| 09 April 2004 | Friday | 18 Safar 1425 |
Karimov's gamble
Whose rule is it anyway?
Already the world's sixth largest oil producer and with large untapped, offshore oil deposits Nigeria is expecting to increase its export capacity by 50% or more within the next few years. By 2005, according to a U.S. National Intelligence Council forecast, Africa's share of U.S. oil imports will climb from 15% to 25%, close to the current proportion coming from the Middle East.
Nigeria along with Angola, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Sao Tome, Cameroon and, more recently, Chad and Sudan have become crucial players in the world's energy stakes. Yet it is not just the environmentalists, the anti-corruption and human rights activists that have become vociferous critics of the oil economy. Serious doubters can be found at the heart of government itself.
In Nigeria, Ms Nedadi Usman, minister of state for finance, part of the all female team at the top of the finance ministry, tells me, "If we hadn't discovered oil we would have been better off today. Once we had oil our agricultural sector collapsed. Oil has made us lazy. When I was growing up I knew I had to use my brains to succeed. The oil generation doesn't feel this. We have become corrupted."
When I first asked Olusegun Obasanjo twenty years ago after his first spell as president of Nigeria - he was then a military dictator - what he had concluded about oil he said it was "a curse". Four years ago, having just been elected democratically, he seemed to have changed his tune. He told me that oil was one of "God's blessings on a poor country".
But now, after a debilitating battle with on-going corruption, an economy that has seen the hollowing out of Nigeria's small industrial sector and, not least, continued guerrilla and ethnic strife in the Niger delta area where most of Africa's oil comes from, a rather fraught, would-be reforming, president, who no longer feels he has time on his side, exploded in public recently, " Oil and gas have blinded us... Oil and gas have taken us away from the values that we used to know. Oil and gas have brutalized us. We are no longer our brothers' keepers."
Obasanjo has a long list of accomplishments in diluting some of the worst political problems of the oil industry. Last year Obasanjo announced that Nigeria was going to abide by a ruling it had sought from the International Court of Justice that gave neighbouring Cameroon sovereignty over the oil-rich Bakassi peninsular. (His minister of defence had instead recommended military action.) Nigeria and Sao Tome recently promised to publish the financial results of their next licensing round - a step towards the much sought after goal of demanding that oil companies disclose the payments they make to governments.
Domestic pump prices, for decades subsidized, are now being deregulated. Oil refineries are being privatized. And, not least, there hasn't been a serious outbreak of violence in the Niger delta for two years now.
Moreover, some observers, like the chief oil lobbyist for Shell, Larry Osai, say that at last one can see that oil revenues are being used for development- roads are being improved, schools better financed and drinking water supplies multiplied.
Yet even for Mr Osai Nigeria's oil is "an albatross", albeit one, he says, "that has to be carried". It means, he argues, that Nigeria- and Africa's other oil economies- are being drawn firmly within the U.S.'s political orbit, although so far not too intimately- Nigeria took a position against the war in Iraq.
But if Washington is perhaps showing more sophistication in dealing with its new oil partners than it has with the ancien regimes in the Middle East the harsh realities of being an oil economy remain. No country which is dominated by oil has yet found the way to convert oil into prosperity for the ordinary working people.
As Moises Naim explains in a recent issue of Foreign Policy, "An economy that relies mostly on oil exports inevitably ends up with an exchange rate that makes imported goods less expensive and exports more costly... agriculture, mining and tourism [become]less international competitive."
Only when a country has a strong democracy, a large economy and an effective public sector, as in Norway and the US, oil has not been a seriously distorting factor. The developing countries that have really made it, notably those in south east Asia, have been oil poor (and often enough generally poor in natural resources).
The trouble is, as Obasanjo has found, there is no going back to the pristine state. Nothing but maintaining good governance and a more sophisticated democracy can save Nigeria. Botswana - a diamond-dependent state - has shown what can be done.
Angola, where nearly all the oil money goes to a corrupt political class, has shown what not to do. Nigeria, the biggest of them all, will be made or broken by oil. Right now, with only three and a half years to go in his final term, the odds still look stacked against Obasanjo. -Copyright Jonathan Power.
Karimov's gamble
The end of March saw a spate of suicide bombings across the Central Asian republic of Uzbekistan. Many people, including the bombers, were killed. The next day, the government forces went on a killing rampage.
It had long waited for an opportune moment to "do away with" a few more opposition sympathizers and massacred 22 - by government estimates, the real count is anybody's guess - citizens including activists and their families.
There are several elements to be noted. One, all the suicide bombers were women. Two, the simultaneous attacks were well coordinated in cities as far as Tashkent and Bukhara. And last but not least, the people that the security forces killed in retaliation happened to be in the vicinity of the presidential palace in Tashkent.
In a state where a citizen's freedom of movement and communication is limited to the extent that one needs a passport- type of document to travel to another town and where long- distance telephone calls are tapped and monitored, the opposition forces appear to have a well-knit network with remarkable coordination.
The level of frustration in the country is driving people to the level where young women are blowing themselves up. And more importantly, the president has every reason to be careful as political dissent continues to grow.
Islam Karimov has run Uzbekistan since her independence from the Soviet Union in 1989 as an absolute dictatorship. Admittedly, his regime has inherited, and then owned, the medieval methods of dealing with any dissent from the Soviet secret service KGB. But his government has been ruthless even by Stalinist standards, and more so than the other five ex-Soviet Central Asian republics.
Uzbekistan has over 7,000 prisoners of conscience, far surpassing Cuba's tally of 350. Police torture is endemic and hundreds have died without being given a chance to speak.
Even the slightest political dissent is not tolerated. Electric shocks, gang rapes, acid baths etc, constitute some of the more horrific torture procedures. The victims are lawyers, journalists, professors, students, civil and women rights activists - incarcerated with little hope of a fair trial, and for allegedly being "Islamic terrorists" - a term that sells easily in the West.
But this is not all. The state has failed to deliver. The poor and arbitrary form of governance through nepotism in the allocation of resources, a complete absence of the rule of law or legitimate means of political expression has brought the country on the brink of a catastrophe. If the situation does not improve soon, it will only be a matter of time before discontent spills out into the streets in a civil conflict.
By overplaying western fears of an Islamic political renaissance, Karimov is doing great damage. Many Uzbek nationals have been exterminated after forced confessions of being members of one banned Islamic group or the other. Now Karimov is asking Pakistan to hand over Uzbeks apprehended during military operations in the tribal areas.
For quite some time, the Americans had condoned Karimov's excesses, pampering him as a valuable ally. But 9/11 has shown that such allies are a liability rather than assets. Not one of the 19 hijackers who brought down the twin towers of New York was from the then hostile states of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, North Korea or Cuba.
The dictators of these so-called "rogue states" could not take the United States head on. In all the major terrorist attacks in the recent past, those who struck have been either from Saudi Arabia or Morocco or Jordan - all enjoying friendly relations with Washington.
The last thing Washington would relish now is to have Uzbek or Tajik men or women blowing themselves up on American soil. Indeed, US selectivity in condoning or censuring torture may affect world stability. The safety of the US Air Base at Khanabad is not the least enhanced by looking the other way from Uzbekistan's internal crisis. The cost of propping up such totalitarian regimes is mounting for the civilized world.
As a citizen of South Asia, where there is democracy and liberty, one can feel the pain of fellow humanity living in Central Asia who daily undergo the excesses of a brutal dictatorship. Amnesty, Asia Watch and many leading human rights organizations across the globe have raised their voices against this state of affairs in Uzbekistan. Their voices have become increasingly audible in the post 9/11 scenario.
The return to democratic norms in Turkey and Indonesia has only been possible under the quasi-Islamic governments of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdurrahman Wahid respectively. This shows that the rhetoric of pro-Islamic politicians when in opposition is mellowed when they come to power through the democratic process.
Whose rule is it anyway?
not so long ago, one had occasion to applaud the attention being given to Karachi, and steps taken consequently to improve the state of affairs in the city. Some related deeds and statements by the many functionaries manning important areas of governance in Sindh were seen and heard by the lucky citizens.
The nazim's declared intention to sort out all of Karachi's problems before the completion of his tenure was followed by the governor's and chief minister's declarations to the same effect.
The Sindh CM in his (rather small) capacity had stated he'd 'do his utmost' for Karachi and was soon seen urging his government officials to develop Karachi, adding that on the completion of the first year of his government, Sindh had been 'led towards progress and prosperity'.
Then there was the self-assured stance of Governor Ishratul Ibad, who claimed to have controlled Karachi's law and order situation, besides having many schemes up his sleeve to uplift health and education in Sindh.
We the citizens - foolish, resilient and trusting - had tended to place our belief in all these notable officials. The various persons in charge had also assured us through well-worded statements that there is much harmony between their respective authorities and that the welfare of the province/city is their basic concern.
The faith in these assertions (and the motives behind most of their actions) has unfortunately been shaken by the evil happening which has left Karachi cold with shock. No amount of condemnation can be enough for the incident at Gadap and the actions that followed. Especially, the actions that followed.
Some three days after the mutilated bodies of the two murdered children were found in a dump, a statement by the CM's House was issued which stated that Mr Ali Mohammad Mahar, 'in view of the position as appeared in the electronic and print media, has urged the Sindh High Court to order a judicial inquiry into the murder of Hajra and Sassi in Gadap, and ascertain the circumstances and causes leading to the tragedy, etc.' It also specified that the inquiry officer should submit his report within four weeks to the provincial home department.
Not to mention that it took the media to spur him into action, the supposed report if submitted will presumably go to the adviser to the governor on home affairs as the Sindh home department has no home minister. And as the respected adviser cannot join in assembly proceedings, elected members will, in all probability, not review it and the matter will be handled at the Governor's House, thus shifting the issue from the chief minister's jurisdiction.
With Sindh and particularly Karachi being 'ruled' by three different functioning bodies, it is only logical to suppose that the 'rulers' are also subject to the dictates of the parties they belong to.
And because of that party struggle, the key post of home minister remains vacant, even though this important portfolio deals with the security of the citizens of the province and the law and order in its cities.
To leave that slot open and having an adviser of the governor's choosing to fill the void leaves room for accountability to shift whenever need be and for praise to be earned whenever the chance is ripe, as in the case of Shaista Almani where almost every political aficionado jumped in to have his or her statement on rights of women to be heard. Now with talk of security commissions and police reforms creating a new stir, the accountability factor appears to be receding farther.
At the moment, different party holdings - MQM, JI and the ruling PML-Q - have formed pockets of power all over Karachi as all three have one top slot amongst the three 'ruling' jurisdictions, namely, the Governor's House, the City government and the provincial ministry. As for the police, with the corruption that prevails in that body, it has become a tool to be used for and against political ambitions of all three.
In the case of the ghastly murders of Hajra and Sassi, how can Deputy Inspector-General Tariq Jamil even hold up his head after revelations that the policeman accused had a shady record and was appointed through political orders? As head of police operations, is he not aware of his officers' record? The next frightening question is how many more such 'officers' are the police harbouring because of political pressures? And the worst is - where do we as citizens look for security?
If criminals are being harboured in the force, anyone can become the next victim. It is no secret that there already are many unreported victims of police 'gangsterism' where offenders are calmly carrying on their activities, since unfortunately all incidents do not make headlines (and hence can't be turned into political campaigns).
It is very well for all the departmental heads to declare that the culprits will be punished and brought to book, but the fact is that unclear responsibility of one and all has created an environment where thugs run riot, secure in the knowledge that an easy getaway can any time be made because there are many strings to pull - a police officer, a town nazim or an adviser's assistant.
Reading the details of the mutilation that the girls' bodies suffered following the beastly molestations was a traumatic experience. But more than the shock of the wicked crime which brutalized the innocence of childhood is the realization that at the end of the day, it is the ambiguous accountability and chain of command which rule us that can make a victim out of any child of ours.