A check on arms trade

THE international community is now set to begin work on drawing up an international arms trade treaty. The UN Assembly’s first committee has adopted a resolution sponsored by 77 states calling for such a pact to be concluded. Although this has been described as a “great success” by one of the sponsors, the treaty will not end the arms race as peace activists have been calling for. The adversarial circumstances are already evident. The United States, the biggest arms supplier in the world, voted against the resolution, while 26 emerging arms suppliers (which include Pakistan and India) abstained. True, 139 votes were cast in favour of the resolution but the treaty is only expected to improve the regulation of the arms trade by plugging the loopholes that allow guns to end up in conflict zones despite embargoes and export controls. It will also be designed to stop the supply of weapons to countries whose development is being hampered by arms expenditure. These are daunting problems.

The fact of the matter is that the arms trade is the biggest business in the world today, its annual turnover being 900 billion dollars. Given the globalisation of trade, the market for arms has grown phenomenally and now even smaller economies like Pakistan, which barely manage to feed their poor or provide them social support, have entered the arms trade as a profitable proposition. It is not just the economic/financial dimension of the arms trade that has far-reaching implications. Of greater concern is the political clout the arms manufacturers have come to acquire by virtue of their economic power. They exert a strong influence on their own governments, especially in the making of foreign policy. Ironically, at times their need to sell arms determines their security interests. Manufacturers in the United States have their lobbies which work to influence Congressmen and Senators to promote conflicts in order to increase arms sales. The treaty may not succeed in curbing these trends and the arms flow all over the world might continue unabated.

The problem with the arms trade is its changed nature. Unlike earlier times when the buyers were governments which could be checked by other governments that were party to an international agreement and were held accountable if they failed to fulfil their obligations, non-state actors have entered this field in a big way. Various militant groups, some of them overtly terrorist in intent, are now major purchasers of arms. They are answerable to no one and operate outside the bounds of law. The proliferation of small arms has made the situation worse. The small arms trade is more difficult to regulate because guns, rockets, grenades and explosives can be easily smuggled across borders without being detected. Because of their accessibility, they are equally devastating, if not more so, than large missiles and tanks. It is estimated that 80 per cent of the casualties in present-day conflicts are civilian and 90 per cent of these are caused by small arms. Will a treaty to regulate the arms trade be able to prevent this spread of terrorism? The only feasible approach would be to check the production of arms by imposing curbs on manufacturers. Arms-cut treaties that seek to impose limits on arms deployment help partially by cutting the demand for these.

Killing the planet

RUNAWAY consumerism is literally eating away at the planet. The earth’s resources are being depleted faster than they can be regenerated, so much so that “large-scale ecosystem collapse” may be imminent in the foreseeable future. According to the WWF’s latest Living Planet Report, the natural world is currently being degraded at a rate unprecedented in human history. In 2003, the world’s 6.3 billion people consumed resources that would take fifteen months to replace — an ‘ecological deficit’ of 25 per cent. If global consumption continues at this rate, it is estimated that an equivalent of two planets would be needed by 2050 to meet the worldwide demand for resources. Indeed, widespread ecological collapse could be upon us much sooner, especially if there is any further acceleration in consumption without a corresponding increase in biocapacity, the planet’s ability to generate resources and to recycle human waste.

Some are more to blame than others for this relentless over-exploitation. In terms of a country’s ‘ecological footprint’, or per capita demand placed on the world’s resources, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, Finland, Canada and Kuwait head the WWF’s list of worst offenders. Overall — and this is hardly surprising — high-income countries account for over 70 per cent of the world’s total ecological footprint. Pakistan comes in at a relatively auspicious 141 in a ranking of 147 nations, but it is important to note that the country’s ecological footprint is still twice as large as its biocapacity. In 1961, when the world’s human population was roughly 3.08 billion, the earth’s biocapacity stood at double the total demand for resources. According to the WWF, humanity’s footprint first exceeded global biocapacity in the mid-1980s, by which time the population had reached the 4.83 billion mark. The need now is to slow down and eventually reverse population growth, besides bringing consumption among the most affluent down to sustainable levels. Production must also be made more resource-efficient through waste minimisation and fuel efficiency, with an emphasis on renewable energy rather than fossil fuels. It is also important to improve productivity per hectare and to increase the planet’s total bioproductive area. Here, efficient land management and checking ongoing losses to urbanisation, salinity and desertification are a must. We are collectively digging our graves with lifestyles that simply cannot be sustained over the longer term. The time to act is now.

Another faulty underpass

ANOTHER underpass in Karachi has developed faults a few days after being inaugurated. It now seems that

the Liaquatabad underpass, which was due to be completed on July 9, was hurriedly inaugurated before the final carpeting had been done so that one track could be opened before Eid. As a result, portions of the road developed potholes and other problems. That is not all. The lighting too is poor. Yet the city government and the contractors in charge of the project are dismissive of these concerns, saying that the problems are “not extraordinary” and will soon be corrected. However, this latest incident is indicative of what seems to have become a common thread in development projects: build now, think of the problems later. In this case too, it seems that the city government did not pay much heed to KWSB’s warnings about high underground water levels in the area which could later pose problems for the underpass. But that advice was not taken into account — a charge the city government denies. This practice of denying or downplaying a problem is also common.

Meanwhile, it is the city’s residents who suffer as a good portion of Karachi is dug up. Projects like underpasses and flyovers are taking much longer than expected to be completed, with each inordinate and inexplicable delay adding to the overall frustration. It might have been better to undertake one underpass at a time rather than taking up many simultaneously. This is especially true if one company is in charge of several projects and does not have the capacity or manpower to handle them all. However, since that approach was not adopted, the administration now has to find a way to ensure that the ongoing projects are completed in time — and not opened until they are ready to use.

Iraq reality check

IF there was good news from President Bush’s news conference Wednesday, it’s that the president is not adopting a bunker mentality and is addressing the deteriorating conditions in Iraq. The bad news is that the more he talks, the more apparent it becomes that there is no easy way to reverse them.

That is a painful admission for an administration two weeks before a midterm election, so any sense of despair was wrapped in more purposeful language. Washington is issuing benchmarks — don’t call them timetables — to Baghdad. The administration routinely changes course in pursuit of its goals. Progress is being made. And so on.

The president at one point said Americans will “support the war as long as they see a path to victory.” It is a curious formulation. If Bush believes the war in Iraq is central to the war on terror, why is support for it dependent on how winnable it is? Perhaps the formulation is unavoidable during election season. It would be unrealistic to expect Bush to say that because the US has no choice but to “win,” he is doubling the number of American troops in Iraq.

So the next round of Washington’s ongoing battle of semantics may entail defining “victory” downward. If the war was initially supposed to bequeath the Middle East a proverbial shining city on a hill — an Arab middle-class democracy that would transform the region — the goal now seems to be to leave Iraq intact, if bloodied. Or to prevent the country from becoming a broken state that is a haven to terrorists. Victory, in the end, may simply be a matter of avoiding a worst-case scenario.

To be fair to Bush, US woes are partly a function of the degree to which the administration has ceded sovereignty to the Iraqi people. There is an awkward tension now between Iraqi self-determination and US responsibility for what transpires in the country. If Iraq’s majority Shia leaders want to use their democratically acquired power to settle scores with a long-dominant minority and engage in ethnic cleansing, what is the proper response of the United States? Reassert control of the country, or walk away?

Such blunt questions may be premature. But they underlie the tension between Washington and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, who held his own news conference Wednesday to criticize U.S. forces for conducting a raid in Sadr City, apparently without Iraqi government approval.

—Los Angeles Times