| 24 August 2004 | Tuesday | 07 Rajab 1425 |
Abdicating responsibility
Wounded by friendly fire
How much autonomy for the provinces?
Sudan: a case of regime change
In this space last week, I discussed the costs of the Multi-Fibre Arrangement (MFA) for both developed and developing countries. The issue to discuss this week is: how will the forthcoming demise of the MFA affect developing countries and what would be the consequences for Pakistan.
Pakistan is among the four largest producers of cotton in the world, the United States, China and India being the other three. Its textile industry accounts for nearly two-thirds of its export and is by far the most important component of the manufacturing sector.
It is also the largest employer in the large scale manufacturing sector. The end to the MFA will have major consequences for the country's economy; perhaps not as significant as for Bangladesh but large enough for the government and the private sector to ascertain what is just around the corner.
Let us begin with Bangladesh - a country likely to suffer the most following the demise of MFA. The country's dependence on the garment industry can be easily seen from the following numbers.
Bangladesh has a labour force of about 60 million, of which 1.8 million is employed in the garment industry. As many as 15 million, or 25 per cent of the total work force, is engaged in such ancillary activities as button-making, packaging, and insurance underwriting.
In 2003, garments accounted for 77 per cent of total exports by value. The textile industry, therefore, is the backbone of the Bangladeshi economy. This happened not because the country had a comparative advantage in this sector. It was the result of the highly skewed system of production produced by the MFA quota system.
When Bangladesh became independent in 1971 and inherited a large export quota from Pakistan, a number of entrepreneurs rushed in from East Asia to set up businesses in the country.
The question now is whether, following the end of the MFA, there will be some disinvestment in the sector since Bangladesh would no longer be able to compete with countries such as China, India and Pakistan, whose export expansion was constrained by quotas.
What makes Bangladesh's situation really precarious is that its markets are highly concentrated. Some 94 per cent of its exports went to the countries that have limited the access to their markets by the imposition of quotas. This makes the country extremely vulnerable to the end of the MFA regime.
How vulnerable? One indication of this comes from what has already happened. In 2001 baby clothing became exempt from quotas, and Bangladesh's exports were reduced by one-half.
China was the main beneficiary. What happened to baby clothing could happen to other apparel as well. The IMF has estimated that the end of the MFA quotas could mean a decline of 25 per cent in Bangladesh's garment exports. Other estimates are even more pessimistic. A Bangladeshi think tank projects a decline of as much as 40 per cent.
This would have a devastating impact not only on the Bangladeshi economy. It will have severe social implications, in particular for women who constitute a significant proportion of the workforce engaged in the garment business.
Some analysts attribute the country's sharp reduction in fertility and population growth rates to the fact that women, employed in the garment industry, have seen a significant increase in the opportunity cost of their time.
It costs the families a great deal if women have to spend their time bearing and rearing children. Although garment workers earn as low as $20 a month, this is still a significant amount for poor families.
Bangladesh's loss is likely to be China's gain, possibly also that of India and Pakistan. There is agreement amongst most analysts that China will be the major beneficiary of the demise of the MFA. The best way of illustrating this is to look at the present shares of various clothing exporters to the US, by far the largest market for textiles in the world, before and after the MFA.
At this time, Latin America, with slightly more than one-fourth of the market share, is the largest supplier to the American market. In 2003, Mexico alone accounted for one-tenth of the US market, with that country's suppliers having benefited enormously from the privileged access granted by the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta).
China accounted for 16 per cent of the American market; Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Taiwan each had four per cent of the share. Pakistan's share was slightly less than two per cent.
The most dramatic impact of the end of the MFA will be on China, India and Pakistan. China is likely to see its market share increase to 50 per cent. If we count Hong Kong as a part of China, the Chinese share in the US market will increase to 56 per cent.
The Indian share is likely to increase to 15 per cent and Pakistan to six per cent. The most dramatic decline will be for Mexico, that will see its share of the US market decline by more than one-third to only three per cent, and that of Bangladesh reduced by one-half to only two per cent.
One major change the end of the MFA regime will bring is to concentrate the attention of the buyers on a few markets. According to Hagen Decker of Kurt Salmon Associates, a consulting company that works with the clothing industry, quotas on the import of materials "have made the supply chain very complex. There is no reason to buy textiles from one country, have garments cut in another and sewn in a third."
With the quotas gone in January 1, 2005, there is every reason to believe that the buyers will concentrate their attention on a few areas where all these steps in the supply chain can be taken simultaneously. What the buyers will be looking for is a one stop shop.
According to Peter Liu, chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, "China happens to be the place where you can do it because within a certain area such as Pearl River Delta, you have everything you need to produce a garment."
Experts predict that the buyers in the post-MFA era will focus their attention on about ten centres of supply rather than deal with 40 or so they have to work with at this time.
Who is most at risk as a consequence of the forthcoming changes in the textile trade regime? According to a study by the European Union, 10 small and large developing countries will bear the brunt of adjustment that would result from the demise of the MFA.
The severest impact will be felt by Macao, China, a territory in which 82 per cent of the exports are accounted for by clothing and textile exports. Cambodia comes next with clothing accounting for more than 80 per cent of merchandise exports, followed by Bangladesh in which the share of clothing exports is more than three-fourths of the total.
According to this study, Pakistan is the fourth most vulnerable country with clothing accounting for 20 per cent of total exports and "other textiles" making up as much as 50 per cent. El Salvador, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, the Dominican Republic, Nepal and Tunisia make up the rest of the list of the few vulnerable states.
Is Pakistan really vulnerable? The fact that textile entrepreneurs in Pakistan think that the country may be vulnerable and are worried about the change that is occurring is indicated by the large amounts of investment they have made in recent years in modernizing their plants. They will have to do more than that and some guidance from the government will be of help.
Given that come January 1, 2005, there will be free access to the American, European and Japanese markets, the textile producers should carefully assess where they have comparative advantage.
Is it in garment and clothing or in high strength fabrics used in automobiles and in draperies and furniture? Some textile experts believe that Pakistan, given the strength of the relatively short staple cotton it produces, has a clear advantage in industrial fibers. If that is the case then that is where it should concentrate its attention.
Vulnerability, however, need not be determined by the share clothing and textiles have in total exports. This was the measure used by the European Union study. In fact, Pakistan is the only country in this list of supposedly vulnerable economies that has a comparative advantage in this industry.
My own analysis indicates that if the government and the private sector respond intelligently, Pakistan stands to benefit from the demise of the MFA rather than be adversely affected by it.
The main challenge to Pakistan will come from China, and to a lesser extent from India. Islamabad could use its leverage in the clothing market to form a strategic alliance not only to benefit from China's comparative advantage in this industry.
It could also use its own expertise in design and fashion to bring greater value to China's exports and its own foreign sales. But it is in South Asia where some new initiatives need to be taken.
I believe that the forthcoming demise of the MFA offers Pakistan and India an excellent opportunity to restructure their textile industry. This could be done in a way that the combined industry could gain a much larger share in global markets than individual countries have at present or those forecast for them by many analysts for the future.
One way of doing this would be to set up a textile working group within the Saarc that could formulate a strategy and draw up a plan to vertically integrate the cotton and textile sector not only in India and Pakistan but also include the threatened industries in Bangladesh.
There is a lot of installed capacity in Bangladesh that could form an important part of a well integrated South Asian textile industry. By beginning to work on textiles right away, the South Asian countries could bring some substance to the promise held out by the free trading area they have agreed to create in the subcontinent.
Pakistani producers should also persuade Islamabad to move on the fast track in dismantling the barriers to trade in South Asia, particularly in the textile sector. That way its producers may be able to form strategic alliances with the companies operating in this sector in Bangladesh and India. What is important is to recognize that this is the time to think strategically about the future.
Abdicating responsibility
Whenever an investigation promises to go as high up as necessary, it is a fair bet that some sort of cover-up is being planned. It was unthinkable that the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib was not known to higher-ups and at the time of the scandal even Donald Rumsfeld was being implicated by innuendo.
How could something as depraved as the physical and mental torture go undetected unless it had the sanction, if not the blessings of those other than lowly prison guards and private contractors? Private contractors? Yes, indeed and even torture had been outsourced and someone was making a profit on it.
Now we learn that the investigation carried out by Major-General Fay has cleared senior military officers and a key finding is that the abuse of prisoners occurred separately from military interrogation and was carried out by individuals acting on their own.
The report does fault senior military leadership in Iraq for failing to supervise and provide resources to those running the prison, allowing chaotic conditions in which abuse flourished.
To refresh our memories, some of the techniques employed on the prisoners included the use of military dogs, temperature extremes, reversed sleep patterns, sensory deprivation and diets of bread and water.
But the photographs that appeared on our television screens and in newspapers were all but obscene and pointed to the sickness of mind of those who were carrying out the interrogations of the prisoners and were certifiably psychopaths.
It could have said that inmates were running the mental asylum. There had been some feeling of shame but only because it was deeply embarrassing to be counted among those guards of Saddam Hussain who treated his opponents with similar savagery in that very prison.
Here is a flashback that confirms that those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it and I quote at length from Anthony Summers book The Arrogance of Power:" Nixon professed shock, when in late 1969, the horrific story of the worst atrocity in modern US military history broke in the press.
The previous year, it emerged, troops of the Eleventh Light Infantry Brigade of the American Division had slaughtered at least 350 unarmed Vietnamese civilians. American soldiers and junior officers had shot and bayoneted old men, women, and children, even babies.
"Some of the women had been beaten and raped before being killed. All dwellings had been burned to the ground, the carcasses of the villagers' cattle tossed into wells to poison the water.
The massacre, in and around the village of My Lai, had been carried out without provocation. There had been much enemy activity in the area, but the brigade had met no hostile fire the day.
"Nixon had his press spokesman declare the mass murder abhorrent to the conscience, promising that it would be dealt with in accordance with the strict rules of military justice.
Behind the scene he ordered the army to spy on the young veteran who had exposed the atrocity by writing to Nixon and other politicians about it. The president griped to an aide about the negative publicity for hours, saying, " Its those dirty, rotten Jews from New York who are behind it".
"While twenty five soldiers eventually charged with involvement in the attack, the focus of attention was Lieutenant William Calley, the twenty-four years old platoon leader who admitted to having played a leading role. Calley was charged with the deaths of 109 civilians and was convicted of the premeditated murder of 22. He told the judge he thought it had been 'no big deal'.
"When Calley was sentenced to life imprisonment, Nixon ordered that he be released pending an appeal and said he would personally review the case before any sentence was carried out.
Calley was eventually confined for only three years, spent mostly in a comfortable apartment at Fort Benning, Georgia, with permission to receive visits from a girlfriend.
A record entitled 'The Battle Hymn of Lieutenant Calley,' sung to the tune of 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic,' proved immensely popular. A publisher paid the soldier a hundred thousand dollars for his life story."
All the top officials of the Bush administration made polite noises and expressed their regrets about the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib while distancing themselves from it.
No one was willing to accept any kind of responsibility or even knowledge that something terrible was happening. Thus there was the incredible situation that apart from a handful of lowly prison guards no one saw any evil, heard any evil and did any evil.
There was, of course, Lyddie England who became the poster-girl in the photographs who testified that she "did it for fun." I have no doubt that, whatever her fate, she has already signed a book contract and will end up becoming a celebrity. It is interesting that she has shown no regrets. On the contrary she has been defiant and claiming she was carrying out orders.
There is so much evidence of prisoner abuse of not just at Abu Ghraib but at other locations that to ascribe it to a few individuals seems like a practical joke that goes too far.
It is a test of leadership to accept responsibility. One would hardly accuse Lancet of harbouring sentiments that are anti-American and British. It is the medical profession's most respected journal.
Yet this is their finding:" US army doctors working at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq helped design abusive interrogation methods and failed to report death triggered by the beatings."
This is a clear violation of the Hippocratic oath and in any lawful society would lead to them being debarred from practising medicine, to say nothing of being parties to torture.
There is obviously much going on in Iraq besides winning the hearts and minds of people who have been liberated from the brutalities of a tyrannical regime. No one's hands are clean of blood.
Wounded by friendly fire
"A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behaviour, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done.
If at the end of a war story you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie."
- Tim O'Brien,
The Things They Carried
Vietnam war veteran and Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry has been ambushed and, for the moment, remains caught in enemy fire. Having made his five-month stint of decorated service in Vietnam the heart of his platform, it is now emerging as his Achille's heel.
A group of veterans financed by Republicans from Texas and close to President George Bush are airing ads calling him a liar for the claims he has made about his service and suggesting that he did not come by his military medals honestly.
Their case is shoddy, given that none of the Swift-boat Veterans for Truth were with Kerry at the time and their claims have been refuted by those who were. Their motivation is shabby, as most of them are piqued by the fact that Kerry returned home to campaign against the war. All of which makes the fact that their attacks have had such a huge impact that much more revealing.
For since the ads began screening, Kerry's slight lead in the polls has been shaved away. Two weeks ago, before the ads appeared, he was running even with Bush among the nation's 26 million veterans. Now Bush has a 24-point lead. The issue dominating the news cycle is not what is happening in Najaf today but what happened in the Mekong delta 35 years ago.
There are three things we can learn from this. First, there is no level to which Republicans will not stoop to besmirch a character, belittle an issue or befuddle the electorate.
Second, there is no level to which the Democrats will not stoop to attempt to neutralise these attacks. And third, that the Republicans will always win in this race to the bottom because so much less is expected of them and, when it comes to muck-slinging, they have no qualms about getting their hands dirty.
Take Vietnam. At first sight this is an issue you would think the Bush administration would want to keep away from. Thanks to family connections, the president served his war in the Texas National Guard - and even then it is debatable whether he showed up.
The vice-president, Dick Cheney, managed to defer being drafted five times, until the war was over, claiming he had "other priorities". Nine months and two days after the army changed the regulations so that married men with no children were no longer exempt, Cheney had his first child, Elizabeth, bringing a whole new meaning to the term family planning.
Nobody is questioning their record in Vietnam for the simple reason that, unlike Kerry, neither them ever served there. For them to raise Kerry's service is a mixture of chutzpah and desperation that could backfire.
Bush has tried to distance himself from the ads, saying they were put out by an independent group. But since the money trail leads back to his friends in Texas, this won't wash.
The trouble for Kerry is that, in all likelihood, none of this will matter. The Bush campaign knows the attention span of the public is short and that few will sweat the details.
Their hope is that by the time the claims of the Swift-boat Veterans have been discredited, a stubborn question mark will remain hanging over Kerry's military record. If you spread enough dung, goes the logic, then some seeds of doubt will grow.
But if the method of attack by Republicans is underhand, the issue they have chosen for this attack is understandable. For it was Kerry, not Bush, who placed his military service centre stage in this election campaign. The logic of doing so was clear enough.
Clips of Kerry striding through the delta carrying a gun while his band of brothers (those who served with him) offered testimony of his heroics, served as a double whammy. They established Kerry in the public mind as a strong leader in wartime while providing a contrast with Bush, who stayed at home.
But by the time of the Democratic convention, the party had elevated his service 35 years ago from one aspect of his personal history to his principle selling point in his campaign for the presidency.
Refusing to spell out what plans he had for the future in Iraq or the war on terror, he was forced to exploit this one moment in his past for all it was worth. "If we do not speak of it others will surely rewrite the script," said Vietnam veteran George Swiers shortly after returning. "Each of the body bags, all of the mass graves will be reopened and their contents abracadabraed into a noble cause."
And so it was that Kerry referred to his military service alone to qualify him for the presidency. He delivered a string of nationalist non sequiturs: "As president, I will wage this war with the lessons I learned in war"; "I defended this country as a young man and I will defend it as president"; and "I learned a lot about these values on that gunboat patrolling the Mekong delta".
Then towards the end he reached for the stars and stripes. "That flag flew from the turret right behind my head. And it was shot through and through and tattered, but it never ceased to wave in the wind. It draped the caskets of men that I served with and friends I grew up with."
In so doing, Kerry may have neutralised charges that he will be weak on defence. But he also made his war record fair game and set the ground work for one of the most nationalistic elections in living memory: a campaign that offers the choice between a Republican candidate who wants America to be obeyed and a Democrat who wants it to be "looked up to" and become "once again a beacon in the world".
Kerry is not only running for president, but in flight from a history he knows only too well. When he returned from Vietnam he testified before the Senate foreign relations committee that American troops had "raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to genitals and turned up the power, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians [and] razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan." Just a few reasons why that beacon has burned so dimly for so long, and why Americans deserve a better choice. -Dawn/Guardian Service
How much autonomy for the provinces?
The 1940 Resolution envisaged Pakistan to be an "independent sovereign state" rather than an amalgam of several autonomous and sovereign states. It is, however, astonishing that some of our politicians have asserted that the powers conferred on the federal government by the 1973 Constitution, are far in excess of what was actually envisaged by the founding fathers of Pakistan.
Accordingly, they are demanding a new constitution under which all the present functions being performed by the federal government, with the exception of defence, foreign affairs and currency, should be transferred to the provinces.
The 1973 Constitution, which has already designated the provinces to be autonomous cannot, however, be blamed for the political, economic and social woes, particularly of the smaller provinces, as alleged by some political leaders.
As a matter of fact, most of these leaders, who are demanding annulment of the present Constitution, ruled the country, from time to time, under the same constitution. It is another matter that instead of governing their provinces constitutionally, they resorted to authoritarianism only to protect their personal interests.
Unfortunately, an obliging and predominantly corrupt bureaucracy always aided them in satisfying their lust for power and other gains. Their autocracy had become so absolute that even the common folk, who suffered the agonies of their ruthless rule, did not dare question their undemocratic governance.
These leaders hardly cared for the political, economic and social injustices and inequities perpetrated on their people as a result of their totalitarian rule. They defied the Constitution with impunity, and wrecked the system.
These leaders, if they had so wished, could have played a meaningful role in redefining the federal-provincial relationship if it was indeed necessary to do so and bring the system out of its stupor. Apparently, they are now fudging the issue only to conceal their ineptitude.
In most of the federations in the world, all kinds of disputes, procedural or substantive, are settled by following the democratic procedures, without recourse to fiddling with the prevailing system or scrapping it altogether.
The United States, Switzerland and Canada are the most outstanding examples of nations settling the differences between the federation and the federating units through political negotiations.
In Pakistan also, such efforts may be useful to protect the interests of the smaller provinces rather than the condemnation of the present Constitution as totally unworkable.
The federating units can play an important role in meeting the daunting challenges of development and, therefore, the need for increased autonomy for them. There is no reason to deprive the provinces of this right.
One should not, however, lose sight of the fact that, given the unique nature of overall South Asian politics and other factors, the maximization of autonomy can end up in weakening the federation. For obvious reasons, a weak federation cannot protect a country's national interests.
The tenacity with which Pakistan has to guard its territorial integrity, particularly in the wake of 9/11, makes this point even more relevant. Needless to say, the people of Pakistan have every right to have a strong and viable state to protect their collective interests, and hence, the question of the scope of provincial autonomy has to be given careful consideration.
Provincial autonomy should not be allowed to transgress acceptable limits as this may adversely affect the strategic interests of the country. However, at the same time, no effort should be made by the centre to tamper with the quantum of autonomy granted to the provinces as this would not only be inconsistent with the 1973 Constitution but could also obstruct the much desired process of national integration.
This should be avoided to ensure the success of the political, economic and social transformation of the country. It may also be mentioned that the federation was not an end in itself but a means to achieve complete integration of the federating units, as a transitional mechanism, into a system that fully respected their inalienable rights. This is the only way to save Pakistan from stagnation.
The most promising way to settle the question of the quantum of autonomy to the provinces is to develop consensus among them in this regard, rather than impose a decision on them. A debate could also be held on the idea of welding the provinces into a single coherent entity as only then can the problems faced by the country be seen from a purely national point of view.
The writer is a former ambassador.
Sudan: a case of regime change
The horrors in Darfur mark this century's first great venture in genocide, but they are not the first such action perpetrated by the National Islamic Front (NIF) regime ruling Sudan. That distinction goes to the jihad directed against the various African peoples of the Nuba Mountains beginning in 1992.
Genocide began again in the vast oil concessions of southern Sudan in 1998, when the African peoples of the region became targets of a systematic policy of scorched-earth clearances.
Many hundreds of thousands were killed or displaced. Khartoum's genocide in Darfur is both familiar and different. It is, as seasoned Sudan analyst Alex de Waal has argued, "the routine cruelty of a security cabal, its humanity withered by years in power: it is genocide by force of habit."
Confronted with a surprisingly robust military insurgency in Darfur - growing out of decades of economic marginalization and a near-total breakdown in civilian security - the government in Khartoum instinctively responded by organizing and deploying the Janjaweed Arab militia, which has brutally and systematically destroyed the means of agricultural production throughout Darfur, focusing almost exclusively on African tribal groups. These people now confront "conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction": They face genocide.
No reasonable world order can tolerate a serially genocidal regime that rules only by virtue of ruthless survivalism. Yet this is what the United Nations appears prepared to do.
A July 30 U.N. Security Council resolution on Darfur was an exercise in temporizing. Veto-wielding China and Russia, as well as Pakistan and Algeria, resisted all meaningful action; both China and Pakistan abstained in the final vote.
In the distorting shadow of the Iraq war, this is an exceedingly difficult moment to argue for "regime change" in Khartoum. But regime change alone can end genocide as the domestic security policy of choice in Sudan.
And it is the only thing that can avert the deaths of hundreds of thousands in Darfur. The mismatch between humanitarian need and capacity grows more deadly each day. And Khartoum is strenuously resisting deployment of any peacekeeping force, even from the African Union.
The moral logic of regime change could not be clearer. The NIF came to power by military coup in 1989, deposing an elected government and aborting the most promising peace process since Sudan's independence in 1956.
The only arguments against regime change are those of realpolitik (the regime is Sudan's de facto government) and practicability (how can Sudan's governance be taken into international receivership?).
But years in power cannot legitimize genocide: This will only encourage regimes like Khartoum's to believe they are invulnerable and act accordingly. Even from the real politik perspective, acceptance of rule by those who commit genocide is counterproductive to regional and world order; it also offers encouragement to other regimes tempted to use genocide as a political weapon.
To the second objection - how will it be done? - there are certainly no easy answers. But one consequence of the Iraq war (though of course not a justification in itself) is that public discussion of regime change by the United States will resonate much more deeply in Khartoum's despotic thinking.
If it is coupled with serious efforts to work with our European allies to squeeze Khartoum by means of comprehensive economic sanctions, as well as sanctions targeted against NIF leaders, we may first be able to secure a permissive environment for humanitarian intervention in Darfur, saving hundreds of thousands of lives.
If regime change is not to be chaotic, it must be organized by a consortium of international actors, including regional governments; efforts must be made to reach out to all opposition parties throughout the country and in exile.
A proportionately representative interim governing council must be created externally but be ready to move quickly to take control when the NIF is removed by whatever means are necessary. The great risk is an implosion of the military that sustains NIF power, but this risk is as great without any effort of regime change.
The challenges adumbrated here are daunting and politically risky. The consequences of failing to accept these challenges are continuation of genocidal rule and additional hundreds of thousands of deaths. -Dawn/ Washington Post Service