Politics of pipelines

CONSEQUENCES of the disintegration of large empires spin themselves out over decades. The most striking legacy of the two great wars of the 20th century is the emergence of more than 190 nation states engaged in kaleidoscopic political and economic alignments. The most recent accretion to their number came from the unravelling of the Soviet Union, an epoch-making event which not only brought to an end a 50-year old bipolar world order but also opened up a huge stretch of Eurasia from Germany to China and Afghanistan for integration into a new capital-driven global economy.

History does not lack instances when time gets accelerated and when winds of change become a whirlwind that flattens the existing political landscape. Lenin’s revolution in Russia, debilitated as it was by a hopeless war, was one such event. But the creation of the USSR took much longer than its fast dissolution. “The speed of its collapse”, wrote the historian Norman Davies in his monumental work Europe “has exceeded all the other great landslides of European history — the dismemberment of the Spanish dominions, the partition of Poland, the retreat of the Ottomans, the disintegration of Austria-Hungary.”

A particularly rapid landslide took place in our proximity in a land that was once considered a single undifferentiated swathe of Islamic people but which entered the modern era as distinct Central Asian republics of the Soviet system. On the first of December 1991, more than 90 per cent of Ukrainians voted for independence. A week later, leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Byelorussia met behind Gorbachev’s back and declared that the “USSR had ceased to exist”.

What they offered to the other successor nations of the Soviet Union, was a commonwealth of independent states — CIS, in the later parlance. Independence was a gift that the Central Asians would have sought probably after another couple of decades; it arrived suddenly and they are still grappling with its problems. They often indicate that they would succeed better if the rest of the world lets them do it in their own way.

It is not a small “if” as the arc of these states, stretching from Azerbaijan to Kazakhstan, delineates an area of high strategic salience — the “heartland of the world” in geographer Sir Halford Mackinder’s famous phrase. Even more importantly today, it also holds vast reserves of oil and gas — strategic commodities that will shape world politics as government leaders and the movers and shakers of the mighty multinationals pay competitive, perhaps even belligerent , attention to them.

War is a complex phenomenon that can rarely be attributed to a single cause. But one single thread that runs through most recent conflicts — the Balkans, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq et al — is the contest for energy resources and the routes for the transportation of oil and gas. The multi-faceted, tangled web of war against terrorism is no exception. “It is interesting that the map of ‘terrorist sanctuaries’ and so-called enemy rogue states, wrote Bulent Gokay of Keele University soon after the invasion of Afghanistan, “is a map of the world’s principal energy resources.”

It is the pipeline map around the oil and natural gas resources of the region (Eurasia) that, in his analysis, connects the Balkans to Afghanistan. Issues of war and peace in our time are doubtless decided not only in the chancelleries of the politicians but also in the less visible boardrooms of the great multinationals where shadowy men pore over their geo-economic designs and charts.

A spate of books, industry essays and media reports projects the aggregated image of a markedly heated-up great game now being re-played in Central Asia. The media, with its instinct for drama, focused sharply on the first ever summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) held in Astana (Kazakhstan) in July 2005 with an alarmist query whether we were witnessing the rise of a rival, eastern, ‘Nato’. I hope to follow up this broad survey of the parameters of the great game with a separate article that attempts a tentative answer to the question if the SCO can undertake the imputed mission of restoring the lost balance of power in world affairs.

After a decade of conflicting reports about the energy reserves of Central Asia, there is a consensus now that they are large enough to make a significant impact on the history of this century. The American Petroleum Institute describes the Caspian basin as the area of greatest resource potential outside of the Middle East. Kazakhstan hopes to overtake Iran and Kuwait as an energy exporter between 2010 and 2015. Its separate grids will link it up with its traditional partner, Russia, the newly arrived China and the path-breaking western pipeline connecting Azerbaijan-Georgia-Turkey.

Apart from oil and gas, the region can generate a substantial surplus of hydro-electric power. The United Energy Systems of Russia claim that the electricity produced in Central Asia will be cheaper than in Siberia. Potential clients of Tajikistan’s electricity include Pakistan. Iran, one of the five littoral states of the Caspian Sea and a country with a shared history with Azerbaijan and railway links with Turkmenistan is a vital stakeholder in the future developments in the region.

I have a vivid memory of an intense debate on Russia’s place in the new world in its political class in the mid-1990s. Ardent Atlanticists saw its destiny in taking the westernization of Russia to its logical conclusion. Norman Davies speaks of ‘thoughtful Russians’ who admit that the Soviet Union “was a folly that should never have been built in the first place”. Counterpointed to this view was the almost mystical idea of a sacred and historic mission that embraced the Eurasian vastness. Somewhat distanced from the inherent romanticism of these two visions of Russia was the new hard-boiled decision-making elite that quietly concentrated on the realpolitik of restoration.

The Soviet Union could not be revived but Russia could overcome and reverse further disintegration (dezintegratsionnye) in its near abroad. In due course, Vladimir Putin was selected by this elite to negotiate with the West a zone of influence. He does not seem to have succeeded too well. Pro-western regime changes in Georgia and Ukraine, each described as a revolution, have already compromised the sanctity of the map that Russian friends used to sketch for us as inviolable. The Central Asian rulers exhibit a noticeable fear of similar colour-coded upheavals.

Another kind of retreat, more pertinent to this article, is seen in Moscow’s failure to limit the transportation of oil and gas from Central Asia to the world market exclusively to Russian territory. The capital-intensive Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline referred to above is a symbol of western determination to deny such a monopoly. Apart from the export of military hardware, the energy sector has been the main engine of Putin’s drive for economic recovery. Considering the disaster of August 17, 1998, when Russia devalued its currency by 34 per cent and announced a 90-day moratorium on some of its commercial debts, Putin has done well; the present high oil prices provide him now with the resources needed for the urgent renovation of the energy infra-structure.

The Russian giant, Gazprom, has a secure foothold in the region especially in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Moscow felt obliged in acquiescing, at least temporarily, in the establishment of US military bases at Karsi-Khanabad in Uzbekistan and Manas airport (Bishkek) in Kyrgyzstan. But it has balanced it with its own increased military presence in the region. This aspect of the situation will be analyzed further in the article on the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which Pakistan wants to join as a regular member.

The states of Central Asia anchor their political and economic security in a multi-vector policy pursued singly as well as collectively. Washington has all along preferred to deal with them bilaterally. As evidenced by the recent visit of US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld to Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and the statements of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, it intends to engage the region in a comprehensive and robust manner. The future Amercan concerns arise less from Russian interest in it and more from the strides made by China, the latest, and perhaps, the most benign of the players in the new great game.

China is motivated by strategic as well as economic considerations. Its rapid economic growth demands greater and diversified access to outside sources of energy. It is also focusing on developing its provinces bordering on Central Asia to reduce its internal disparities. The showpiece of its energy policy in the region is the great pipeline that would link Kenkiyak in Kazakhstan to Atyrau in China.

The China National Petroleum Corporation announced on August 22 this year that it was taking over the Canadian-owned PetroKazakhstan for $4.2 billion. It seems that by frustrating the Chinese bid for Unocal, Washington has freed Chinese resources for an alternative portfolio in Central Asia. China does not have a political agenda similar to the one that makes Washington discourage the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline. Beijing is also interested in obtaining a spur of another major pipeline that would take Russian oil to Japan. Its widely acknowledged strategic decision to devote the first half of the 21st century to economic development is instrumental in expanding ties with Moscow and the Central Asian states.

The strategic map of the region is not complete without a reference to Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. Cultural factors could have given Pakistan a headstart in early 1990s. The newly independent states saw in Pakistan a kindred country that would pose no threat to their fragile internal order. But the lack of imagination and suppleness in its Afghan policy pushed it almost to the bottom of the queue.

If Pakistan can salvage gas projects with Iran and Turkmenistan and reach an accord with Tajikistan on electricity, it could still figure in the strategic map that would be drawn around the emerging pipelines, the future conduits of prosperity and political influence. It is a founding member of ECO; it may well be accepted as a full member of SCO. It is worthwhile to make the effort to position Pakistan effectively in a world where multipolarity can be delayed but not denied.

The writer is a former foreign secretary. Email: tanvir.a.khan@gmail.com

Improving peasants’ plight

LAST Sunday, a news item said that Mukhtaran Mai had received the ‘woman of the year’ award in a star-studded ceremony at the Lincoln Centre in New York. The honour had been bestowed on her by the actress Brooke Shields on behalf of Glamour Magazine. A few eyebrows did go up in Islamabad where medals and stripes are usually dished out to men in uniform during war — and peace time.

Officials are certainly not used to foreign organizations doling out decorations to women for deeds performed away from the battlefield. Some of them even wondered if it had been at all wise to have let the woman out in the first place. Wasn’t she going to add, somebody in the foreign office asked, to the stereotype that westerners already have of Pakistan as a land of oriental machismo where retrogressive males practise a stone-age culture?

A report had mistakenly described her as Pakistan’s premier women’s rights activist — a title which deservedly belongs to Asma Jehangir who has fought long and hard for women’s rights in the country. Nevertheless, this should not detract from the significance and importance of the event at the Lincoln Centre, or the fact that the poor peasant woman from Meerwalla, who was gang-raped on the orders of a panchayat of perverse old men, made quite an impact. Rapes take place every 10 minutes in the United States.

The difference is that in America one doesn’t hear of a bunch of crotchety, lascivious old men ordering the defilement of a woman.

Mukhtaran Mai’s indomitable courage, struggle against tremendous odds and her refusal to submit to gross injustice attracted an exceptionally large audience at the function. People began to view her as some kind of sub-continental Emily Pankhurst. Other recipients of awards included Hollywood stars Catherine Zeta Jones and Goldie Hawn, and celebrities like tennis star Venus Williams, CNN’s Christina Amanpour and the former president of Ireland, Mary Robinson. Mukhtaran Mai was, however, the star, and received two standing ovations.

It is not very clear who had done the research, but the audience was greatly impressed by the video displayed by Brooke Shields which showed how this plucky woman had braved social stigma by going public with her 2002 assault and used the international attention she attracted to set up a girls’ school in her rural community. Aid poured in from abroad after her appeals for support, and according to certain sources she is supposed to have received around Rs 80 million for her educational projects.

The media in the world’s second largest democracy had also taken note of the event. CNN, along with a number of other international television channels, had reported the assault when it had first occurred in 2002. It shocked human rights organizations around the world, spurred Pakistan’s president into action and goaded an anti-terrorist court to do what everybody expects an anti-terrorist court to do — take immediate action. The court found the rascals guilty of collectively defiling a woman’s virtue and handed down the death penalty. There was an appeal, and then the case ran the gauntlet between the Lahore High Court and the Shariat court, until it was finally rescued by the Supreme Court.

This time CNN gave the plucky young woman generous coverage. An American female of Pakistan origin praised her bravery and resilience and drew attention to the continued legal, social and political repression faced by victims of violence in Pakistan. What is tragic is, that in spite of the occasional good deeds that one comes across in the NGOs, the acts of violence, mutilation, tribal warfare and racial loathing traps the modest balloon of human endeavour in some headlong downwards tailspin, frantically hurling civility, justice, truth and responsibility out of the basket as it careers towards the earth.

“This award is a victory for poor women. It is a victory for all women,” a flushed and exuberant Mukhtaran Mai said during the recent ceremony. Unfortunately, she too had gotten it wrong. There will never be a victory for the women of Pakistan, poor or rich, unless the whole retrogressive, obscurantist power structure is replaced by an enlightened social order.

The award wasn’t even a victory for Mukhtaran Mai. It was just an acknowledgment, albeit an awesome and spectacular one, of her courage and perseverance. An acknowledgment made by a people who still know how to give praise where praise is due. Her real victory will come when the Supreme Court decides to take up her case.

She and thousands of other women are anxiously awaiting the judgment of their lordships. They know that whatever the decision, it will be a landmark in the history of jurisprudence in this country.

Critics have often wondered why the president and the military brass have not played a more active role in eradicating some of the social ills which are destroying the moral fabric of society.

In spite of his waning popularity, caused no doubt by going back on the promise he made on national television over the issue of the two hats and his recent statement of how Pakistani women inveigle and wheedle visas and political asylum out of foreign embassies, the president still has some support.

There is evidence to suggest, however, that President Musharraf is concerned about his public image and is supposed to have once asked a confidant why people don’t like him any more. If this is true and he is interested in expanding his popularity, he should be seen as a man of the people and not as a patron of an iniquitous system where everybody is hell bent on maintaining the status quo.

He should also do something about the rural kulaks armed to the teeth, who move about in numberless four-wheelers with tinted glasses, have their own rules of etiquette, social behaviour and justice and intimidate an inefficient, ill equipped and corrupt civil administration that turns a blind eye to stories of excesses committed on village folk. People have begun to wonder why the army doesn’t intervene.

They have done such a splendid job in the earthquake relief zone. Why can’t they turn their sights on another target — the liberation of peasants who have been illegally confined? After that, so far as the haris are concerned, the president could continue to wear his two hats until Kenya wins the World Cup.

In conclusion, here’s one of the verses from Oliver Goldsmith’s poem ‘The Deserted Village,’ written by a person who really cared about rural folk and lamented the fate that was befalling them. “Ill fares the land to hastening ills a prey/Where wealth accumulates and men decay./ Princes and lords may flourish or may fade./A breath can make them as a breath has made./But a bold peasantry their country’s pride/When once destroyed can never be supplied.”

Riots and racism

THE rioting in France has led to attempts in Britain to explain how “the French system of integration has failed”. This is the mirror image of what happened in the summer when, after the bombing attacks in London, French commentators pointed to the incipient collapse of British multiculturalism. On both sides of the Channel, apprehensions are being put to rest by scrutiny of the other side’s shortcomings.

Comparing the two national methods of integration does not make sense, because the British model is neither better nor worse than the French one. Both countries, drawing on their histories and collective psychologies, have over time developed specific integration mechanisms.

The British model allows diverse communities to develop, while the French model relies on individual integration. In France, a sense of full citizenship is encouraged, while in Britain citizens are able to retain their previous identities. Each model has its merits.

Even though the riots have nothing to do with religion, analysts and politicians seem determined to centre the debate around Islam, integration and identity. We are facing a case of political brinkmanship, a dangerous strategy that attempts to turn fears of Islam into short-term electoral advantage, using arguments that were once restricted to parties of the extreme right.

There is a chronic inability to hear those Muslim voices that for years have been saying Islam is not the problem and that millions of Muslims have embraced their identities as Europeans, Muslims and democrats. The left and the right suffer from a lack of the political resolve needed to address pressing social issues. Perpetuating fear to win votes is easier than presenting courageous policies.

The street-level realities in France and Britain reveal startling similarities. Whether along ethnic or economic lines, the two models have created veritable ghettos. In both, communities remain isolated. The French suburbs, as well as the rich residential areas, are socially and economically isolated. In France, political discourse recoils in horror from “religious communitarianism”. But people are unable to grasp that another form of communitarianism is undermining society. Black, Arab and Muslim people are the least well-off and suffer for it.

The extent to which both models draw upon and promote xenophobia cannot be overstated. We must confront our own racism. Discriminatory housing and employment policies are nothing more than institutionalised racism. Social, not religious, concerns lie at the heart of the debate. To counteract the trend toward ghettoization and racism, we must develop a political creativity, one that dares to take risks. Change is needed as a high priority in key areas.

The first is education: school curriculums have little or nothing to say about the history and traditions of many in society. If a curriculum does not recognize certain parents’ contribution to society, how can we pretend that it respects their children? To make matters worse, France recently passed a law calling for the “positive effects” of colonialism to be promoted in schools, while in Britain prominent figures such as Gordon Brown have argued for similar policies.

Meanwhile, state schools are compounding inequality. Instead of creating anxiety over religious schools — which affect a tiny minority — would it not be more sensible to call for the reform of a whole system of education that generates inequality?

The second priority is the fight against unemployment and discrimination in the labour market. Unemployment rates among citizens of “immigrant origin” are far higher than among “native-born” citizens. It is of the highest importance to provide equal access to the labour market. Governments should act to establish equitable employment standards and penalise racial discrimination.

The third area of concern is housing and urban policy. Local authorities rarely dare to challenge attitudes to minority ethnic communities, but the objective of greater social intermingling can only be attained through a firm political commitment to confront discrimination head on. Such policies will be unpopular.

Political parties are reluctant to promote them. We must launch national movements that crystallise grassroots initiatives promoting civic education and participatory democracy, focused on local projects that bring together citizens from various backgrounds. Confidence must be restored, in ourselves and in our neighbours.

No such policies are taking shape around us, either on the right or on the left. Those who consider themselves French or British are now being told that they are, first and foremost, Arabs, Asians or Muslims. How can individuals who have been swept to the margins of society avoid being attracted by the voices of literalism and radicalism?

Trapped in a debate as impassioned as it is sterile about who is French and who is British, we can no longer hear the legitimate demands of certain citizens who really are French or British. The recent violence is an unfortunate reaction against the deafness of authority.

By avoiding the real debate — about equal opportunity and power-sharing — France and Britain are stigmatising people and destroying their sense of belonging, by encouraging fear and perpetuating a hold on power. Share they must, however; this is the lesson history will teach them. —Dawn/Guardian Service

The writer is a visiting fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford.

Tortured justifications

THE terrorist attacks of 9/11 killed nearly 3,000 Americans. With its response to those attacks, the Bush administration threatens the very idea of America. The administration’s attempt to exempt the CIA from a proposed law barring cruel and degrading treatment of prisoners in US custody is the latest instance of an assault on this country’s values that began soon after 9/11. In some ways, such chiselling away of core American beliefs is more damaging than any terrorist attack, because it comes from within.

Last week’s disclosure by The Washington Post that the CIA runs secret prisons in several Eastern European nations — sites where men can disappear indefinitely without charges or legal protection — provides more evidence that US leaders are mocking our ideals.

The bar on cruel and inhumane treatment is part of the Geneva Convention, which the US signed but which President Bush determined did not apply to terrorists, who wear no uniform and fight for no country. Alberto R. Gonzales, formerly Bush’s legal counsel and now attorney general, soon after 9/11 derided the Geneva Convention as “quaint” and “obsolete.” Although Bush has said detainees will not be tortured and will be treated humanely, the administration’s definitions of those terms keep changing.

That’s unacceptable. Military and CIA interrogators must be told what is allowed and what is not. Without clear guidelines, mistreatment or torture will continue. The rules should be the same at home and abroad, for soldiers and spies.

The argument that the US should not heed the Geneva Convention because its enemies do not sets the stage for a race to the barbaric bottom. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who was tortured during his 5 1/2 years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, spoke eloquently on the fallacy of the “we’ll do what they do” argument last month.

He said all American POWs “knew and took great strength from the belief that we were different from our enemies, that we were better than them, that we, if the roles were reversed, would not disgrace ourselves by committing or countenancing such mistreatment of them.”

McCain engineered a 90-9 endorsement of his proposed law barring “cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment” of any detainee held by the US government. The law also would make interrogation techniques outlined in the Army Field Manual the standard for handling detainees in Defence Department custody. That would provide needed clarity to soldiers, who have seen colleagues mistreating inmates at Iraq’s notorious Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere.

The House has not yet approved the bill, but it should. The Senate attached McCain’s anti-torture amendment to another bill on Friday, and McCain has vowed to keep attaching it to every piece of Senate legislation until it becomes law. If the president follows through on his threatened veto - which would be his first - the House and Senate should override him.

John Yoo, who served in the Justice Department’s office of legal counsel when it produced its 2002 memo discussing how to define torture, said last year: “Our system has a place for the discussion of morality and policy. Our elected and appointed officials must weigh these issues in deciding on how it will conduct interrogations. Ultimately, they must answer to the American people for their choices.”

Those sentiments are even more valid a year later. It’s now clear our leaders made some appalling choices. It’s time they started answering for them. —Los Angeles Times