Author: Justin Podur

ABU DHABI (Airport, just passing through on the way back to Toronto) – I was in Islamabad for the 100-day mark of the elected government. It had fractured over the inability to make any clear move to deal with the situation on the border with Afghanistan, the inability to address the economic problem, and the indecisiveness over whether to reinstate the supreme court judges sacked by Musharraf.

Continue reading “Countdown to impeachment in Pakistan”

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Continue reading “Empires Don’t Build Rivals”

KOZHIKODE, Kerala, India July 21/08 – The news India is all centered on tomorrow’s confidence vote, on which India’s Congress-led coalition government, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) has staked its rule. The confidence vote was necessary, as I said in my previous blog, because of the Indo-US nuclear deal. In between that blog entry and this one, I had a chance to look at a new document prepared by the Left parties, consisting of correspondence between the Left parties and the UPA over the nuclear deal. Now I might be biased but I have to say that the left arguments strike me as much more coherent than the UPA’s, and this seems to emerge very strongly from the correspondence.

But let us review the arguments of the UPA as best we can.

In order to grow, India needs energy. In order to become a world power, India needs help. The Indo-US nuclear deal will provide the energy, but more than that it will provide technology. The deal amounts to a lifting of the embargo against India that has happened since India exploded nuclear devices 10 years ago and will provide access to the latest in nuclear technologies. India will begin a “nuclear renaissance” that will make India a “nuclear superpower”, meeting its energy needs through international agreements for fuel and self-sufficiency in technology, courtesy of the US. Similarly, the economic, political, and military cooperation with the US is aimed at strengthening India’s strategic position as a global power.

The left response is basically as follows.

There is no disputing that India needs energy, and that at present Indians do not use enough energy to lift the majority of the country out of poverty. But the role of nuclear energy in the current mix is 3% and the most optimistic scenario with this deal is that it could reach 6% by 2020. While they make some allusions in this direction, solar and wind investments might make more sense, especially solar, as well as, (unfortunately from the climate perspective, which Indians will suffer from), coal.

Incidentally, the left is not necessarily against civil nuclear power, but it does criticize the technological and economic lock-in that will occur if the Indo-US deal is struck. There are other nuclear technologies India could use that would ultimately rely on local nuclear fuel (thorium) rather than imported uranium. The tens of billions India will spend on imported technologies from Westinghouse, GE, and other American firms are lost opportunities for building domestic energy technology and capacity (of course, I would argue that such opportunities should be pursued in a non-nuclear way, given that nuclear catastrophes in a country like India would be even more catastrophic).

The deal, in any case, does not amount to a lifting of the embargo. The US President has to report to the US Congress each year on whether India is properly handling its nuclear program and whether India’s foreign policy is congruent with that of the US. For example, the US medium-term strategy involves isolating Iran diplomatially, the long-term strategy involves isolating China. “Congruence” means helping the US in these programs. And what does India get from isolating Iran and China? A lost opportunity at peace and integration in its own region, increased dangers from its neighbours, and in the short term, lost energy sources for development (especially in the form of the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline).

India’s compliance will be monitored, and if it fails to comply, the US can break the deal and prevent nuclear material from even getting to India. What if the US fails to comply? Perhaps the consequences will be as bad for the US as its blowing off of the Kyoto protocol? Its blowing off of the International Criminal Court? Its blowing off of the softwood lumber agreement with Canada? (In other words, the US can and break agreements at will, without much consequence, while the US is able to make other countries suffer if they break agreements).

Finally, the strategic power India seeks is illusory. Powers do not build up other powers to rival themselves. They build up dependencies to do their bidding. There is no shortcut for India to becoming a global power by a deal with the US. There is only a way to become a client, purchasing arms and playing a regional role of creating mischief and tension in a world that needs neither. What is to be gained by trying to rival China, except forcing China into an arms race of which India’s development and people will be the first victims (and not the US)? Why should India subvert its (admittedly not always consistent) nonaligned history in order to help the US prevent rivals from emerging? To the degree that India has succeeded since independence, it has been by ignoring the advice of the developed countries on economics, politics, and foreign policy, and it has failed by adopting that advice (on agriculture, mass education, intellectual property, and neoliberalism generally). Why risk those gains now?

In any case, there is not much longer to wait. Asking the reader to keep in mind my spectacularly poor record at prediction, I venture that the government will win the confidence vote and the deal will squeak through, though I hope not. I will try to write about it tomorrow (my internet setup is not as good here).

It is interesting to be watching all this from Kerala, which is a somewhat marginal place (its main tourist attraction is literally called the backwaters), not unlike Canada in that sense. Here, in addition to the nuclear deal, there is the textbook controversy I mentioned earlier (in which a 7th grade social science textbook includes a story about a boy who writes down that he has “no religion” in a checkbox). That controversy has now become a tragedy. Reports say that Muslim Youth League activists beat to death a 40-year old school principal, James Augustine, yesterday. He was trying to go to his school and the Muslim Youth League, as well as the Congress League, were protesting outside. Secular activists vowed not to take the mobilizations meekly, and some of them beat up some Muslim Youth activists yesterday, during a dawn-to-dusk “strike”. Today there’s also a one-day education strike, to protest James Augustine’s murder.

Again a superficial impression, since I can’t read Malayalam (I speak it rather poorly) and haven’t really connected with any political people here yet, is that this is a communal agitation for political gain, intended to undermine the government. The government had agreed to back off and amend the textbook somewhat, but the religious activists didn’t back off in response. The role of this type of street agitation, including beating people to death during protests, has some relationship to politics and to the state. I don’t think the police allowed the killing to happen, the way they sometimes do during communal agitations especially in other parts of India, but I don’t actually know their capacities or sympathies – if this type of agitation continues much will depend on both. That the suspects were immediately arrested and that this seems to be widely seen as a tragedy both bode well, though the textbook was amended and that bodes badly.

Next time I’ll try to talk about energy, agriculture, and climate change problems here (for example an anomalously bad rainy season endangers Kerala’s water and hydroelectric supplies – 50% of Kerala’s electricity comes from this source), but in the meantime it’s all about the nuclear deal…

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Continue reading “So, what am I doing in Islamabad?”

I am currently sitting in my very reasonable apartment in the Iqbal International Institute for Research and Dialogue guest house, typing at a laptop that is sitting on a dresser and using a wireless connection set up for me by my host, Junaid Ahmad, who borrowed an unused router from an office here at the Islamic University and set it up in the apartment next door. I’m trying to type quickly because the “load-shedding” is going to happen soon and I’ll lose my internet connection in the blackout (there are several of these each day, and it is far better here in Islamabad than most other places). These guest houses are fairly new. Situated next to the “old campus” of the International Islamic University-Islamabad (IIU-I), which is itself attached to the Faisal Mosque, one of the biggest mosques in the country and one of Islamabad’s tourist attractions, the guest houses are equipped with air conditioners, fans, indoor plumbing, a mini-kitchen with a gas stove, and a separate dining room. There are patches of grass in front and behind and gondolas where one could sit and do work if the weather were cool enough. People don’t, because it’s been so hot, which is why people also seem to keep much later hours here than I’m used to, getting up late and going to bed late. Overall the idea of these guest houses is for people to be able to contemplate. There is a gate between these apartments (lined up in a row, like townhouses, and all ground-floor) and the road to the mosque. The gate is always attended by a uniformed security guard, usually the same friendly middle-aged fellow. Most of the staff of the guest house that I’ve seen are men of similar age – they actually bring us guests our meals. I’ve actually spent most of my time here, at the computer, with Ahmed Rashid’s or David Macdonald’s book or local newspapers or magazines. Or, if not here, in the campus buildings.

The IIU-I is a public university and known to be not in the same league as universities like Quaid-e-Azam or LUMS (Lahore University of Management Sciences). It has an old campus and a new campus. The new campus, which I’ve been to once, is on the other side of town. It is itself divided into men’s and women’s campuses, which as far as I could tell were architecturally identical, mirror images of each other. The old campus is used mainly for administration – the offices of the President, Rector, and institutes (Iqbal Institute, Islamic Research Institute, and others) – are located here. There are a few classrooms and auditoria, and students for our classes take buses from the new campus to this one. The class I’m teaching here, I teach in a small auditorium on this old campus, a 3-minute walk from the guest house.

The teaching is unpaid but the Iqbal Institute is covering part of my travel expenses. My class is called “Critical Thinking” but in retrospect it might have been called “Critical Thinking for the Modern Muslim Woman Psychology Student.” For some reason, even though this university has students in Islamic Studies, Economics, Political Science, International Relations, Environmental Science, Bioinformatics, Media – the vast majority of my 40-some students are psychology students from the women’s campus. I have a smattering of male students form other disciplines (mostly economics and politics). Robert Jensen, who is teaching Media Law and Ethics here, has a slightly bigger group of about 60, all from the Media and Communications program. Males and females are together in our classes, which is not normal practice and which caused a few tensions (see Robert Jensen’s article on an incident that happened the other day). Most of the women in my class wear the hijab, many wear the niqab, and a plurality just wear the traditional shalwar kameez. A couple of the men wear western clothes, most wear the shalwar kameez, and a few alternate on alternating days.

In addition to the class, Jensen and I have been doing some public lectures and interviews. This morning I was on Geo TV’s “Nadia Khan show”, which is usually about entertainment and cultural matters, in which the host, Nadia Khan, takes calls from an adoring audience (like a daily, breakfast version of Oprah, maybe?). I talked about environmental problems and how they impact developing countries, and participated in the ritual of “Happy to You”, in which Nadia exhorted me to dance (seated) while she gave birthday and other greetings to viewers. On perhaps a more serious note, we’ve also done some talks on media and cultural issues, and will be doing a couple more on globalization and democracy in the coming days.

The way that I am teaching “critical thinking” also has some of its own embedded assumptions: my implicit goal is to encourage students to think carefully about their assumptions, question and discard them if necessary, be open to alternative views, and to be able to think free of ideology, or at least to be able to explicitly choose their ideological affiliations from what they know to be a set of alternatives. So I taught some logic and statistics concepts, and then I taught different economic, psychological, and political frameworks (liberalism, conservatism, keynesianism, marxism, freudianism, behaviorism, cognitive). For a writing assignment, I gave them an excellent piece by Chinese Revolutionary Lu Xun on women’s rights, given in 1923. A bonus question was to get them to guess whether the writer was male or female, what country, and what decade – most guessed a Western woman in the 1960s or later.

There is, you may recognize, a certain randomness to my being here, doing this. How would someone who works on environmental problems and tries to write in service of social movements end up teaching at an Islamic University in Pakistan? I obviously seized the opportunity partly for the chance to be close to these events for a journalistic trip, but how did the opportunity come up? The answer is my host, Junaid Ahmad.

Junaid is a mid-twenties recent graduate of law school in the United States, an American of Pakistani origin who seems, from what I can tell, almost as fluent in Urdu (especially the English-loaded Urdu you hear here) as he is in his first language English. He has a booming voice, a sense of humor, and a complete earnestness about leftist politics. I met him at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre five years ago, where I found him to be a very sincere and knowledgeable activist. Over the years since then, I’ve known him mainly through his writing, some of which we published at ZNet and which provided an excellent and nuanced view of politics in Muslim societies, which is his main interest. At times very polemical, Junaid’s writing style sometimes hides the fact that he is humble, open to new thoughts and ideas, deeply committed to social justice. Here in Islamabad, he is the ‘fixer’: the behind-the-scenes person who organized our classes, our public talks, and our meetings with activist and other groups. He’s been an excellent host, and I am here to try to help him with his agenda.

What is that agenda, exactly? You may have noticed that many Muslim countries are currently under the boot of the empire, or under a lot of pressure from it. I don’t dislike the empire because it’s the US, but because it deprives people of their rights and their lives. It also provokes reactions, some of which are healthy and others of which are unhealthy, and conflicts that cause a lot of suffering and have the potential to cause more. Among these is a certain reading of religion and a certain kind of nationalism, which can be sexist, homophobic, authoritarian, hierarchical, anti-democratic. To Junaid, these are not the only readings for either the religion or the community – they are incorrect readings that become hegemonic in society when they serve the interests of the powerful.

On the contrary, social justice and gender equality are all fully compatible with Islam, in his view. If I say that the religious doctrines are a big part of the problem, Junaid argues that my view lacks nuance. But above all his argument seems to me to be strategic, which he himself is reluctant to concede since, according to him, “it makes one’s engagement with his/her faith rather utilitarian”. His question: “Are you interested in criticizing the entire society, or are you trying to transform it?” Because if it’s the latter, you have to meet people where they are. Rather than maligning their faith, Junaid wants to contest those who would use it to argue for hierarchical interpretations, or even those who would use religion for a resistance bereft of social justice content, what Tariq Ali called “the anti-imperialism of fools” in his “Letter to a Young Muslim”.

It has led him into controversy with other activists he respects, but who he feels are too dismissive of religion and unwilling to try to understand why people might be driven to problematic interpretations of Islam. Last year he suggested that the militants at the Lal Mosque were drawn to that ideology because, in addition to being used by the state, they had been abandoned by it, and by those who could have led young people in more constructive directions.

Junaid is working through IIU-I, then, partly because of family connections that go a long way here (his father is the respected political scientist Mumtaz Ahmad, who taught at Hampton University in the US and is now running the Iqbal Institute here at IIU-I), and partly because it is where he thinks his efforts to introduce different readings and interpretations of Islam and politics can make a difference. He brings activists from outside to try to spark a broader intellectual culture on these problems, and he’s brought Farid Esack, As’ad Abukhalil, Shabana Mir, and Robert Jensen through so far. Some of the university’s officials are backing the effort and one was so optimistic that he said that “hopefully, probably, in a few years, it might have a marginal effect,” which of course fit well with my own tendencies toward self-deprecation.

What Junaid is trying to do in Islam is similar (though not exactly the same) to what Robert Jensen is trying to do with Christianity. Some of Jensen’s talks here have touched on these themes and I have had a preview of his upcoming book on it, a book which will expand on his essay “Why I am a Christian (Sort Of)”. Jensen sees religion as spiritual and ethical striving, not as supernatural claims and moralistic rules. Jensen’s argument is clearly also strategic: The US is a deeply religious society, and it makes more sense to try to understand why, to recognize that most or all of what is bad are cultural and political practices that are associated with religion rather than religion itself, and deal with it, rather than to spit on it.

There is a certain kind of liberation theologist (and I know a few of these), regardless of religion, that is at once fun and incredibly frustrating to argue with. They reject all the same ugly practices and the religious justifications for them. They just argue that they are perversions of the religion and not consequences of it, and that religion like any system of thought or ideology is contested terrain. They argue that if one can’t reject socialism and its values of equality and solidarity on the basis of the lack of democracy in the USSR or Cuba, then one also can’t reject Islam because of the practices of the Saudi regime or the Taliban. Junaid can nuance you to death, but in the end he is trying to take an original approach to do something very important. I continue to think I’d rather have the liberation without the theology, but the times are a little too desperate to dismiss projects and ideas that are a little different from my own. And that, I suppose, is why I came here.

Justin Podur was in Islamabad from June 24-July 17. He can be reached at justin@killingtrain.com.

ISLAMABAD JULY 13/08 – Over the past few days the Americans have hit the Pakistanis at the border and are increasing threats of hot pursuit. Some of the peace deals between frontier forces and militant groups are holding. In other areas, the Taliban have besieged Pakistani troops, kidnapped soldiers and others, and killed them in ambushes. In Pakistan’s newspapers the debate is about how much Pakistan can support the American war on terror. An article by Mohammad Ali Siddique suggests that Pakistan can’t afford not to support the Americans and must not engage in separate peace deals with Taliban and al Qaeda groups operating on the border. The Americans and NATO will tire of the war and decide on a negotiated peace, and at that point Pakistan can make peace. But not before, because that would cause America to tilt further towards India and isolate Pakistan from the West.

And being isolated from the West carries heavy penalties. Sudan is feeling that right now: the International Criminal Court has decided to pursue charges against Omar Bashir, the sitting president of Sudan, for war crimes in Darfur. Alex de Waal’s books and blog are the best guides to that complex conflict, and on that blog the ICC’s decision was referred to as “a Disaster in the Making”. Putting aside the political nature of such a prosecution, given that no one is considering prosecuting Bush for what the US is doing in Iraq or Israel for what it’s doing to the Palestinians, there is also the effect of such a move on the possibilities for peace in Sudan. In that context, it is a very irresponsible move, a pre-emptive strike against a negotiated settlement. But it does have another effect: to show third world leaders what might be in store if they are too defiant. Or, in Pakistan’s case, if insufficiently committed to the war on terror.

Of course, the war on terror is not the only war going on in this region. In the background, ready to be re-emphasized at any minute, is the war on drugs. Like the war on terror, it is ill-defined, open-ended, both unwinnable and unlose-able (drugs will never declare victory), and therefore a perpetually useful pretext: until it is widely seen for what it is. Below I will discuss supply, demand, and possible solutions.

Before delving the war on drugs, I would like to dispense with one little phrase. The idea of an “opium fueled insurgency” can be deceptive. It is true that the covert networks designed for smuggling arms and money to counterinsurgent forces – such as the CIA and ISI networks designed to supply the Afghan mujahadin when they fought against the USSR – are also easily converted to drug smuggling networks. It is also true that illicit drugs were understood and tolerated as a way for these forces to support themselves financially during the war against the USSR (on the connection between drugs and covert operations, the indispensable book is Alfred McCoy’s ‘Politics of Heroin’). But the current situation in Afghanistan is slightly different. Today, the Afghan economy is dependent on poppy, which, according to UN sociologist David Macdonald’s book “Drugs in Afghanistan” (Pluto Press 2007), supplies 60% of Afghanistan’s GDP and employs 10% of its people (pg.96). Everyone in the economy, from farmers to local warlords, from foreign intelligence agents to government officials, from the Taliban to probably NATO soldiers as well, are taking a piece. So it’s not just the insurgency that’s opium-fueled, it’s the entire economy.

What is the drugs situation? As with any commodity, we can look at supply and demand. Part of the supply side is the covert networks just discussed. Most opium moves from Afghanistan by the ‘Balkan route’: through Pakistan, Iran, the Gulf States, through to Turkey and Europe (Macdonald pg. 105), taking about 9 months to arrive from the Afghan farm to the European street. There are creative ways of smuggling employed, since high profits in the industry make it feasible to do things like stuff almond shells with heroin and smuggle them randomly interspersed with real almonds. But above all, the trade depends on the suborning of public officials. In Afghanistan, reports range from estimates that dozens to 60% of elected parliamentarians are linked to warlords and drug trafficking in some way (pg. 95). Similar percentages probably apply for police and of course the warlords who still control local areas. Then there are the officials in the countries along the route.

Another important piece in the supply puzzle has to do with the push-the-water-balloon nature of drug cultivation. Both Iran and Pakistan were major opium producers until 1979, when the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the dictatorship of Zia ul-Haq in Pakistan both outlawed production in their countries – production which simply shifted to Afghanistan. If production in Afghanistan could somehow be eliminated, it would no doubt shift somewhere else.

The final supply side consideration is the farmer. No Afghan farmer grows rich from growing poppy. On the contrary, sociologist David Mansfield (davidmansfield.org) conducts field studies for the UK government and other NGOs on why Afghans do or do not grow poppy. He found four differences between farmers who grow poppy and those who are able to make a living growing vegetables, fruit, wheat, and other cash crops. First, poppy growers have less land (or no land, working as sharecroppers). Second, poppy growers have more debt. Third, poppy growers live in areas where access to market is difficult, while successful non-poppy growing farmers live near provincial centers. Fourth, poppy growers generally live in regions where the writ of the state is weak or not fully extended.

In this context, eradication programs lead to financial ruin for already heavily indebted farmers.

In a May 2007 report to the UK government, Mansfield warns that “talk of spraying elicits the threat of violence and/or a declaration of intent to support Anti Government Elements. The perception that corruption is endemic amongst those conducting eradication (including their involvement in the drug trade) and reports of bribery and partiality during implementation further weakens the legitimacy of counter narcotics efforts.” He also notes reports that “in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar as well as Farah, there were increasing reports of Taliban and government officials finding ways to co-exist. Respondents suggested that in many areas both sides had made agreements not to engage in hostile action. These agreements left government officials undisturbed in the district centres whilst the Taliban were free to operate in the surrounding rural areas.” Evidently Pakistan is not the only place where separate peace agreements and local arrangements are being made.

Now we turn to the demand side. In the imaging of Afghanistan as a source of drugs that corrupt the streets and youth of the West, the many victims of addiction in the region are made invisible, as Macdonald shows. Addiction is complex, but it does go along with displacement and war. Many Afghan refugees became addicted to opium in Pakistan or Iran (both of which have major addiction problems of their own) and brought their addictions back when they returned. Without prospects for peace or opportunity, religious and legal restrictions are insufficient to stop people from turning to opium and heroin to dull their pain. A study by the RAND corporation years ago suggested that the cheapest way to fight a drug war was to spend dollars on treatment for addiction, which was far cheaper than trying to interdict shipments of drugs or eradicate crops.

Finally, to solutions. The most likely possibility is that the drug war will be allowed to continue, providing its many benefits to many people and meting out suffering to many others. Perhaps a truce will be called for a time? The governor of Helmand province suggested in 2006 that those in the drug business should be encouraged to invest their profits in Afghanistan (construction companies and industries) rather than taking the money out to tax havens (Macdonald pg. 97). Among those seeking victory in the war on drugs, some look to the Taliban’s ban on opium in 2000 as a total success. Macdonald points out several problems with this: first, it was accomplished through terror. Second, it was only a year-long, a year in which, some suggest, the Taliban used the ban to drive the price up so they could sell off existing stocks at high profit margins, after which they would have probably allowed cultivation to resume (had they not been deposed).

One suggestion by the Senlis Council (a European think tank) in 2005, is to license Afghanistan to produce opium legally. Today, licit opium is produced by Turkey, India, France, Australia, Hungary, Spain, and a few other countries (pg. 34). The idea was rejected by the Afghan government. The counter argument by the Afghan Minister of Counter Narcotics, that they could not guarantee that opium wouldn’t be smuggled out for the illicit trade, seems to me to be unconvincing. How could a situation where some licit and some illicit opium was coming out of Afghanistan be worse than the current situation? Of course, this kind of licensing would have problems too: it would drastically lower the price available to the farmer, who would probably then require some form of price support (which could also be applied to other crops). Without such support, and so long as an illegal market existed and set a higher price, smuggling would continue.

David Mansfield and David Macdonald implicitly suggest some mix of alternative development for farmers, interdiction, and fighting the addiction. Within the current framework of prohibition, that may be the best that can be done. But accepting the current framework means accepting some absurdities. Macdonald reports that “Australian and German bio-engineers have also recently created another alternative to traditional opium poppy plants, mutated poppy plants that produce… thebaine and oripavine used in analgesic pharmaceutical drugs… but without producing morphine that can be processed into heroin.” (pg. 71)

Surely we ought to be able to change the rules to fit the plants than to change the plants to fit the rules.

In the 1970s, under the imperially-controlled regime of the Shah, Iran managed to distribute opium legally to registered addicts. In Macdonald’s words, this “suggested a humane drug regime that permitted older people who had used opium for many years the comfort afforded by regulated doses of opium for the aches and pains of old age and to avoid suffering withdrawals.” Those under 60 had to seek treatment – treatment based on a maintenance dose (for more arguments on ending prohibition, see Mike Gray’s 2000 book “Drug Crazy”). Most societies seem to combine both irrationality and hypocrisy in their drug policies. These serve those who profit from the drug war, the monies, the weapons, and the pretexts that it provides. They do not serve addicts, users, or farmers. An end to prohibition and an end to the drug war would take a powerful weapon away from the war on terror.

Justin Podur is currently visiting Islamabad. He can be reached at justin@killingtrain.com.