean Gas Corporation (10%).

The Yadana Gas Project is operated by Total SA of France, Chevron Corporation of the USA, PTT of Thailand and Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE) of Burma. The gas projects made giant companies richer and moneyed Burmese generals to build secret projects. “Yadana”, apart from religious sense means jewels and “Shwe” means gold – jewels and gold for others but not for the people of Burma.

Lack of democracy is not a concern for the non-sanction governments because the generals are regarded as agreeable guys who can not only do business with but also can conceal the secret deals. The outcomes are drug money laundering, nuclear establishment, secret tunnels construction and billion dollars concealment.

The report recently released by the Earthrights International (ERI) about $US 4.8 billion generated for Burmese junta by Total and Chevron is a good case in point. It is understandable that the CEOs will deny at first. Multinationals like Total where public campaigns can play a role has paid compensation for forced labor and violations of labor standards. But there are more companies from other countries where neither democracy nor public opinion can help. Banks in Singapore and companies from South Korea are a few examples.

Leave alone Chinese and Indian companies because both countries ignored epidemic of forced labor practice and readily voted for Burmese junta at the International Labor Organization (ILO). It will also be wrong if Burmese people expect any face saving payment for forced relocation, forced labor and malpractices of labor standards from them because public interest in these two democracies is too low.

Daewoo International projects net profits of US$86 million every year while the junta takes in up to US$3 billion annually. But in 2006 more than 20 South Korean NGOs and trade unions, have urged the Seoul government to investigate Daewoo International Corporation for allegedly sending weaponry technology to military Burma.

In the US, there are coordinated attempts by politicians, media outlets and campaigners who are to make profits out of Burma for American companies. History tells us that the covert actions and invisible hands have being playing for business and security interests. After secrets are declassified the world comes to know that not all clandestine operations were profitable and or sensible. Forget about morality. Poor Burmese people have to wait for a couple of decades then.

Tint Swe

14-9-09

YANGON (Reuters) – Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was charged on Thursday with breaking the terms of her house arrest and faces up to five years in jail after an American intruder sneaked into her lakeside home, her party said.

Opposition activists denounced her trial, set to begin on Monday, as a ploy by the country’s junta to keep Suu Kyi, 63, sidelined ahead of elections in 2010.

Her National League for Democracy (NLD), which won a landslide election victory in 1990 only to be denied power by the military, “strongly condemned” the new charges two weeks before her latest six-year detention is due to expire on May 27.

The Nobel Peace laureate has spent 13 of the past 19 years in detention, most of it held virtually incommunicado at her home, with her telephone line cut, her mail intercepted and visitors restricted.

She was charged under the Law Safeguarding the State from the Dangers of the Subversive Elements, which imposes a three-to-five-year jail term if a detainee “violates the restrictions imposed on them.”

The charges stem from a bizarre incident involving U.S. citizen John William Yettaw, who, according to state media, claimed to have swum across Inya Lake and spent two days in Suu Kyi’s compound earlier this month.

Yettaw was charged with abetting, or “encouraging a violation of the law,” said Aung Thein, one of Suu Kyi’s lawyers.

Other reports said he had been charged with entering a restricted zone and breaking immigration laws, but Aung Thein could not confirm those charges.

Yettaw was arrested on May 6 as he swam back from Suu Kyi’s home. U.S. embassy officials were allowed to see him on Wednesday but he revealed little about his motives.

“We cannot comment. He didn’t tell us any details,” embassy spokesman Richard Mei said.

It was apparently the second time that Yettaw — described by state media as a 53-year-old psychology student and a resident of Missouri — had tried to meet Suu Kyi at her home.

Suu Kyi’s main lawyer, Kyi Win, said Yettaw was told to leave after his first attempt in late 2008. This time Yettaw refused.

“He said he was so tired and wanted to rest, but she pleaded with him. Then he slept overnight on the ground floor,” Kyi Win told the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB).

“GRAVE AND CONCERNING”

Suu Kyi’s detention in a house inside the prison will renew fears for her health after she was put on an intravenous drip last week for dehydration and low blood pressure.

Her main doctor, Tin Myo Win, was detained last week and is still being held at an undisclosed location.

The United Nations has said Suu Kyi’s continued house arrest is illegal under Myanmar law, which permits detention for five consecutive years before the accused must be freed or face trial.

Suu Kyi lodged an appeal against her detention after it was extended last year in an apparent violation of the law. The junta denied the appeal, saying they could hold her for a sixth year.

“The regime filed these charges to extend her detention beyond the six years,” said Aung Din, executive director of the U.S. Campaign for Burma, a pro-democracy group.

“It is an act of blackmailing the international community, especially the United States, demanding a ransom to get back an American citizen and better treatment for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.”

Australia’s Foreign Minister Stephen Smith called the arrest “grave and concerning” and demanded her immediate release.

The 10-nation Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), one of the few groups that allows Myanmar as a member, is “concerned” by the latest events there, Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva told Reuters.

“We would like to see positive steps being taken according to the roadmap. It’s very important the political process is inclusive,” he said.

The generals have in the past ignored calls for her release as they push ahead with a seven-step “roadmap to democracy” expected to culminate in the multi-party elections in 2010.

The NLD and Western governments dismiss the “roadmap” and last year’s army-drafted constitution as a cover for the generals to cement their grip on power.

Daoud Kuttab, an award-winning Palestinian journalist, is Professor of Journalism at Princeton University.

Ramallah – As the summit between US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu approaches, most of the discussion has focused on whether or not the newly elected Israeli leader will finally say that he backs a two-state solution. This is the wrong approach. Israelis should not determine the status of the Palestinian entity, nor should Palestinians have a say in what Israelis call their own state.

The only question that Obama should ask Netanyahu is, When will Israel quit the occupied Palestinian territories? Attempts at obfuscation – whether by talking about an “economic peace,” or insisting that Arabs recognize the Jewishness of the state of Israel – should not be allowed to derail the goal of ending the inadmissible occupation.

During Obama’s first meeting with a Middle East leader, a simple and courageous Arab plan was outlined. Empowered by Arab leaders, Jordan’s King Abdullah II officially presented the peace plan devised by the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic States. Despite the Israeli wars on Lebanon and Gaza, Arabs offered  normal relations with Israel once it quits the lands that it occupied in 1967.

The plan also calls for a  “fair” and “agreed upon” resolution of the Palestinian refugee problem. The fact that Israelis and Palestinians need to agree on a solution of the refugee issue neutralizes unwarranted Israeli fears about the demographic threat posed by the Palestinians’ right of return. Last summer, when he was shown a poster with 57 Arab flags representing the countries that will normalize relations with Israel, then candidate Obama told Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that the Israelis would be “crazy” to reject that plan.

Obama’s impressive signals since taking office – telephoning Arab leaders before European allies, appointing special envoy George Mitchell and speaking on Al-Arabiyeh for his first interview – reflect a different approach from the staid and unimaginative past.

The US has repeatedly opposed the 1967 Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and has called for its end. It has consistently voiced disapproval of settlement activities. Leaders of both major US parties have articulated a policy that calls for a viable, contiguous Palestinian state on the lands occupied in 1967. The US has also opposed Israel’s unilateral annexation of East Jerusalem, and – along with every country on the planet – refused to recognize the application of Israeli law to residents of East Jerusalem.

Yet Israel’s actions on the ground have gone counter to American and international positions. The newly established Israeli government refuses even to pay lip service to the internationally accepted requirements for peace. On the other hand, the freely elected Palestinian leadership faces international boycott until it accepts a solution that the Netanyahu government rejects.

Among the international community’s demands of Israel has been the acceptance of the two-state solution and a total freeze on all settlement activity, including expansion and natural growth. Freezing settlement will certainly be a central focus of the robust diplomacy of Mitchell and his team. Mitchell, who was deeply involved in crafting the settlements language of the Mitchell Report of 2001, understands the capacity of the settlements to destroy the prospect for a two-state solution.

Jerusalem is another on-the-ground issue that will be a litmus test for the Obama administration. Demolition of Palestinian houses and Israeli provocations in East Jerusalem highlight the need to confront this issue without delay. The focus of Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the Middle East is Jerusalem’s importance to Christians, Muslims, and Jews, so that attempts to Judaize the Holy City must stop immediately.

A third imperative for Palestinians is to reunite the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Irrespective of the outcome of the internal Palestinian dialogue taking place in Cairo, there is a need to reconnect Palestinians. There is no excuse why Palestinians living in either remaining sliver of Mandatory Palestine should be barred from traveling to the other part of the occupied Palestinian territories.

Israeli officials’ claims that barring the movement of people and goods is required for security reasons do not withstand scrutiny. Under the leadership of US General Keith Dayton (Mitchell’s security deputy), the most vigorous security checks can be made to allow such travel.

With renewed peace talks, results must be stressed over endless process. The last failed promise by President George W. Bush came at Annapolis in late 2007, when he vowed that an independent, viable, and contiguous Palestinian state would be created before the end of his term.

More than four decades after United Nations Security Council resolution 242, occupying land by force, illegal construction of exclusive Jewish settlements, and restrictions on movement continue unabated. Time is no longer on the side of those who favor two states.

The Obama administration must seize the initiative and insist that Netanyahu unequivocally support the two-state solution. Otherwise, tension looms in the Israeli-American relationship, and calls for one state with equal rights for all will begin to drown out older ideological visions, as settlement activity forecloses the prospect of two states.

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Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2009.
www.project-syndicate.org

Dani Rodrik, Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, is the first recipient of the Social Science Research Council’s Albert O. Hirschman Prize. His latest book is One Economics, Many Recipes: Globalization, Institutions, and Economic Growth.

Cambridge – It may take a few months or a couple of years, but one way or another the United States and other advanced economies will eventually recover from today’s crisis. The world economy, however, is unlikely to look the same.

Even with the worst of the crisis over, we are likely to find ourselves in a somewhat de-globalized world, one in which international trade grows at a slower pace, there is less external finance, and rich countries’ appetite for running large current-account deficits is significantly diminished. Will this spell doom for developing countries?

Not necesarily. Growth in the developing world tends to come in three distinct variants. First comes growth driven by foreign borrowing. Second is growth as a by-product of commodity booms. Third is growth led by economic restructuring and diversification into new products.

The first two models are at greater risk than the third. But we should not lose sleep over them, because they are flawed and ultimately unsustainable. What should be of greater concern is the potential plight of countries in the last group. These countries will need to undertake major changes in their policies to adjust to today’s new realities.

The first two growth models invariably come to a bad end. Foreign borrowing can enable consumers and governments to live beyond their means for a while, but reliance on foreign capital is an unwise strategy. The problem is not only that foreign capital flows can easily reverse direction, but also that they produce the wrong kind of growth, based on overvalued currencies and investments in non-traded goods and services, such as housing and construction.

Growth driven by high commodity prices is also susceptible to busts, for similar reasons.  Commodity prices tend to move in cycles. When they are high, they are apt to crowd out investments in manufactures and other, non-traditional tradables. Moreover, commodity booms frequently produce ugly politics in countries with weak institutions, leading to costly struggles for resource rents, which are rarely invested wisely.

So it is no surprise that the countries that have produced steady, long-term growth during the last six decades are those that relied on a different strategy: promoting diversification into manufactured and other “modern” goods. By capturing a growing share of world markets for manufactures and other non-primary products, these countries increased their domestic employment opportunities in high-productivity activities. Their governments pursued not just good “fundamentals” (e.g., macroeconomic stability and an outward orientation), but also what might be called “productivist” policies: undervalued currencies, industrial policies, and financial controls.

China exemplified this approach. Its growth was fueled by an extraordinarily rapid structural transformation towards an increasingly sophisticated set of industrial goods. In recent years, China also got hooked on a large trade surplus vis-à-vis the US – the counterpart of its undervalued currency.

But it wasn’t just China. Countries that had been growing rapidly in the run-up to the great crash of 2008 typically had trade surpluses (or very small deficits). These countries did not want to be recipients of capital inflows, because they realized that this would wreak havoc with their need to maintain competitive currencies.

It is now part of conventional wisdom that large external balances – typified by the bilateral US-China trade relationship – played a major contributing role in the great crash. Global macroeconomic stability requires that we avoid such large current-account imbalances in the future. But a return to high growth in developing countries requires that they resume their push into tradable goods and services. In the past, this push was accommodated by the willingness of the US and a few other developed nations to run large trade deficits. This is no longer a feasible strategy for large or middle-income developing countries.

So, are the requirements of global macroeconomic stability and of growth for developing countries at odds with each other? Will developing countries’ need to generate large increases in the supply of industrial products inevitably clash with the world’s intolerance of trade imbalances?

There is in fact no inherent conflict, once we understand that what matters for growth in developing countries is not the size of their trade surpluses, nor even the volume of their exports. What matters is their output of modern industrial goods (and services), which can expand without limit as long as domestic demand expands simultaneously. Maintaining an undervalued currency has the upside that it subsidizes the production of such goods; but it also has the downside that it taxes domestic consumption – which is why it generates a trade surplus. By encouraging industrial production directly, it is possible to have the upside without the downside.

There are many ways that this can be done, including reducing the cost of domestic inputs and services through targeted investments in infrastructure. Explicit industrial policies can be an even more potent instrument. The key point is that developing countries that are concerned about the competitiveness of their modern sectors can afford to allow their currencies to appreciate (in real terms) as long as they have access to alternative policies that promote industrial activities more directly.

So the good news is that developing countries can continue to grow rapidly even if world trade slows in and there is reduced appetite for capital flows and trade imbalances. Their growth potential need not be severely affected as long as the implications of this new world for domestic and international policies are understood.

One such implication is that developing countries will have to substitute real industrial policies for those that operate through the exchange rate. Another is that external policy actors (for example, the World Trade Organization) will have to be more tolerant of these policies as long as the effects on trade balances are neutralized through appropriate adjustments in the real exchange rate. Greater use of industrial policies is the price to be paid for a reduction of macroeconomic imbalances.

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Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2009.
www.project-syndicate.org

Pro-democracy activists in London, led by the NLD-UK branch, staged protests and demonstrations on 10.05.2009 Thursday afternoon, in front of Burmese military regime Ambassador’s Residence, to call for the regime to give better medical care for the ailing detained people’s leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma.

Please click here or on the picture above to read the whole doucment.

Please click here, or above, to read the whole article.

The 63-year-old Nobel Laureate was placed on an intravenous drip by her doctor’s assistant on Friday because she cannot eat, has low blood pressure and is dehydrated, said party spokesman Nyan Win.

But Myanmar authorities refused to grant the assistant permission to visit her again at her home on Saturday, while her physician is being detained by police on unspecified charges, he said.

“We are worried for her health situation. There should be no restrictions for medical treatment,” Nyan Win, the spokesman for her National League for Democracy (NLD) party, told AFP.

Shlomo Avineri, Director-General of Israel’s Foreign Ministry in the first cabinet of Yitzhak Rabin, is Professor of political science at Hebrew University.

JERUSALEM – As President Barack Obama’s special Middle East envoy, former US Senator George Mitchell, learned during his visit to the region, America’s efforts at Israeli-Palestinian peace-making are running up against three major obstacles. They will, no doubt, also arise in Obama’s upcoming meetings with the region’s leaders.

The first obstacle – indeed, the issue that stands front and center today – is the ongoing Palestinian civil war, with Hamas controlling the Gaza Strip in defiance of Abu Mazen’s Fatah-led Palestinian Authority. The Palestinians’ basic failure at nation-building makes any meaningful peace talks with Israel – let alone an agreement – almost impossible at the moment. With Palestinians unable to agree among themselves on a minimal national consensus, how can peace be established between them and Israel?

Second, with Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister, Israel now has a government which is far less likely to be willing – or able – to make major concessions and evacuate hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers from the West Bank.

Third, and most significantly, the 1993 Israel-PLO agreement has until now failed to achieve its aim. Attempts to revive the Oslo peace process – the “Road Map” and the Annapolis process – have similarly failed to achieve more than vacuous declarations and hollow photo opportunities. The causes of these 15 years of failure should be considered, so that Mitchell’s mission does not become another stillborn effort.

Both the Palestinians and Israel can easily and rightly be blamed for the failure of the Oslo process. But there is a more fundamental cause at stake, and it should not be overlooked.

The Oslo process tried to build a Palestinian state from the top down: create a Palestinian national authority, hand over territory to it, give it increasing power, arm it and finance it, hold elections, and a Palestinian state would emerge. Instead, the consequence was a corrupt, militarized Palestinian Authority, with competing security services proved incapable of providing security. Nor could it conduct credible negotiations with Israel or deliver necessary services to ordinary Palestinians.

Two reasons for this failure stand out: the institutional weakness of Palestinian civil society, which lacks the infrastructure necessary for nation-building; and the impossibility of simultaneous nation-building and peace-making. There is no precedent anywhere in the world that suggests that such a two-tier process can succeed.

A fundamental change of paradigm is needed: the effort should shift to building a Palestinian state from the bottom up, for which there are encouraging signs, even in the midst of the failure of the top-down process.

In the last two years, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US General Keith Dayton have succeeded in effective institution-building in three West Bank districts – Jenin, Bethlehem, and Hebron – turning them into the most peaceful areas in the West Bank, with a minimal Israeli military presence. Local authorities were supplied with adequate funding and advice; independent chambers of commerce became the backbone of a local commercial middle class, which is interested in keeping the region peaceful, even absent an overall agreement; local police were trained (in Jordan), and now function effectively as police forces, not armed militias; and business relations with adjacent Israeli regions have been renewed.

This empowerment of an effective local leadership was done with much persistence – and little fanfare. But these nuts-and-bolts projects created – for the first time – the building blocks necessary for effective Palestinian nation-building.

Admittedly, this process will take time and patience. But, until now, it has been the only approach proven to succeed, while everything else has failed. As Blair recently put it, such a bottom-up process may even go hand-in-hand with Netanyahu’s goal of an “economic peace,” though it would eventually have to go beyond it. That such an approach would have to include a total halt to Israeli settlement activities goes without saying. If carefully crafted, it may even be implicitly accepted, albeit without much enthusiasm, by the Israeli government.

The Oslo process has failed; an attempt to revive it – say, by way of the Beirut Arab peace initiative – will merely bring into the open all of the existing disagreements between the two sides, and will not overcome the Palestinian failure at nation-building. After all the breakdowns in efforts to create a Palestinian state from the top down, only the old-fashioned way – from the bottom up – remains viable.

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Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2009.
www.project-syndicate.org

Shashi Tharoor, an acclaimed novelist and commentator, is a former Under-Secretary- General of the United Nations. He is now the Congress Party candidate for Parliament from Thiruvananthapuram in India’s southwestern state of Kerala.

New Delhi – A month after they first queued to vote in India’s mammoth general election, the country’s voters will learn the outcome on May 16. The election, staggered over five phases – involving five polling days over four weeks, rather than one “election day” – will determine who rules the world’s largest democracy. Only one thing is certain: no single party will win a majority on its own. India is set for more coalition rule.

That may not be a bad thing. India’s last two governments each served a full term and presided over significant economic growth, even though they comprised 23 and 20 parties, respectively. Coalition politics gives representation to the myriad interests that make up a diverse and complex society, and ensures that the country as a whole accepts the policies ultimately adopted.

But coalition rule can also often mean governance of the lowest common denominator, as resistance by any of the government’s significant members to a policy can delay or even thwart it. In India’s parliamentary system, if a coalition loses its majority, the government falls, and keeping allies together can sometimes prove a greater priority than getting things done.

India’s national elections are really an aggregate of thirty different state elections, each influenced by its own local considerations, regional political currents, and different patterns of political incumbency. Soon after May 16, the largest single party that emerges will seek to construct a coalition out of a diverse array of victors from the various states.

Several outcomes are possible. The most likely is that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Indian National Congress, currently leading the government, emerges once again as the largest single party and assembles a new ruling coalition. The main alternative would be majority alliance put together by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by the 82-year-old Lal Krishna Advani.

But there is a third possibility: a motley collection of regional parties, together with the Communists, gets enough seats to prevent either of the two big parties from forming a government. In that case, a “hung parliament” could see a “third front” coming to power as a minority government, supported tactically by one of the big parties. This has happened before – and each time, the government that resulted fell within a year.

Each alternative could have serious implications for India. Though the big parties are broadly committed to continuing an economic policy of liberalization and growth, the BJP is mostly focused on the well-being of India’s merchant class, whereas Congress wishes to redistribute enhanced government revenues to the poor through generous social programs. The left, which would strongly influence any “third front” government, are staunchly opposed to economic liberalization and wish to strengthen, rather than dilute, India’s large public sector.

In foreign policy, India’s growing closeness with the United States under both the BJP and the Congress has proved controversial at home, with leftist parties threatening to scrap the Indo-US nuclear deal and break defense ties with Israel if they come to power.

Should the regional parties dominate the government, domestic politics would strongly impact India’s foreign policy: the anger of Tamil voters over events in Sri Lanka, or of Muslims over Gaza, would be reflected in the government and therefore constrain policy options. The BJP has promised a more hawkish security posture than Congress in the wake of the Mumbai terrorist attacks, but when it was in power it conducted itself remarkably similarly to its rival, initiating a peace process with Pakistan.

The biggest differences among the various groupings consist in the tone and tenor of their respective visions of India. Congress remains a “big tent” party, committed to preserving India’s pluralism and conscious of the multiple identities and interests of India’s many peoples. The BJP, which accuses Congress of “appeasing” India’s minorities, hews to a staunchly Hindu-chauvinist line, and has received support from some of the most bigoted and intolerant sections of Indian society.

The “third front” involves assorted petty particularisms – parties representing the sectarian interests of specific castes, sub-regions, or linguistic groups. The danger is that such groups could accentuate the divisions of a fractious society, rather than pull everyone together in the collective national interest.

That would be a startling change from five years ago. The 2004 elections were won by the Congress party, led by a woman political leader of Roman Catholic faith and Italian descent (Sonia Gandhi), who made way for a Sikh prime minister (Manmohan Singh) to be sworn by a Muslim (President Abdul Kalam) in a country that is 81% Hindu. That single moment captured much of what elections have meant for this diverse democracy.

But the ultimate reality will remain that of a coalition government trying to make progress in a contentious polity. In India, policy changes require political consensus within the ruling coalition, labor laws are strongly defended by unions and political parties, and controversial decisions can be challenged on the streets, in the courts, and ultimately at the polls. Necessary policy reforms advocated by a ruling party are often held hostage to the prejudices of its allies.

So change comes slowly. But it does come, and once a policy consensus has been established, it tends to be durable. Indian democracy has often been likened to the stately progress of the elephant – ponderous in its gait and reluctant to change course, but not easily swayed from its new path when it does.

The elephant of Indian democracy will acquire a new set of mahouts before the month’s end. Who they are will have a major impact on the fortunes and prospects of one-sixth of humanity. That alone makes the election results due on May 16 worth the world’s attention.

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Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2009.
www.project-syndicate.org

Ian Buruma is the author of Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance. He is a professor of democracy, human rights and journalism at Bard College. His latest book is the novel The China Lover.

New York – Asked in September 2006 whether there was anything wrong with the way American interrogators were handling “high-value” prisoners in Guantánamo Bay, and elsewhere, President George W. Bush famously responded: “We don’t torture.”

The definition of torture is notoriously slippery, but we have known for some time now that the former president was being, shall we say, economical with the truth. At the very least, American interrogators were in breach of the Geneva Conventions, ratified by the United States, against “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.”

Tying a person to a board and bringing him to the point of drowning, over and over, or forcing a prisoner – stripped naked and covered in his own excrement – to stand with his hands shackled to the ceiling for days, until his legs swell to twice their normal size, may not have constituted torture in memos prepared by government lawyers, but such practices are surely cruel, inhuman, and degrading.

Barack Obama’s first act as America’s president was to ban torture immediately. The question now is how to deal with the past, and specifically with the fact that these acts were not just condoned, but ordered by the highest US officials.

Should the responsible officials, including Bush, be prosecuted for breaking the law? Should all the details of what was done be released and publicized? Should there be a special commission to investigate? Or would it be better, in Obama’s words, to “look to the future, not the past”?

In fact, as Obama quickly realized, his preferred response is proving to be impossible, for a refusal to look back will burden the future with greater perils.

Ex-Vice President Dick Cheney has stated on several occasions that he has no regrets about what he likes to call “enhanced interrogation” techniques, such as near-drowning, because they “kept our country safe” from terrorist attacks. Obama’s ban, in his view, leaves the US “vulnerable.” In short, liberal scruples about morality, legality, and international torture conventions are foolish and irresponsible. The implication is clear: if the US were to be attacked by terrorists again, we will know whom to blame.

The stakes, then, could not be higher in the “torture debate” gripping the US. On one side are Cheney and his allies, who see torture in pragmatic terms; if a severe threat to collective safety is perceived, even a liberal democracy must get its hands dirty. Nobody likes to torture, but security is more important than moral scruples, and the laws will simply have to be adjusted or finessed.

On the other side are those who condemn torture as a moral abomination that cannot be allowed under any circumstances. This, in fact, is also the legal position of those who ratified the Geneva Conventions: “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.”

But these are not the main grounds upon which the torture debate is being fought out in the US today. For understandable reasons, many defenders of Obama’s decision to ban torture are attempting to answer Cheney’s pragmatic view with an equally pragmatic counter-narrative. They argue, contrary to Cheney, that torture is not the best way to keep us safe. A person in extreme pain will say anything, thus providing unreliable information. They claim that other, more sophisticated, interrogation techniques are not only more humane (and legal), but also more effective.

To drive this point home to the general public, which, in the US, is still easily persuaded by Cheney’s point of view that torture is justified if it saves lives, liberal commentators and politicians have called for a special commission to investigate fully the last administration’s record. This, they believe, will show clearly that torturing is counter-productive. Not only does it do great harm to the country’s image, and the rule of law, but it is likely to cause more, not less, terrorism.

The intellectual and political merits of such an argument are obvious. The current administration cannot afford to walk into the trap set by Cheney, and be held responsible for another possible terrorist attack just because it abolished torture.

But are these really the proper terms on which this debate should be held? If torture is an absolute wrong, whatever the circumstances, the question of its effectiveness is irrelevant. To hold the debate on those terms threatens to dilute the moral principle.

This leaves the question of why torture should be condemned absolutely, whereas other acts of war, such as bombing, which cause more damage to human life, might be acceptable as inevitable consequences of national defense. Bombing can, of course, be a war crime if it is used as an act of terror against unarmed people. But military operations that kill or injure civilians often do not automatically qualify as crimes, as long as deliberately inflicting pain or humiliation on a helpless individual – even if he or she is an enemy – is not the aim. In the case of torture, that is the aim, which is why it is different from other acts of war.

A prominent American right-wing commentator recently opined that any attempt to hold the torturers, and their masters in the Bush administration, accountable, would make a mockery “of the efforts of the tough and brave Americans who guard us while we sleep.” Aside from the fact that torturing people is not the same as combat, and requires little bravery, this gets it exactly wrong. After years of torturing people in one of South America’s most savage “dirty wars,” Brazil’s generals decided to stop it, because its institutionalized use was undermining the armed forces’ discipline and morale. It was making a mockery of men who should be tough and brave, but had become thugs instead.

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Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2009.
www.project-syndicate.org

Joseph E. Stiglitz, Professor of Economics at Columbia University, chairs a Commission of Experts, appointed by the President of the UN General Assembly, on reforms of the international monetary and financial system. A new global reserve currency system is discussed in his 2006 book, Making Globalization Work.

New York – As spring comes to America, optimists are seeing “green sprouts” of recovery from the financial crisis and recession. The world is far different from what it was last spring, when the Bush administration was once again claiming to see “light at the end of the tunnel.” The metaphors and the administrations have changed, but not, it seems, the optimism.

The good news is that we may be at the end of a free fall. The rate of economic decline has slowed. The bottom may be near – perhaps by the end of the year. But that does not mean that the global economy is set for a robust recovery any time soon. Hitting bottom is no reason to abandon the strong measures that have been taken to revive the global economy.

This downturn is complex: an economic crisis combined with a financial crisis. Before its onset, America’s debt-ridden consumers were the engine of global growth. That model has broken down, and will not be replaced soon. For, even if America’s banks were healthy, household wealth has been devastated, and Americans were borrowing and consuming on the assumption that house prices would rise forever.

The collapse of credit made matters worse; and firms, facing high borrowing costs and declining markets, responded quickly, cutting back inventories. Orders dropped abruptly – well out of proportion to the decline in GDP – and those countries that depended on investment goods and durables (expenditures that could be postponed) were particularly hard hit.

We are likely to see a recovery in some of these areas from the bottoms reached at the end of 2008 and the beginning of this year. But examine the fundamentals: in America, real estate prices continue to fall, millions of homes are underwater, with the value of mortgages exceeding the market price, and unemployment is increasing, with hundreds of thousands reaching the end of their 39 weeks of unemployment insurance. States are being forced to lay off workers as tax revenues plummet.

The banking system has just been tested to see if it is adequately capitalized – a “stress” test that involved no stress – and some couldn’t pass muster. But, rather than welcoming the opportunity to recapitalize, perhaps with government help, the banks seem to prefer a Japanese-style response: we will muddle through.

“Zombie” banks – dead but still walking among the living – are, in Ed Kane’s immortal words, “gambling on resurrection.” Repeating the Savings & Loan debacle of the 1980’s. the banks are using bad accounting (they were allowed, for example, to keep impaired assets on their books without writing them down, on the fiction that they might be held to maturity and somehow turn healthy). Worse still, they are being allowed to borrow cheaply from the United States Federal Reserve, on the basis of poor collateral, and simultaneously to take risky positions.

Some of the banks did report earnings in the first quarter of this year, mostly based on accounting legerdemain and trading profits (read: speculation). But thiswon’t get the economy going again quickly. And, if the bets don’t pay off, the cost to the American taxpayer will be even larger.

The American government, too, is betting on muddling through: the Fed’s measures and government guarantees mean that banks have access to low-cost funds, and lending rates are high. If nothing nasty happens – losses on mortgages, commercial real estate, business loans, and credit cards – the banks might just be able to make it through without another crisis. In a few years time, the banks will be recapitalized, and the economy will return to normal. This is the rosy scenario.

But experiences around the world suggest that this is a risky outlook. Even  were banks healthy, the deleveraging process and the associated loss of wealth means that, more likely than not, the economy will be weak. And a weak economy means, more likely than not, more bank losses.

The problems are not limited to the US. Other countries (like Spain) have their own real estate crises. Eastern Europe has its problems, which are likely to impact Western Europe’s highly leveraged banks. In a globalized world, problems in one part of the system quickly reverberate elsewhere.

In earlier crises, as in East Asia a decade ago, recovery was quick, because the affected countries could export their way to renewed prosperity. But this is a synchronous global downturn. America and Europe can’t export their way out of their doldrums.

Fixing the financial system is necessary, but not sufficient, for recovery. America’s strategy for fixing its financial system is costly and unfair, for it is rewarding the people who caused the economic mess. But there is an alternative that essentially means playing by the rules of a normal market economy: a debt-for-equity swap.

With such a swap, confidence could be restored to the banking system, and lending could be reignited with little or no cost to the taxpayer. It’s neither particularly complicated nor novel. Bondholders obviously don’t like it – they would rather get a gift from the government. But there are far better uses of the public’s money, including another round of stimulus.

Every downturn comes to an end. The question is how long and deep this downturn will be. In spite of some spring sprouts, we should prepare for another dark winter: it’s time for Plan B in bank restructuring and another dose of Keynesian medicine.

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Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2009.
www.project-syndicate.org

Nava Thakuria is a Guwahati (Northeast India) based independent journalist whose focus area remains the socio-political developments taking place in Northeast as well as its neighbouring Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet, Burma and Bangladesh.

The devastating tropical cyclone that struck Burma (officially known as Myanmar) a year ago had shown the world the real face of the military rulers of the Southeast Asian nation. But the natural disaster had opened up the country to the international communities to some extent. The international exposure to the alienated Burmese, who have been living under military rule for over four decades, seems to play the role of a catalyst for a change in the coming days. Originated from the Bay of Bengal, the deadly cyclone hit the Burmese land on the night of May 2 and continued its devastation till the next morning. It left a trail of devastation in the entire Irrawaddy and Rangoon (Yangon) divisions of the country. Nargis also partially destroyed the areas under the Bago, Mon and Kayin region. With human casualties, the cyclone added to the damage of social infrastructures, killing of thousands of livestock and also causing flood, wiping out paddy fields, which were made ready for the country’s primary crops rice.

The cyclone claimed nearly 140,000 people and another few hundred thousand people went on missing. The United Nations estimated that Nargis  affected 2.4 million people and rendered thousands families homeless. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimated the loss of nearly 300,000 water buffalo and cows, 7,500 goats, 65,000 pigs, 1.5 million chicken and ducks. Nearly 10,00,000 acres of farmland in Irrawaddy and 3,00,000 acres in Rangoon division were destroyed. Similarly Nargis damaged over  800 000 houses, including schools and hospitals.

Of course, the military government reported the final death toll as only 84,537 only. The government-run daily newspaper ‘The New Light of Myanmar’, revealed that the storm left 53,836 missing and 19,359 people injured. Burma has neither independent media nor easy internet access through out the country.

The ruling State Peace and Development Council not only wanted to hide the statistics of casualty, the group of Generals also initially prevented international aid workers to enter the country.

International agencies and local donors were stopped from entering the affected areas and also delivering aid, which was meant for hundreds of thousands of people in jeopardy. Soon the condemnation was poured on the military junta for its arrogant and inhuman behaviour and practices. The callousness of the junta was criticised by Suzanne DiMaggio of the Asia Society’s Social Issues Programme saying that for nearly five decades, Burma’s military rulers had systematically undermined the interests of their own citizens. Referring to Narigs, she stated that the junta-controlled news media failed to announce warnings about the approaching cyclone.

The military regime at its new capital Naypyidaw, which is north of Rangoon, had an apprehension that the massive flow of foreign aid workers to their country might create trouble for them in the coming days. Even the SPDC chief senior general Than Shwe got time to visit those victims only after international criticism came out in a bigger way.

The military rulers were softened only after the personal visit of the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in the middle of May. Slowly the communication between Naypyidaw and the international agencies got improved. Visas and travel permits were made little easier and faster for the foreign aid workers.

India, which maintains strategic relationship with Burma, was one of early supplier of aid to the cyclone victims. New Delhi launched Operation Sahayata to deliver more than 175 tonnes of relief materials including food supplies, tents and medicines. Moreover, the Indian government successfully pursued with the junta to accept the international aid. Later a team of 50 medical personnel was also sent by India to the Irrawaddy delta.

After 12 months of the disaster, the situation remained almost same. Now there are no refugees in the camps, as the military dismantled those nearly six months back. But the affected people are still living with acute shortage of pure drinking water and food, not to speak of proper shelter. More over most of the victims, who survived Nargis, are facing unending trauma.

An independent report (meaning free from censorship by the junta) released recently divulged the fact that the dictators failed to provide adequate food, water and shelter to the Nargis survivors and even then continued violating the rights of the victims as well as the local relief workers.

“The junta’s response was marred by failures to warn, failures to respond, limits on humanitarian assistance from independent Burmese NGOs and citizens, and limits on humanitarian assistance from international entities eager to assist,” said in the report, which was jointly released by the Center for Public Health and Human Rights of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Emergency Assistance Team –Burma (which was formed in  May last year by the Burmese community-based organizations dedicated to providing aid and assistance to the Nargis affected people).

Titled ‘After the Storm: Voices from the Delta’, the report also asserted that the junta obstructed relief to victims of the cyclone, arrested aid workers and severely restrained accurate information in the wake of the disaster.

The community-based assessment report of health and human rights in the wake of Nargis also added, “Relief workers witnessed systematic obstruction of relief aid, willful acts of theft and sale of relief supplies, forced relocation, and the use of forced labor for reconstruction projects, including forced child labor.”

Professor Chris Beyrer, director of Center for Public Health and Human Rights, said in an interview that the findings of the reports ‘are evidence of a wide array of abuses perpetrated by the ruling SPDC in the response to a disaster which is in violation of international humanitarian relief norms and legal frameworks for disaster relief’. Meanwhile, the UN has highlighted urgent needs for the cyclone affected people. Addressing a donor meeting in Rangoon during the first week of April, Bishow Parajuli, the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator, emphasized that there was still an imminent need for sustainable shelter and agricultural support ahead of the monsoon season.

Organized by the UN, the meting was attended by around 70 participants, including the Heads of Diplomatic missions, UN Agencies and National and International Non-Governmental Organizations.

Speaking to this writer from Rangoon, Astrid Sehl, the communication officer of United Nations in Myanmar, admitted that the level of humanitarian assistance that currently being provided in Burma was much lower than the actual needs of the people. She also revealed that there were no cyclone affected people living in the camps at his moment, as those were dismantled last year.

“Most people have returned to their villages of origin or relocated elsewhere, however, pockets remain in which a number of households have yet to find durable solutions remain and relocations or returns still have to be facilitated,” she added.