April 25, 2009
Pirates and Piety in Somalia and Pakistan
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Posted by Saleem Ali at 01:45 AM | TrackBack (0)
April 11, 2009
Treating Pakistan's "Cancer"
President Obama’s recent statement on US policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan had some rather stark superlatives, labelling the border region “the most dangerous place on earth for Americans”, and sharply referring to extremism in Pakistan as a “cancer that could destroy the state”.
If the administration’s diagnosis for an acute malignancy is to be followed, then the response clearly needs to be systemic as well as targeted. Any reputable oncologist will tell you that a symptomatic approach still does not deal with the systemic causes of “cancer clusters” in the first place; that requires far more introspection on behavioural patterns.
The administration appears to be following a path whereby systemic causes of extremism are still being given minor importance in comparison with the larger tough-talk of drone attacks and threats of “no blank cheques”. The cushioning of the tough talk with the incentive of conditional development aid of $1.5 billion per year is also facing greater resistance in Congress, even though this is a relatively small amount in the larger scheme of US investment in fighting terrorism.
Just to give Americans an idea of what this amount means in the larger scheme of US counterterrorism operations overseas, $1.5 billion is approximately twice the cost of building the new US embassy in Baghdad. For a country of 160 million people, providing such a “carrot” will hardly satiate many appetites, especially when the Pakistani government has announced that it needs $30 billion in foreign assistance to meet its development challenges that have been hindered by the “War on Terror”.
(Oops, sorry, Secretary of State Clinton has decided to not use that term anymore — “Overseas Contingency Operations” is the new name of the game. Congratulations to the new administration for moving from hyperbole a la Bush to euphemisms a la Obama!)
Adding to the administration’s equivocation, American journalists who are obsessed with the narrative of “failed states” continue to present story after story about Pakistan with some level of repulsive bemusement. The latest example is an Idiot’s Guide to Pakistan published by the Carnegie Endowment’s Foreign Policy magazine.
As if to add insult to injury, General David Petraeus and Admiral Michael Mullen also recently admonished Pakistan about “indications” that the country’s intelligence services may be involved in helping the Afghan Taliban. Such vilification will further infuriate the Pakistani public, which feels victimised by the Taliban far more than the West, with thousands of soldiers killed and its own society further fractured by dissent and suicide bombings.
Such rhetoric also demoralises the Pakistani intelligence services, which can be credited for helping in the arrest of some of the major Al Qaeda kingpins, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaidah.
There may indeed be some nefarious activities within the ISI just as much as there have been manipulative activities by the CIA in the past. However, the way to approach this issue is to look at the ultimate cause of such activity, rather than hurling vacuous accusations. In the context of the Afghan conflict, both Pakistan and India have been interfering at various levels in the country, as noted by eminent scholars such as Christine Fair.
To deescalate this perverse Indo-Pak competition for dominance over Afghanistan, a regional solution is needed to resolve conflicts between India and Pakistan, including Kashmir and Balochistan. However, the Obama administration succumbed to Indian pressure and decoupled the Kashmir conflict from the regional strategy, and has threatened drone attacks on Balochistan that can only further destabilise the situation.
India has spent over $1.1 billion in aid on Afghanistan in the last five years when more than 80 percent of its own population lives in abject poverty. The goal of such neighbourly munificence should be questioned internally by Indians as well during their upcoming election. If neighbourly kindness is India’s ultimate goal, I can assure you that Pakistan and Bangladesh, India’s closest contiguous neighbours, would be most appreciative of such aid as well!
As for the Obama administration, if they are truly interested in a reform strategy towards Pakistan, they must first recognise the importance of building peace through a sustained strategy of diplomacy and development. I voted for Mr Obama and his “audacity of hope”, but his current approach to South Asia has left me disenchanted.
So what can the Obama administration do to bring back the sparkle in my eyes and those of many other Pakistani-American constituents?
There are many alternative strategies that need to be explored within the development mandate. Development aid must be specifically targeted towards key projects that can highlight America’s direct commitment to the Pakistani people — for example, direct aid to build desperately needed power plants or dams rather than more “capacity-building” for NGOs that USAID adores. Such intangible programmes often end up providing inflated overhead for consultants and have little palpable impact in winning “hearts and minds”.
Wide-scale weapons buy-back programmes such as those carried out after the Yugoslav conflict need to be implemented as they have proved to be fairly effective. Within one year, the programme in Croatia recovered 10,000 rifles, 7,000 anti-tank rocket launchers, 15,000 grenades and almost 2 million rounds of ammunition. In impoverished parts of our region, a carefully conducted programme of this kind could yield very positive results. Some hardliners will still need to be fought, but any combat must follow such ostensibly “softer” strategies that will gain much wider and lasting results.
A primary reliance on armed tactics is based on the false premise that terrorism is somehow a static phenomenon. The metaphor of “cancer” is particularly apt for our purposes: highly targeted radiotherapy, analogous to commando-style raids that have yielded important Al Qaeda targets, are essential to kill cancer cells. But excessive radiation (in the form of repeated drone attacks) itself spawns further cancer cells.
That is just what Al Qaeda is hoping for — a propaganda victory with further examples of US military intervention to gain more recruits and create more “cells”. Even beyond Pakistan, the damage that a heavy-handed approach to conflict resolution has done to US relations with the Muslim world is evident. The protests against Mr Obama’s first official visit to Turkey, a Muslim country that recently hosted a Pak-Afghan summit, clearly show that artful oratory and some mild palliatives of development aid will not be enough to gain sympathy for America’s objectives in the region.
Dr Saleem H Ali is a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution’s research centre in Doha, Qatar and an associate professor of environmental planning and Asian Studies at the University of Vermont. His latest book is Islam and Education: Conflict and Conformity in Pakistan’s Madrassahs (Oxford University Press, 2009). www.saleemali.net
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September 17, 2008
Palin's Alaskan Approach to Natural Resources
Energy and the environment were clashing forces in US Senator and Republican presidential nominee John McCain’s selection of Alaska’s governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. It seems that initial promises of an environmental agenda from the ‘maverick’ senator are being trumped by political expediency over oil prices.
Conservation appeared to be making a comeback among conservatives this year, with the publication of staunch conservative Newt Gingrich’s Contract with the Earth, which even boasts a foreword by ecological doyen EO Wilson. However, McCain’s embrace of a conservative Alaskan as vice presidential nominee raises questions about his commitment to conservation.
While Senator McCain is admired by environmentalists for acknowledging the seriousness of climate change, his score with the League of Conservation voters remains highly varied, ranging from 6 to 56 (on a scale of 100). Governor Palin has not been rated on this scale, but Alaskan politics have always been a textbook case of campaigns that pitch the economy versus the environment.
The choice of Palin as the running mate should prompt voters and the international community alike to inform themselves about resource conflicts in the self-proclaimed “last frontier” of America.
Alaska has changed with the times in remarkable ways since it was bought from Russia for a paltry sum of $7.2 million in 1867 — around 1.9 cents per acre (the purchase price would amount to around $105 million current dollars).
For Americans, the state has always been a perplexing paradox. It is the largest in size but smallest in population density; it has the coldest climate but also the most active system of fiery volcanoes; and it has been the largest source of a non-renewable resource like oil but also the largest source of renewable resources such as timber and fish.
The state is home to the largest percentage of Native people in the country with over 15 percent of the population of indigenous Alaskan lineage but unlike much of the Lower-48 states, there were no treaties signed between settlers and local, leading to a legal settlement in 1971.
Adding to the list of Alaska’s extremes is another unlikely statistic. According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxic Release Inventory, the state is the emitter of the largest amount of toxins into the air, land and water of any state in the union. This dubious distinction has been held by the state for six years in a row since 2001 and raises alarms when mentioned to Alaskans as well.
What could possibly be so polluting?
The usual suspect is the North Slope’s oil, but this is in fact extracted without much incident and piped down 1500 miles to the port of Valdez. Problems may arise once the oil is on the tankers, but those incidents are relatively few and far between since the devastating Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989 which spilled nearly 11 million gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound.
Alaska’s toxic release inventory top spot owes largely to one particular operation on the extreme north-western coast of the state, more than five hundred miles from the nearest oil installation. Close to the shores of the Chuckchi Sea in this desolate wilderness is the world’s largest zinc mine. Named after the pet of a local aviator, the Red Dog mine is a monumental achievement of engineering but also a stark reminder of the impact resource extraction can have. An estimated 500 million pounds of “waste rock” is dumped each year into permitted facilities and are stored in stockpiles and mine tailings on site.
Nevertheless, the mine provides precious livelihoods for an extremely remote community and is partially owned by one of the native Alaskan corporations (The NANA). From 2000 through 2006, the mine produced an estimated $6 billion worth of zinc, lead and silver — about 80 percent of the value of all mine output in Alaska. Sentiments regarding the mine are widely divided between those who are benefiting from the employment and reside in the nearest town of Kotzebue, 86 miles from the mine, and those who are in small villages in closest proximity to the mine.
Governor Palin has supported mining across Alaska and resisted efforts to list species such as the polar bear or beluga whales as endangered as such listings may hamper mineral development. In Alaskan politics, contentious issues can arise around resource development far more acutely than at the national scene. This is evidenced by the struggle between various Native groups and environmentalists over the Pebble Mine project adjoining Bristol Bay, near the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery. Despite her fishing credentials, the governor is a supporter of this project as well.
Support of mining projects should not singularly discredit a candidate’s environmental credentials. However, the nuance and care with which such decisions are made deserve greater scrutiny by the public as a mark of leadership versus positional entrenchment. In coming months, Alaskan resource management may well become an unlikely touchstone of presidential acumen for voters.
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March 29, 2008
Encouraging Adoption Pakistan and the Muslim World
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Posted by Saleem Ali at 10:06 AM
Encouraging Adoption in Pakistan and the Muslim World
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Posted by Saleem Ali at 10:06 AM
March 01, 2008
Pakistan's political heir
The mourning period of Benazir Bhutto’s tragic assassination has passed this week with a surprisingly calm election and Pakistanis will no doubt begin to approach her son and political heir Bilawal Bhutto Zardari in various ways to express their hopes and fears for the country. As one such citizen, I write this article at the eve of the publication of his mother’s notable book and also after a pivotal election victory for her party. You may ask why I write to give advice to a nineteen year old who couldn’t even run in the election? The answer is simple: reform is far easier to advocate to those who are new to the process than to those who are entrenched in entitlements of the old system. Perhaps that is why so many Americans are gravitating towards an inexperienced but youthfully optimistic senator named Barack Obama.
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Posted by Saleem Ali at 08:12 PM | TrackBack (0)
January 21, 2008
Indonesian Islam is "greening"
In a remote part of Central Java, Indonesia’s most populous island, there is a rather unusual form of environmentalism taking root. Shadowed by the great Merapi volcano and surrounded by fertile fields of rice and sugarcane, a small school is graduating environmentalists whose commitment to the earth is not based on Western conservation texts but rather predicated in values derived from Islam. The head of the school, Nasruddin Anshari, frequently uses the refrain “one earth, for all”, just as much as he does the usual Islamic invocation of Allah-u Akbar (God is Great).
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December 27, 2007
Benazir Bhutto's Tragic Demise
Benazir was a charismatic yet polarizing politician who showed remarkable courage in returning to Pakistan earlier this year despite numerous threats to her life. It is a tragedy for the country that those who follow absolutist ideologies are armed to the teeth and can inflict such damage both literally and figuratively to Pakistani society. The only way to address the problem is to have a massive campaign to disarm militants, and also strengthen civil institiutions so that people have a voice and the fanatics lose their recruiting ability. At the same time it is important for Americans to keep things in perspective about Pakistan. While this is a terrible tragedy, America has also shown to the world that strong societies can recover after such dreadful assassinations and the vast majority of Pakistanis have a vibrant national commitment that will allow them to recover as well. The next few weeks will be crucial in terms of how fast this recovery will be -- the international community must remain engaged with Pakistan's transition towards democracy and keep the pressure on President Musharraf to hold free and fair elections in coming months.
Linked below is a long audio interview that I gave to our local press about the Bhutto tragedy which they have posted online with a slide show about Bhutto's life and tragic passing which can be heard from the link below:
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/legacy/slideshows/122707bhutto/index.html
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Posted by Saleem Ali at 10:38 PM | TrackBack (0)
December 23, 2007
Balancing Islam in Academe
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Posted by Saleem Ali at 06:20 PM
