| 17 August 2004 | Tuesday | 30 Jamadi-us-Saani 1425 |
The purple heart of a campaign
Unfinished business
A growing sense of siege
Cotton in the countryside and the textile industry scattered throughout urban Pakistan provide sustenance to tens of millions of people. A dramatic change in the fortunes of both - cotton, the crop and textile the product it produces - should obviously be the subject of deep analysis by policymakers in Islamabad.
I will begin with a short history of how rich countries have tried for more than half a century to protect their cotton growers and textile workers from competition from the parts of the developing world that had clear advantage in both activities. In fact, the story of distortions introduced into the cotton and textile sectors goes back much further than that.
In the late 1800s and the early decades of the 1900s, the British rulers of India provided incentives to their own mills to compete with the handloom products produced by hundreds of thousands of poor textile workers in the subcontinent.
The loss of Indian jobs as a result of these moves by the imperial power caused enormous distress and was the reason why Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi put the charkha in the middle of the flag of the Indian National Congress.
The spinning wheel served as a powerful symbol with which the Indians could easily relate. Gandhi's focus on the problems that the British trade policy had caused for countless Indian workers turned his campaign against the British rule into a mass political movement.
However, even after London ended its colonial rule in India, it used its economic muscle to keep the playing field tilted in its direction. In this endeavour it was joined by a number of other developed countries, particularly the United States.
In the 1950s, a few years after granting independence to India and Pakistan, Britain joined hands with America and concluded bilateral agreements with Hong Kong, China, India and Pakistan to restrict textile exports from these countries and territories. Washington, however, was interested in putting a more formal agreement in place.
In 1961, it initiated the Short Term Agreement with several textile exporters, going beyond the four countries covered under the previous understanding. The STA was the first multilateral agreement to introduce formal restrictions on trade in cotton products.
This was still a US initiative; since other textile importers wanted to impose similar restrictions they went to Geneva, the headquarters of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), to provide them with a legal cover in the form of international arrangement.
In 1962, the Long Term Agreement restricting trade in textiles was signed by both textile exporting and importing countries under the auspices of the GATT. This agreement was amended - tightened, perhaps is a better word - to provide increased protection to the industries and workers in the rich countries. The LTA was the foundation on which the Multifibre Agreement (MFA) was built.
As the name suggests, the MFA went beyond restricting trade in cotton textiles; it also included artificial fibres and textiles using all kinds of man-made materials. By that time - the early 1970s - several relatively more advanced developing countries, including Pakistan, had acquired chemical industries to produce the raw material for man-made fibres.
The developed countries were concerned that by allowing man-made fibres and fabrics into their markets they would open a huge hole for developing countries' access. Silk was the only fibre that was not included in the MFA since, barring Italy, there were not many developed countries that were large producers of this particular item.
The MFA was negotiated to last for only four years, but in trade, protective barriers produce powerful vested interests. There was no appetite for ending the MFA in 1978. It was extended after the European Union and the United States broke the ranks of the developing world.
This they did by granting preferential access to a number of small countries either in their vicinity (for example the Caribbean in the case of the US) or with whom there were strong political ties (for example small African, Caribbean and Pacific states for the EU).
In 1995, the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC) was negotiated as a part of the Uruguay round of trade negotiations. This was done to get the developing world to agree to the round's conclusion and to agree also to the replacement of the GATT with the World Trade Organization.
The WTO was given real teeth in the sense that it had the power to entertain complaints from its member countries in case its rules were violated. The creation of such an organization was resisted for four decades by the US since it would have meant the surrender of some sovereignty to an international body.
The EU wanted a WTO type of body to be put into place so that it could bind Washington to good behaviour in the conduct of international trade. The EU agreed to the ATC to get support from the developing world.
The ATC committed WTO members to eliminate all quotas incorporated in the MFA by January 2005. This agreement also included the provision for progressive liberalization of the quotas before the deadline was reached.
Had that been done, the demise of the MFA would not have come suddenly; it would have died a slow death. But all major importers of textiles did little to ease the pain of adjustment in the period after 1995.
Consequently, as one analyst puts it, there will be a "brutal and messy restructuring of a basic manufacturing activity that is estimated to employ at least 40 million people world wide, most of them in poorer countries, and generates trade worth more than $350 billion a year."
Exports of more than 30 countries including some of the largest developing countries such as Bangladesh, India and Pakistan are subjected to quotas. China which entered the WTO in 2001 is subjected not only to quotas but will continue to face them a few years after the phasing out of the MFA. It had to agree to this extension as a condition of its joining the WTO.
How is the textiles and clothing market structured at this time? As already indicated, global exports are valued at about $350 billion, with about $180 billion accounted for by clothing and the remaining $170 billion by textiles. Almost four-fifths of the total exports come from developing country suppliers, including Pakistan. The largest share among major suppliers is held by China with 17.5 per cent of the total and the lowest by Pakistan with 2.2 per cent.
Among the 10 largest producers of textiles two are developed trade blocs countries - The EU accounts for 12 per cent of the total and America another 4.5 per cent. There is even greater concentration among importers.
The top 10 account for 72 per cent of the global imports with the United States purchasing 24 per cent and the European Union another 19 per cent. China, Mexico and South Korea are the only developing countries that are among the top 10 importers. Their imports are mostly for re-exports.
The imposition of quotas has seriously distorted the textile industry. It has kept millions of people out of work in many developing countries that have a distinct comparative advantage in this industry.
Pakistan is one such country. In 2003, some four million people worked in textile and associated industries. If the country had not been subject to quotas the number of people working in this part of the economy may have been perhaps 15 million.
MFA quotas have also distorted prices consumers pay in developed countries. According to the studies carried out by the European Union and the World Trade Organization, merchandise imported from China cost 52 per cent more in the United States and 25 per cent more in Europe had they not been restricted by quotas.
The same is true for exports from India and Pakistan. Consumers in America pay 43 per cent more on South Asian imports and those in Europe pay an additional 25 per cent.
Looking at the total cost to the consumers, one study estimates that they pay $70 billion a year more for clothing purchases as a result of quotas. This burden falls hardest on poor families who spend a high proportion of their incomes on clothing.
As already indicated, the main reason for the imposition of quotas by the West and Japan was to save jobs in the domestic industries. Each job saved in the American industry has cost the country's consumers an average of $170,000.
This is, in fact, a subsidy provided mostly by low income earners all across the United States to keep a few textile workers employed mostly in the states of North and South Carolina. Moreover, a job successfully protected in the United States results in the loss of about 35 jobs in a country such as Pakistan.
One of the political economy lessons to be learned from all this data about the cost of quotas is that a well organized group such as the textile owners in the states considered important by the US.
White House for electoral reasons can obtain benefits that far outweigh the costs of providing them. If the political world worked according to basic economic principles, it would promote everybody's welfare if the textile workers in the Carolinas were to be paid their full wages for being laid off rather than inflicting such a heavy cost on the country's consumers, as well as those who would find jobs in the developing world.
Textile industry is not the only area where such absurd outcomes result from public policy. As I have discussed earlier, much the same can be said about the way the western nations and Japan protect their agriculture sector. According to the estimates made by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, quotas on textile exports have reduced world income by $137 billion annually.
The cost to developing countries is estimated at $40 billion in lost export earnings and 27 million loss of jobs. Not only have the developed country consumers suffered enormously as a result of the distortions introduced by the MFA quota regime, the loss to the developing countries has been much greater. Will the demise of the MFA regime bring an end to this distortion? I will discuss this issue next week.
The purple heart of a campaign
Why is a 60-year-old millionaire in shirt and slacks touring America, saluting plump matrons with banners and teenagers waving flags? Because he's John Kerry and, almost four decades after four or so months of very active military service, he's running for president. No, wait. Saluting for president. It's an incongruous and depressing spectacle.
There is, in a muted way, quite a lot to be said for Kerry. Watch him answering questions from black journalists in Washington last week and see how he handles the issues well: he's good at thoughtful policy discussion. His long years in the Senate haven't been wasted.
He understands defence and intelligence. Maybe he still looks curiously lumpen on the stump - half Woody from Toy Story, half Van Heflin in Shane - but his Boston convention speech was decently eloquent. And he gave his daughter's hamster the kiss of life.
In sum, Kerry and John Edwards make a balanced team - mixed gravitas and grin - which, nationally, is probably just ahead of Bush and Cheney - mixed gawp and grizzle - and doing rather better than that in a majority of the battleground states where November's election will be won and lost.
So far, so promising. But somehow you feel that the real contest isn't joined yet - and meanwhile Kerry keeps on saluting, a nervous tic. We know why he does it. Some bright spark, long ago on the primary campaign trail, decided that Kerry's brief, old moment of heroism in a war Americans in general (and Democrats in particular) like to forget, could be vamped point-counterpoint against George Bush's more mysterious record flying Texan National Guard jets in Alabama. But the point, not to mention the counterpoint, is pretty exhausted now.
It isn't just the predictable emergence of a bunch of well-funded Vietnam veterans who buy TV commercial time to defecate on his record (even if, as it seems, they weren't exactly on the spot when the waste matter hit the fan).
It is the way the whole nature of the debate is cramped and confined by its pseudo-military posturing. In theory, Kerry's little C-in-C routine makes him a natural White House adversary of Osama, Saddam and menacing visitors from outer space. (Alien versus Predator is on general US release this week.) In practice, it makes him as one-dimensional as an empty parade ground.
His ramrod back and carving fingers say he should be barking orders. But, when his lips move, they mouth careful clauses and prudent caveats. He's uneasy playing simple in a complex world - and, properly orchestrated, that could be a real strength. Who needs another candidate flubbing his script and playing stupid? But when mouth and military two-step don't match, the result is painfully obvious.
"Flip-flop!" cry George W and the rest. He engages brain and changes his mind! Who on earth can salute such indecision? Some of the Bush charges are asinine. The president calls Kerry a slacker, for instance - probably in yet another ex cathedra vacation statement from Midland, Texas. But flip-floppery is a more resonant slur.
Anyone who sits in the Senate has his party line to worry about - and inconsistency comes as inevitably as politics. A politician with a long record has to be vulnerable to easy hits, and can perhaps explain and defuse them. But a war hero with a saluting twitch sets himself up as something different, something above politics.
Kerry is stuck now with a hollow, unhelpful role - mired in ancient controversy, doomed to renounce nuances or balances. Would he (the Michael Howard memorial gaffe) have gone to war in Iraq knowing that it (like the duff intelligence it was based on) clearly wasn't worth it. An answer that both Bush and Blair might privately echo.
But Kerry can't do hypotheticals or hindsight. He has to be straight and clear. So, yes, he would have moved to oust Saddam. He'd have done, alas, just what the president did. And thus the me-too litany grows. Is America really embarked on a "war" against terror - as opposed to the pursuit of a particularly malign agglomeration of terrorists? It's a vital distinction, but Commander Kerry can't make it.
Don't we hear rather too much about service nobility and rather too little about Abu Ghraib? Kerry, the super vet, is hamstrung there, too. Come to think of it, where is Osama bin Laden - or even Mulla Omar? The commander can't go there either.
He'd be talking military failure, not military triumph. He could make hay with the Bush record day after day. Flip-flop? First flatten Najaf, then pick it up and dust it down. He could ridicule the Bush absurdity of bringing "democracy and freedom" to the Muslim world which doesn't appear to include Saudi Arabia.
He could laugh out loud when Bush calls Afghanistan a "rising democracy" - as opposed to the rising star of global heroin production. But, yet again, he's hobbled. He wants the troops home early. He's on their side against the White House and an indeterminate schedule which sees the boys sweating it out in Baghdad for ever.
To achieve his early exit, though, he needs more help from more allies - which means he can't be nasty to anyone. A democratic "coalition of the willing" which includes Turkmenistan is a joke beyond sickness.
A "new mood of cooperation" means finally proving less feeble, less flip-floppy than Bush has proved over Israel. It means telling General Sharon where he gets off and what to with his wall.
A statesman could begin to lay out that ground. An ordinary, articulate politician could begin to explain why change is necessary. Kerry direly needs such change. It is why he is necessary. But not while he's giving that damned salute, not while the Mekong still flows straight through the purple heart of his campaign. - Dawn/ Guardian Service
Unfinished business
"The top officials of both parties should set an example of propriety and ethics which goes beyond the strict minimum required by law." Who said this? Thomas Jefferson? Abraham Lincoln? Franklin Delano Roosevelt? Actually it was Richard Nixon in 1951.
Clearly he had had a change of heart. At the end of his political career, he found it necessary to address the American people on a nation wide television and declare that he was not a crook.
I have been re-reading Anthony Summers' book The Arrogance of Power mainly to see if I could get some quotes on the Vietnam war and see if there was any similarity between what being said then and what is being said now in order to show that the script is the same.
Here is one picked at random: "McNamara reported moreover, that the ' other war, ' the struggle for the minds and hearts of the Vietnamese population was also going badly. Corruption was rampant, the population apathetic. Such concerns appeared not to bother Nixon.
On another visit to Saigon that year he responded cynically when an American official asked for his help in encouraging that genuine elections be held in South Vietnam. 'Oh sure, honest, yes, honest, that's right,' said Nixon, so long as you win.' Then he winked and slapped his knee."
I am reminded of Donald Rumsfeld's visit to Kabul two weeks ago. When a reporter made the accusation that there had been multiple registration in the voters list, Rumsfeld watched on as Hamid Karzai made the quite astonishing admission that it seemed not to matter and he more or less implied, the more the merrier. Some other Afghan official explained that the use of indelible ink that would detect whether a person had already cast his or her vote.
Nixon had his 'Madman Theory' in which he wanted Kissinger to warn the Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin that the President had lost his senses and he might start using serious weapons in North Vietnam and dramatically escalate the war. By serious weapons he meant atom bombs.
Yet the same Nixon changed his 'Madman' threat when he spoke with Senator Mark Hatfield, a committed opponent of the war. "He gave me assurances," a satisfied Hatfield wrote in a letter to a concerned citizen, "that he (Nixon) saw this war not as a military threat.... but rather as an outgrowth of the misery and injustices of life in South Vietnam...that the real thrust against communism will not be made with hand grenades and guns alone but with a more effective battle against social, economic and political injustices that deny people their basic right to adequate food, living conditions and human dignity." Senator Hatfield concluded that Richard Nixon represented the greatest hope for peace.
Yet Anthony Summers discloses that "only insiders knew that in the very last days before the election President Johnson had been presented with damning intelligence suggesting that Nixon and his running mate Agnew were playing politics with the lives of hundreds of thousands of men, American as well as Vietnamese. Had this information been made public at the time, it would have destroyed Nixon's presidential hopes in a single stroke-then and forever."
While I am on the subject of Vietnam, there is some unfinished business as well as a reminder that even the good guys use chemical weapons. From August 1961 until 1971, that is to say for ten years, the United States and South Vietnamese military sprayed millions of litres of toxic herbicides to destroy the vegetation.
Various herbicide mixtures identified by coloured stripes on their containers, the most common and deadly was Agent Orange, was the spraying programme known as Operation Ranch Hand. Dioxin, Agent Orange's deadly component can cause an increased risk of cancer, immunodeficiency, reproductive and development changes.
A group representing victims of Agent Orange has in an open letter to mark the 43rd anniversary of the start of the wartime herbicide spraying has appealed to the American public to support its legal action against the manufacturers which include Dow Chemical, Monsanto and Occidental Petroleum.
The Association says that the herbicide continues to have devastating consequences. "The war is over. The country has made her marvellous rebirth. Millions of people have nevertheless been subject to deadly, incurable diseases due to dioxin disclosure. Thousands of them have died in agony with deep indignation towards the perpetrators of the crimes."
I still have a vivid memory of Colin Powell holding up a phial of anthrax as he made the case against Saddam Hussein at the Security Council of the United Nations. Coin Powell served in Vietnam in what is known as tour of duty and I do not know whether he was actually involved in combat. When he spoke of Saddam's chemical weapons, I wonder how the victims of Agent Orange must have felt.
As happened with Vietnam, Iraq is becoming a forgotten war and there is far more coverage of the dismantling of the Al Qaeda network. This may have something to do with the coming elections. Iraq is not a success story so far. Indeed it appears to be getting worse. But the rounding up of terrorists plays well with the American electorate.
In this helter-skelter, there was the sting operation where a man wanted to buy some weapons so that he could assassinate Pakistan's ambassador to the United Nations! The Pakistan Foreign Office duly made a demarche. Is that the same as a protest? Or is it something higher or lower? To say the least it was not funny, not funny at all and makes the war on terror seem like a Peter Sellers film.
A growing sense of siege
Religion has many dimensions. For most people it is simply a matter of fact. They were born in a particular faith and see no reason to step outside their ancestral code of belief. The belief hinges on the two mysteries that cap either side of life: birth and death. People find a meaning in life only in the answer to two questions: why are we born and what happens after death?
There is no mystery in either for the Muslim. The answer lies in the verse that is recited at the funeral of every Muslim: From Allah we come, to Allah we go. Similarly, the Christian believer or the Hindu believer has a definition for existence. There is a day of judgment for the Christian (as indeed there is for the Muslim); there are the cycles of karma for the Hindu and the eventual liberation.
Litany and ritual become the hallmarks of identity: baptism, a thread ceremony, or circumcision (a Jewish ritual adopted by Islam). For most believers, of any religion, the practice of faith is an occasional commitment rather than a consuming one.
The majority of Muslims do not pray five times a day, although this does not make them any less convinced of their belief in the unity of Allah and that Muhammad on whom they wish peace, is Allah's last Prophet (PBUH).
It may seem a paradox, but while consistent prayer may arguably strengthen your faith, its absence does not necessarily weaken it. People find their own balance and are comfortable with it. Most Muslims who do not pray five times a day will go for Friday prayers. Faith is not a burden on the mind; it is a comfort for the soul.
What turns a normal believer into a soldier of a shadow army, or, in an extreme case, a potential suicide-missionary? The answer does not lie in rocket science, but in common sense, commonly visible. It must be stressed, at this point, that we are discussing the ordinary individual, and not the fringe fanatic.
Every faith, every society, every nationality has its share of fringe fanatics - racists, or berserk ideologues who believe they can achieve their fantasies by the arbitrary use of terror.
Normal Americans know, for instance, that a white supremacist is morally wrong. No one goes to school to learn that. Perhaps the Bush White House has forgotten how much genuine sympathy America received from Muslim peoples and nations after 9/11. No sane person supports mayhem and the death of innocents. No cause can justify injustice.
So why are television screens exploding with images of normal young Muslims who have picked up the gun? The answer may lie in the sentence just used: No cause can justify injustice.
There is always more than one side to a story. Israel has as much right to exist as any Arab nation, but the moment the defence of Israel becomes an exercise in brutal injustice against Palestinians, we know that a moral line has been erased and beyond that moral line wait suicide-missionaries ready to give their lives.
It might be perfectly legitimate to condemn Saddam Hussein as a despot, but when anger against despotism becomes selective, and when Saddam becomes an excuse for occupation and neo-colonialism, then we know that a moral line has been crossed.
It is perfectly natural that a believer should find his source of inspiration in faith, for faith is his measure of the moral code. This is true of all religions. When a Hindu soldier of the Indian Army seeks courage from the temple he has every right to do so, just as his Sikh counterpart takes the name of Wah-e-Guru and his Muslim comrade in the same army takes the name of Allah.
Who else will Syed Moqtada al-Sadr turn to except Allah? He has at least as much right to turn to Allah as George Bush when he claims that God asked him to invade Iraq.
There is an increasing sense that whatever little justification there might have been for the occupation of Iraq disappeared with the ouster of Saddam Hussain. Anne Barnard, in an incisive story (12 August, International Herald Tribune), reported the mood among the Marines who have gone to save Iraq for democracy etc.
The headline of the report from Ramadi was an answer rather than a question: GIs in Iraq are asking: Why are we here? Lance Corporal Anthony Robert, 21 years old, understood who he was facing. "People are tired of us being here. It's the same as if someone came to the US and started taking over. You'd do what you'd have to do."
Ordinary people would do what they would have to do. Patriotism is the strength of ordinary people, young men who once had no desire except for a decent job, a pretty wife and wonderful children.
Ordinary men with ordinary dreams have become the extraordinary fighters of Najaf and Fallujah. Propagandist theories will not fit them, not if they are repeated a million times over compliant media.
Where is the great Shia-Sunni divide through which Pentagon strategists had hoped gleefully to march? Such divisions have melted in the heat of a common cause. They did exist, but in a different context. They might return, but only after this fire has been quenched.
Even "pliant" media has a way of turning counterproductive. The Americans uprooted the television channel Al Jazeera from Iraq because they did not want its stark and scathing reportage about the offensive against Moqtada Sadr and the mosque of Hazrat Imam Ali. So what does a "cooperative" channel like Al Arabiya do on the morning of Friday the 13th? It mentions "Syed Moqtada Sadr" every five seconds.
Do I hear a stress on "Syed", which indicates that Sadr comes from the family of the Prophet? His "jihad" dominates the news and sure enough there are anti-American demonstrations through the Arab world after Friday prayers. In the meantime Al Jazeera has lost a story but reinforced its credibility.
The sense of siege that began in Palestine has now seized Iraq. But its catchment area is widening to include nation after nation in the western alliance. The case of a Bangladeshi in Tokyo, Mohamed Islam, is relevant. In May he, along with four other Muslim men, was spread eagled on the front pages of the Japanese media, through a nudge from the authorities, as the sinister heart of Al Qaeda in Japan.
After 43 days in jail, all they could find against him was that he had hired two illegal migrants, one of them his brother. He was fined $3,000. The problem is not the mistake. Mistakes will occur. The problem is that his innocence was not considered news.
For the mass of the Japanese that untruth is still the truth, while the injustice turns yet another normal person into a man with a mission, even as he becomes a symbol for those Muslims who would like to paint the world in black and white.
The indifference of governments to Muslim sentiment indicates a barely concealed contempt. Governments are supposed to be responsible, and if this is their cue who can blame those unburdened by intelligence or decency from indulging in hate campaigns that get increasingly more hateful?
I learn from friends that a new book is now available at Barnes and Noble, America's largest chain of bookstores, and through Amazon. It has been written by a certain Craig Winn. Those who have read this book describe it as a turgid, inaccurate diatribe.
I suppose you cannot stop fringe-fanatics from writing junk, but to find such a book on the august shelves of Barnes and Noble means that it has the support of people who would not consider themselves fringe-fanatics.
Muslims find it difficult to fathom why such fanatics take particular pleasure in abuse against the person of the Prophet. Muslims have their fair share of fanatics too, but you will not come across a virulent attack on Jesus Christ.
In India and Asia, Hindus and Muslims have lived together for upwards of a thousand years. I cannot think of a single instance of a Hindu writer indulging in such prurience against the person of the Prophet.
Neither will you find a single instance of a Muslim writer being malicious about Hindu gods. They may target Muslim rulers and Hindu rulers. But there is inherent respect for the others' religion.
Issues that would have been dismissed with a shrug five years ago are not becoming pieces of a looming, dark jigsaw puzzle. History is the ebb and flow of wars of dominance and empire.
For a thousand years the tide flowed in a particular direction; reversal was inevitable. Where there are men there will be ambition, greed and conflict. But when hatreds enter the political space then conflict acquires a raw, personal dimension.
The technology of war has improved for both the state and the individual. If the United States Air Force can precision bomb a small part of an apartment block to hit a specific target, then a cell of individuals can also assemble a weapon of mass destruction.
George Bush invaded Iraq to look for weapons of mass destruction of the past. All of us, together, as nations, as societies, as creeds and races, need to sit together, act together, now, this moment, to abort the weapons of mass destruction that are being conceived in minds inflamed by anger. If George Bush does not see the urgency, perhaps his successor will.
The writer is editor-in-chief of Asian Age, New Delhi.