Is development it’s own worst enemy?

I was reading an article this morning in the British Guardian Online. It was about an isolated tribe of Jarawa natives who were starting to come out of the jungle in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands for the first time and how they are beginning to interface with the tourists and recent arrivals. The writer, quite rightly alluded to the difficulties the tribes faces in the future in terms of integration, adapting to diseases, alcoholism, materialism etc as they become more and more integrated into the western notion of development. Necessarily these are traditionally poor people who have survived for centuries by their instinct and what the jungle can provide for them, the thing for the moment is that, they do not know they are poor, nor do they appear to care or are in any particular need of what the west can provide for them. Unfortunately that will progressively change as well meaning, but poorly advised “assistants” help them adapt to the western world. The richness of their present simple life will eventually become the symbols  of their future poverty.

Jarawa women of the Andaman Islands

It got me to thinking however about the general notion that we see indigenous peoples need to reach levels in their lifestyles that are consistent with western norms that may be askew. The Jarawa seem to have an idylic lifestyle. They are not constrained by any moral conventions that constrain the outside world, they live a semi nomadic existence where there appears no need for anything other than what their surroundings can provide for them. Ecologically and environmentally, the Jarawa appear to leave a negligible footprint on their surroundings yet seem happy with that even to the extent of repelling intruders with spears and arrows until quite recently. However, as they start to integrate as they are now doing, their lives will become irreversibly changed and it needs to be decided soon if that is for the better or should they be protected.

Their future is perhaps written for them as development takes hold of their tiny island. Inevitably they will through contact establish needs they previously did not have or could not obtain from the jungle.  Sweets, clothing, housing, liquor, medicine, education, money, communications, transport and a host of other symbols of development and advanced society. Through bitter experience of how other indigenous people have fared in the past, they will not fare well. They will lose their skills at living with nature, they will contract diseases, they will become indolent, always living around the edges of society eventually becoming a serial pest as that society loses its tolerance with their slow adaptation to western expectation. They will live in hastily constructed shanties at the edge of civilization instead of in their organized jungle village.

Going by the conventions set down by agencies such as the United Nations Human Development Reports, the Jarawa people will be included in deserving the minimum standards laid out for their existence yet what that fails to acknowledge is that these standards would generally exceed their current expectations and what is more, it needs to be asked if in fact they are needed or should what we be doing is to maintain the status quo.

Is development only a western perception that would enable them to live in a developing western world with western needs. Poverty world wide is measured against an immeasurable standard if say compared to the Jarawa people. The same, to some extent can be said for peoples all over the world in different locations and different sets of ideals. We tend to presume that what we can offer is what is best and fail to understand that sometimes what they have might well be what is in fact best after all.

For several years I have worked in Afghanistan. When I first arrived I had the opportunity to travel to remote regions of Nangahar province where I met with villagers whom I considered had an almost idyllic if not austere life, similar to that of the Jarawa however with a greater degree of development you might say. They had little to be sure however they had enough to live a lifestyle that was free of material needs. They live in mud houses with a mud floor and rarely a window. They grow and eat their own simple foods. They do not own cars and they do not travel far. They are uneducated but they can live under extreme weather conditions as they have done for centuries. It is rich in its simplicity. There were growing issues of education of which they had little and medical resources of which they had none and much of the issues of maternal and natal health were frequent problems that needed resolutions. Much of it compared to others who had only recently acquired these services.

Yet there is resistance. In the far reaches of Nuristan province to the east of the country, the local people are resisting all comers. That includes the US military and the Taliban as well as the development community. Their villages are only accessible by foot tracks in the mountains that even the donkeys find difficult to traverse. They don’t want change and will fight to prevent its arrival.

In terms of their material wealth however, apart from the land beneath their feet, they have little to show of wealth. Most Afghans live in harsh inhospitable environments where an austere religious lifestyle and work at subsistence levels of farm production that regulates their daily lives yet, for the most part, provides a sense of order and a level of social security within each tiny hamlet.  Many never venturing out even to the next village but remain within the family compound. It is only when change takes place that dislocations to these tiny communities begin to eventuate. They are poor however their poverty is relative to a system that they are being introduced to that advocates development.

A question that needs to be asked, is do they really need it until they decide for them self? Is development aiding in the destructions of societies? Well meaning but often self serving aid agencies who set an agenda that is rarely based on what these communities actually need as opposed to what they might say they want or promote ideas the aid groups can sell to them and proceed to offer a change to their lifestyles. A move towards one that emulates their own along with their own particular set of values, changing social structures, material wealth and complete with vague notions of democracy and the inherent politics of gender, education and health care.

Development at peoples own pace can be good. Development at paces they cannot maintain is not good. For the Jarawa people, development will most likely only bring them poverty and hardship that they otherwise would never have known.

Treating the problem and not the cause.

For the past eight years, the emphasis in Afghanistan has been to simultaneously address the issues of insurgency by providing a military response to the insurgency itself; strengthening the capacity of the central government and its administrative flow-on to the regions; and at the same time, engages the community in a hearts and mind campaign through community development to bring the people onto the side of the government and its supporters. This latter component is largely being provided by way of public infrastructure, the construction of roads, canals, schools and clinics throughout the communities that will foster supposedly improved agricultural production and market access for those in the more remote regions where the Taliban hold command. Other avenues are though education, building capacity of the population and improving the educational standards throughout the country. The problem so far is, it is not working.

All of these apparent solutions are long term projections that even now have yet to manifest them self into tangible results. The Taliban have become stronger and their influence and reach has exceeded the capacity of all the international military might and the good will that has been projected so far and has failed to curtail. Each passing day sees them growing stronger and more diverse, extending their influence into neighboring Pakistan with increasing alacrity and ferocity.

Even now in Afghanistan, a new pro-military strategy is being devised that will see an additional eighteen to twenty thousand troops on the ground and a continued pursuit of community goodwill programs in support of their hearts and minds. The apparent near exclusion in going forward however is the unfettered support for the government without condition, a consequence of the inability of Karzai to address the ever growing level of corruption that has taken hold of it that seemingly stems from the highest office down. Corruption is endemic if the system is examined. It permeates every level of the national, provincial and district levels of administration and largely goes unchecked.

Yet the powers to be continue to look at and are planning around this revised military strategy with the same enthusiasm and expectation that was held when the Taliban were first routed at the end of 2001. What is at risk however is the fact that these are the very reasons the Taliban have gained such strength throughout the country and are now spilling their influence into neighboring Pakistan. The question that the authorities’ first need to ask themselves is what has been the root causes of the failure of the past eight years to stem their growth? Why are the Taliban succeeding when faced with such overwhelming odds as the international and national military presence provides?

The Taliban have three factors that are on their side. One is the unwillingness of the national and international governments to come down hard in eradication of the opium production in the country. This activity in itself provides the primary source of several hundred million in funding through the rural taxing measure applied by the Taliban to wage its war in perpetuity if necessary. Next is the inability and apparent unwillingness of the government to clamp down on the endemic corruption that permeates its barely hallowed halls. Political posts including provincial governors are appointments that are not merit based but reliant upon the regional power that a warlord can and does project. They are appointments to bring the tribal brigands together, to curry local favor that aims to prevent these same warlords siding with the Taliban in the event their appointment is not looked upon favorably. In Helmand province to the south of the country, the reverse has occurred. A former Taliban commander has been appointed to the position of Governor showing how closely the government is connected to the insurgency. Too often however these same governors manipulate public funds siphoning millions off the national budget for personal gain. The third factor and possibly the overriding factor above all others is the overall level of poverty that exists and continues to exist in a country where billions in foreign funds have been committed without seriously addressing that issue.

The focus of development has been to maintain Afghanistan’s rural based economy such that almost all of the international aid is directed towards providing aid and assistance to this endeavor. The problem is that for most Afghans, the best they can expect from this is the opportunity to works as low paid itinerant farm laborers whenever the seasonal work is available.

Afghanistan has about twelve percent of its vast landscape that is arable and only slightly more than half of that is irrigated. Out of that small portion, only about forty percent of the population own land, the majority being landless. Even so, eighty percent of the population is still engaged in agricultural activities. Of those that do own land, the production capacity in a good year, is only slightly more than that which would be considered subsistence level in a normal economy. The people of Afghanistan are considered to be amongst the poorest in the world with the licit and illicit GDP at less than eight hundred dollars per year. At the other end of the spectrum however is the public understanding that some of those in power have established financial empires that extend to hundreds of millions of dollars stripped out of the economy and invested in the other countries of the likes of Dubai due to the stability those economies offer. To say that poverty and all its inherent issues that go with it are the underlying factors that see the Taliban rise up is possibly an understatement.

Over the past eight years, the west has contributed more than fifty billion dollars in aid that by all accounts has gone into stimulate the economy. Out of that however is the constant drain towards foreign imports. Afghanistan imports around five billion dollars in goods per year while exporting less than three hundred and forty million. Needless to say, almost all of the fifty billion in funds contributed to over that eight years have largely been passed on to the neighboring countries on the importation of goods and foodstuffs.

Like in any country that has come out of war, the primary issue facing most people and their families is finding solutions to alleviate their poverty. Nothing substantial however that has been so far done has provided any clear long term solution to that constant cycle of poverty. Should the west not continue to provide the driving funds behinds its economy, the internal revenue raised by the government through taxation and import duties is less than one third of that necessary to continue its current meager operations. The existence of industry is limited. Less than ten percent of the people are engaged in industrial activities and the majority of that involves construction industries related to and funded by foreign intervention. Another ten percent are engaged in service industries with the government and the international organizations being the major employers.

In itself, the construction of roads and rural buildings and the like provides short term employment opportunities that are a stopgap to the economic cycle of poverty that dominates rural Afghanistan. It is not enough. Between itinerant farm work and short term opportunities in construction programs, there are no significant sustainable employment opportunities available at all. It is in this environment that the Taliban readily find its recruits with the offer of a low but seemingly regular income.

The people themselves although willing to forego the Taliban if the opportunity arises, also find them more able to solve their immediate problems if not financially, but also in the deliberation of civil law matters that the various levels of government cannot solve. In many instances, officials within that government system are themselves the primary protagonists. Experience shows that villagers will provide a part time paid service to the Taliban by planting a roadside bomb, manning an illegal road block or even participating in an attack against a government or military target and then returning to their villages to lead a more normal life until the next pending need for money arises.

It is within this background that the likes of President Obama from the US and Prime Minster Gordon Brown from the UK are seeking solutions in moving forward with their aid packages. For the moment it is a military surge now being assembled that is their focus, the emphasis is directed towards treating the problem which in this case is the defeat of the Taliban and its ideology. That ideology is however within the hands of a few at the top and not always for fundamental religious purposes but the power that it commands. It is not with satisfactorily treating the underlying cause of their continued existence, and that is addressing the national level of poverty and the need to establish sustainable employment opportunities that can alleviate that grass roots support.

So far as addressing the industrial strategy for Afghanistan it has been a laisser-faire approach that is typical of established capitalist thinking. In a number of foreign government initiatives implemented through government agencies and non-government agencies, an effort has also been directed towards funding micro finance projects. These provide a small amount of funds to individuals, normally less than one hundred dollars, in the hope that these people will start a small home based enterprise. And start they do. The problem however is that rarely do they expand beyond that base and traditionally they only employ the person receiving the funds themselves.

Again this is projecting outside of the realms of what is required. People want employment, simple jobs that provide a sustainable level of income. In the western societies more than seventy five to eighty percent of the populations work at a paid job for a living as opposed to running their own business. The same can be said for the people of Afghanistan yet there is this persistence to provide them with small home based business opportunities. The people want sustainable incomes, whether it is rural based or urban based as many are now turning towards to seek employment. Running their own business might be a nice idea however for anyone who has been in that position of entrepreneur; it takes much more than just a nice idea to make it work effectively.

Looking at the economic development and aid funding overall there is also a strange dichotomy in existence. The predominant donor to Afghanistan is unquestionably the US with some thirty billion already allocated to the development mission in Afghanistan. While the US is also unquestionably the premier nation on the world in support of capitalism within its own precincts and the performance of individual attainment through enterprise, its performance in Afghanistan could not be any further removed from that principle. The major portion of its funds are not used for industrial development and are firstly directed towards its own military with some hundred billion or so already budgeted to support that process. Then the thirty billion development aid is for the most part directed towards supporting and developing the scale and capacity of the national government while the remainder is utilized in investing in its hearts and mind campaigns though its investment in public and community infrastructure. The US government certainly provides funds to Afghanistan yet it comes with all the restrictions that government can instill. Profit is not an acceptable condition with respect to public funding.

In that sense, the US government is seemingly working on a socialist model for its assistance program to Afghanistan. One where it expands the size and resources of government while it provides for the implementation of what can be deemed social welfare projects as opposed to fostering a truly capitalist market place which it promotes as its aim. The arguments for government being that regulations are needed if industry is to prevail whereas reality dictates that in any economic system anywhere in the world, the regulations have come after the industry has established. The present banking crisis in the US should amply demonstrate that situation and that situation exist in a highly developed and sophisticated economy.

What is largely being ignored is the need for capital, large lumps of available high risk capital for the private sector to develop if it can develop at all. Government agencies are not normally the providers of capital, neither in their own countries nor in the countries where their governments provide assistance. There are a few international based banks in existence however their capacity to fund large scale industrial development of the likes that is required is limited if non existent. For the most part they are limited to retail deposit banking. In short, there is no capital base to begin with that will engender an industrial revolution.

The question is then, if the expectation for development and industrial growth are to take place through a laisser-faire approach to capitalism what is the basis for capital funding to drive that? Surely someone in the US government is able to understand that industry needs accessible funding if it is at all to develop, either through public subscription or commercial loans in order for it to expand? The prospect is similarly remote that capital that can be raised through private treaty while the population maintains an annual GDP at eight hundred dollars. Or perhaps the question that Obama and Brown need to ask, are their own government bureaucracies the best equipped promoters of an industrial and economic revolution in Afghanistan when they are not considered to be suitably equipped to provide that in their own?

And while capital is a major limitation to industrial growth, so too is the lack of provision of suitable expertise and assistance to industry that are required if the currently level of available skills and technology are to be taken into account.

Taking this to the rural level where the largest unemployed sectors of the countries population are located however is going to be difficult but not impossible. In as much as the European economies grew during the period of the industrial revolution, before the advent of power, before macadamized roads were provided, before sophisticated communication networks were in place, before comprehensive legal frameworks were in place, the same scenario should be the basis of the strategy for development in Afghanistan. The idea that the country needs a television network or major reconstruction of government offices or even a truly democratic process in place before it needs steady incomes and food on the table for millions of people is laughable if it was not actually the practice that is currently being implemented albeit with good and honorable intentions. The people suffer deprivation and suffering if not starvation while the legal structures to build their economy are being put into place. The eye is off the ball.

There are a myriad industrial and business opportunities that are being forgone, mostly through lack of foresight but largely through a lack of capital backing. In as much as the present support is also for the expansion of government, the levels of corruption that exist at all levels retards national development negates a significant part of that. Previous government enterprises that were controlled under the former socialist government are still hampered because of that quest to maintain control by the government departments. In 2003 there were some three hundred state owned enterprises ranging from wheat or cotton marketing to the manufacture of cement and state owned transport systems or even the production of olive oil. Instead of allowing private enterprise build industry and competition the government is keeping control through maintained ownership and entering private treaties and leases. The inability of the government to funds the recovery of these projects with few exceptions have seen them lay idle as have the bulk of national industries them self.

Agricultural production is but one aspect of development. There is a major need for the secondary processing industries that go with it if agriculture is to provide a sustainable backbone to the national economy. Cotton for instance is exported unprocessed to Pakistan where it is converted into cotton fabric then re-imported into Afghanistan at twenty to fifty times the added value price of the original cotton crop. It is but one of hundreds of examples of loss of industrial opportunity and divestment of the international investment into the country. Afghanistan flounders while its neighbors prosper on providing its basic needs.

Although maintaining that Afghanistan certainly needs something akin to the Marshall Plan if its problems are to be resolved, the real emphasis should also be on allowing industry to enter a period of supported freefall growth for a period. Incentives to foreign investment houses and manufacturing companies to provide expertise and to establish manufacturing partnerships within Afghanistan should be entertained and funded along with investment guarantees against their failure.

While ever the turmoil exists, investment and industrial growth will always be hampered while correspondingly, the turmoil is expanding because the industrial growth and investment is not taking place. A Catch-22 situation if there ever was one.

The restrictions however are tied up through the limitations of regulations imposed by the foreign donors themselves. Capital expansion in the form of high risk venture capital is urgently needed. Capital that comes with the provision of expertise and the introduction of the necessary technologies to make them function but without the restrictive regulation that one finds in ordered societies or with a brick and mortar backing. Instead of expanding the control that government has over development of industry by the imposition of western standards and regulations, that process should be a follow on process driven by the industries them self. Let the industries develop first and then impose the operating regulation as required. This was after all the basis of growth of the strongest economies in the world.

So far as the vision towards looking for opportunities to build markets outside of Afghanistan, the initial and simplest market is at their doorstep. Almost every thing available in all of the stores in Afghanistan is imported. Finding acceptable locally produced replacements for them should be the first level of endeavor no matter how small that industry and market might be. Protection of those markets should also benefit the government through the imposition of cross border import taxation. In economies such as Afghanistan, the free market rules of globalization should be set aside until the economy is able to stand on its own feet. For the moment it suffers greatly without the small to medium industries in place and without the protection of import duties to sustain them.

What is also necessary is a commercial sense towards foreign intervention and reduce and eliminate the international governments restrictive funding that is now provided as the mainstay. The funding should be representing the economic model desired and not the foreign governments own bureaucratic but limited commercial background. The government of Afghanistan is not going to provide sustainable industries for the people. That is unless the country is to be rebuilt along purely socialist lines as it was during the Russian period of influence. The more money provided to government has only ceded to the provision of more opportunities for that money to be diverted away from the governments programs.

Necessarily, many if not the majority of these proposed supported industrial ventures will most likely fail as they do in well insulated economies such as the US. Notwithstanding, the investment into the communities and national economy will be of the same end benefit. In Afghanistan the commercial expectation should be more so allowing for the fact that an industrial and financial support mechanism needs also to be introduced to provide some insulation against that. So often however donor funding comes with the imprimatur that no profit should be made and spending should be conducted along the lines of government accountability. Other than large public companies and state owned enterprises, no private company in the world operates along these lines nor can they. Why is then that international governments and in particular governments such as the capitalist headquarters of US, the UK, Japan and Germany impose these restrictions on development aid to Afghanistan.

While ever industry fails to materialize, while ever employment remains at the current fifty to sixty percent of the communities existence, while ever the inability to resist the temptations of farming illicit crops or joining insurgency groups remain, Afghanistan will constantly be a problem and provide a source of world wide conflict that is seemingly without end. What is necessary is to treat the cause. That cause being the poverty and financial hardship of the rural people with sustainable solutions and real jobs. Solve that and the problem will eventually take care of itself.

Western Idealism, Eastern Culture

The notion of democracy for a country such as Afghanistan, a country that has been in political turmoil for the past century also demands considerable thought as to how that should be applied. The Bonn Agreement at the cessation of hostilities in 2001 established a pro-forma for the constitution and the form of government that would be introduced. There were some Afghans involved in the early discussions yet as a preliminary to the drafting of the constitution, little if any discussion took place in the communities and villages that make up the structure of this war ravaged land.

America, the most dominant architect to the constitution and the form of government that was to prevail looked no further than their own system of representational democracy, a means by which they could install an interim President with strong powers with a view to dominating the electoral process as the time came for elections.

The people of Afghanistan however know little about elections or even the sense of democracy but were excited at the prospect to the point that the fine detail was easily left without question. This was to be the first such exercise and was lauded as a significant transformation of a country that had until now been largely undemocratic, falling into the abyss of socialist thinking for more than half a century and before that a feudal kingdom. Even now the government bureaucrats still promote the notion of state run industries over a free market economy, stifling growth in these important economic agrarian areas.

What the US appeared to have had in mind was to retain an administration that would have the hallmarks of democracy yet leave the principal game play that would pay continued homage to them as their liberators. What has transpired is that the unelected and often criminal warlords who had served US interests in pursuing the Russians during the Cold War continue but now with some official blessing of both the US and the elected Afghan government who appoints them under Presidential decree. The constitutional Loya Jirga merely ratified his capacity to do that and their place in government, a point noted as early as the Bonn Agreement.

This point however destroyed the notion of democracy. Many of those appointments should have been held responsible for atrocious war crimes during the several years of civil war were now being rewarded by the US and following on its apron strings, the rest of the Western countries.

For the people of Afghanistan, many if not most have lost faith in the process of democracy. Their lives have not changed for the better as they had hoped but five years later they are mired in rampant corruption of the appointed officials, a debilitated economy with an illicit drug economy that stifles other economic pursuit, national security is as bad if not worse than it had been during the long periods of conflict and the ability to make change through the democratic process almost extinct.

The problem lay however with the initiators of the democratic process. It was bought about with little if any consideration for the population at large, the dynamics of the communities and tribal connections that influence the local political processes. It was as if the architects saw American representative democracy as the ideal solution failing completely to understand the political will and dynamic of Afghanistan, the very society that had little involvement in its design. Representative democracy with its party politics might suit a more fragmented society such as the US yet historically, previous incursions into the formation of top-down political parties in Afghanistan had transcended into corrupt and unworkable mechanism by which the country as a whole would be governed leading to a constant transition through coup and countercoup.

The present government has no particular strength in the community at large. The disenfranchised Taliban largely dictate security over almost two thirds of the rural electorate and can only be kept at bay albeit in a war zone condition by the large numbers of NATO and poorly trained national troops and police forces. The government has fallen into the depths of unmitigated corruption with positions reputedly being sold off by powerful Ministers that foster further corruptions down the line of their ministries.

The difficulty for Afghanistan is that the present form of government has been established to satisfy western demands of the country. A docile President that has an alignment with the US in particular, a legislature that will accede to similar economic and commercial dictates that in particular relate to the oil and gas fields and the political connections that it has with its neighbors.

The Cold War may have finished in this part of the world but the victory is still being decided.

What will happen in the future is any ones guess. Military experts from the west all agree that the battle for a secure Afghanistan will take a decade at least, disregarding the fact that the battle for total sovereignty over the Afghans had gone on for more than two hundred and fifty years without success. It is as if the conquerors have failed to learn any lessons from all the battle beforehand.

Of course more importantly, what is the ideal solution that will see relative peace transcend this beautiful if not badly damaged country politically and socially. Afghanistan is, like its neighbors, dominated by its religion, Islam. What many in the west fail to comprehend is however, that Islam is not just a religion, it transcends every aspect of daily life in these feudal communities. Without understanding this and determined by the austerity that the Taliban imposed, the west have presumed to have a government that largely negates this religious idealism and allowed it to only enter as a final condition that the new laws will not go against the principals of Islam.

How to serve the democratic process remains aloof from the present masters of its destiny. If the interests of the people and peace for the region were truly the ambitions, other forms of democracy perhaps should have been considered at the onset.

Experience has shown that all forms of top down government in Afghanistan have failed and failed dismally yet at the community and village level there is democratic process of administration that allows the people to participate in a more compelling form of government, that of direct democracy. With some modifications to its guidelines allow the landless and the women of the community to participate, this provides some impetus to a final solution, a form of direct democracy similar to that which functions in a somewhat peaceful Switzerland and in a less transparent manner although equally Islamic country, Libya. What direct democracy can do in these communities, is eliminate the power structures that prevail with strong individuals at the top with sufficient military might they have acquired over the past thirty years from dominating the political landscape. These communities provide the representation to the next level at district, provincial and then national government. At each stage the representative is not sealed into power by a political gerrymander but remains constantly answerable to the will of those committees that nominate them.

The need for a strong leader is insufficient if he is unable to exercise strong and at times barbaric discipline over those that resist the government. Karzai is a strong leader however he also lacks the capacity to rule according to the dictates that an unruly and insecure electorate demands. The principal key to Karzai retaining western support however is his loyalty to his sponsors and in particular to the US for which until recently he retained dual citizenship as have a number of those he has appointed, a policy that is not always in the best interest of his electorate.

To regain the total will of the people, they too need to be drawn into the democratic process, one where they have a determination over the running of and to contribute into the eventual peace process with its present antagonists that is necessary for their country to move forward.

The Fortune of Soldiers

Up front I have to say I am anti-war but I do believe the world does need armies and good people to serve in them. It does and should continue to be the case however my vision in particular is that it should be one of peacekeeping. I have served as a reservist myself when I was younger and would do it again if I was capable and the need was before me.

My life over the past decade has been about working in places like Kosovo and Afghanistan and Aceh on projects that endeavour to take care of the people and the communities that war and catastrophe leaves behind.

In these environments I have been frustrated by the need for various governments to present themselves as the most powerful and most impervious armed with un-restricted budgets to demonstrate that point yet the weak and powerless of all nations are left largely to fend for themselves. The world spends twenty times the amount on waging warfare as it does on its recovery.

It is only recently that the issues of those that suffer PTSD in particular with the influx of huge number of Americans overloading the repatriation system that has bought this in particular to my attention as it has in some way to the rest of the world. I read stories about individual treatments and grew angrier and sadder knowing that the forces that control our lives are failing to react in the same way to protect it. It is also the communities we live in that fail to see outside the comfort of their own existences that there is a cancer within it.

That cancer is ambivalence, the inability or even the desire to make a change. In a recent exchange where I made an issue out of anger one respondent told me he contributes to a charity that serves returnees and is proud of their service and sacrifice they make on his behalf. As I see it, it is not charity that returnees ask for and the pride, although it makes them feel more worthy as a person, it does not pay the rent nor for the treatment they need when they need it. They want and should get the appropriate attention freely and it should be given as a right that they are entitled to if as a nation they are asked to step up to the plate and make their individual sacrifices.

Those that return home safely, do so as heroes no matter the number of medals they wear. Those that die in battle do so with dignity, valour and strength. They are bought back into the arms of their loved ones whom can grieve for them and put them safely into the right place in the repositories of their hearts. It is those that do not come home safely and who do not die that are a legacy to a nations conscience of its true intent and in this case its eternal shame.

Both sides use the issue of wounded veterans vacuously yet in itself it is also a political issue of profound social importance as it reflects on a nation’s humanity. The political arguments affect not those that suffer from the emotional disorders and sacrifice themselves but it is those that they leave behind who find the argument unpalatable. Life is not just about respect for the nation if the nation is not about respect for the lives of those that make it so.

It is the number of veterans that take alternate solutions to resolve their problem that is the most heart wrenching. It takes the lives of as many men and women if not more than those who have actually died in battle but they do so after all the fighting is done and are not mentioned in the honour rolls. Too often they reach that point where they must believe that no one cares enough for the horrors they have seen in war and the continuing frustrations that exist for them in peace, that they are not being guided out of their turmoil as easily as they were guided into it.

On any number of websites there are those dedicated to returned service men and women, I read the condolences to the families of those that have taken their own lives after they have returned home, after they have been received into their family and friends but also after they have been improperly treated by the system they have been proud to dedicate themselves to.

It is their belief in the system that needs to be preserved. It is their self-sacrifice that needs to be seen as the catalyst to avoid others from following them in this somewhat futile and exceedingly frustrating path and we all need to be a part of that process to make change. It is incumbent on us to use the power of their collective memory to draw to the attention of the world at large that where they have arrived at for the moment is not right. They went into battle in far off lands to make the world a safer place, how they are treated at home and the internal battles they fight alone should be a lesson to save others from a similar fate.

There is a battle notion of leaving no man behind yet when they return home we unfortunately do. If that is politics then so be it, they have suffered enough because of it.

The new Afghanistan: After 25 years of war.

Ideally, Afghanistan was presented with a new beginning on the routing of the Taliban and the backing by the US of a new western style democratic government. The reality however has been less dramatic. Afghanistan in 2007 is as lawless and disrupted as it was during the civil wars with more than 40,000 international troops in the country, more than 5000 people being killed in violent attacks since it was liberated, 100,000 people have been displaced due to the fighting in the southern provinces, development is stagnating, the promised democracy floundering under the weight of corruption and flailing institutional capacity along with an opium trade that now provides 92 percent of the world’s supply and constitutes 50 percent of the national GDP.
Where did it all go so wrong?

At the onset of 2001 and the initial promise of some billions of dollars in international assistance, the people of Afghanistan had reason to believe that their lives would change. Even though the country remains steadfastly Islamic, the severity of the Taliban rule had faded giving prospect for schools to be recovered and the expectation that the girls of the towns and the villages would be able to attend them and the people could live their lives with more liberty although greater change will take years. Village people as they do in most of Asia see that the means to climb out of their poverty is through the advent of education of their children.
The difficulty has been that the west, and in particular the US has largely been diverted with the invasion of Iraq shortly after and the initial thrust by the US forces of routing out the terrorists as opposed to providing any semblance of nation building although this has now become an unfortunately belated priority.
The government was resurrected on the basis of past allegiances and not on the basis of capacity rendering managerial skill and facility within the government vacant. The influx of international organizations were vying for the local expertise and paying up to five times that of the government services consumed all of the talent leaving those warlords appointed to the Ministry positions to in turn appoint family and tribal members to all the positions within the ministry. This not only afforded them protection from below, it facilitated the corrupt practices that has blemished and held back the progress of the country ever since.
Much of the existing problems today arrive through the corruption at the top of the administration. Regional Governors have a large hand in the production of opium clearing out fields of opposition growers as a sign of doing something positive while allowing production in their own fields to continue unimpeded. It is even reported that the brother of the President is a major figure in the opium production and international distribution in the south of the country where the majority of the present fighting is taking place.
With the invasion by the US, they facilitated the existing warlords whom they had allied with during the war against the Russians to assume command of strategic Governorships and ministerial positions, many still retaining these posts now even though a much-touted democratic electoral process has taken place. As time passes however they are cementing their position with even greater firmness that it will prove almost impossible without a major recovery at the top to eliminate them.
The opium trade has also usurped the economy to the point that more than 3.3 million people are reportedly involved in it out of 22 million and more than 3 billion dollars a year being invested into the national budget through its international trade. The task of removing it is being rendered almost impossible with a dramatic change in the way the country approaches the issues.
To recover, Afghanistan is going to require a complete change of conditions by the west. No longer can they rely upon the weak structures of government that President Kazai is able to offer but they need to insist that real power and corresponding real accountability is afforded to the people. The centrist government and the pre-drafted constitution have proven to be an abysmal failure and have no significant effect other than within Kabul itself and even that is suspect. The up-scaled drug trade in the major markets of Europe and the US has a cost estimated to be 20 times that derived in Afghanistan, some 60 billion dollars worldwide. Can the world afford to allow it to continue?
Prior to the war Afghanistan was at the lowest point in its economic and social history with all the development indicators pointing it out to be one of the poorest countries in the world. The approach by the US was inadequate and cavalier paying no serious attention to the economic recovery required. If democratization and development is a real concern as was the promise of 2001, the international cost to bring the country back into a path away from the criminal activity that now consumes it will be massive and at least be equal to that which is being derived illegally and take a generation at least. That cost in many ways will have to be born by the west.

Should America attack Iran

From the point of view of many Americans, I am sure they look at the situation and say to themselves, “we are the richest and most powerful nation on earth” and could easily justify an attack against Iran of whom they know so little beyond the perceived crazy talk of their President.

But looking at it more pragmatically, the reasons to launch an attack are for the moment spurious. Talk of nuclear weapons programs are as a consequence of 100 IAEA inspectors going over all the various installations over the past twelve months reportedly unfounded, they have discovered nothing to support that notion and in fact refute it decisively. One then has to analyses in some respect what it is that the US is really pursuing, is it merely capitulation by the Iranians to the will and might of America or is it more sinister and is the oil as Greenspan has confirmed so indiscreetly in his memoirs?

For a moment perhaps it is wise to look at the consequence of an pre-emptive attack on the nature indicated. The US is proposing strategic aerial bombing raids against nuclear facilities or military training establishments encouraged no doubt by the success of their incursions into Kosovo and Iraq over the past decade and the recent raid by Israel into Syria. But is it so easy? Kosovo was waged against a Serbian army, large in number but nevertheless poorly equipped to meet them. Iraq had a population of 25 million, most of them suppressed under a totalitarian regime and their military conscripts capitulated at the first opportunity.

Iran on the other hand has a population of 65 million and for the most part the majority would be anti-American as a consequence of the poor historical relationship that has existed over the past 50 years between these two nations since the US aided in the overthrow of the Mossadegh government. It has an army of around half a million serving members with a reserve base of an extra 300,000 and a further eleven million former reservists that can be mobilized. Iran learned a lesson about self- sufficiency from the Iran Iraq war with a military wing that is now capable of producing its own tanks, missiles and aircraft.

At the first incursion of a US fighter attack against its nuclear or military facilities, Iran has promised to retaliate with 11,000 rockets fired simultaneously at targets yet unspecified. One could imagine that the leveling the Green Zone in Baghdad and the US Centcom headquarters in Oman would be a priority targets as would be the oil installations of all of the allies of the US along the Persian Gulf and a rendering of the Straits of Hormuz. That by itself would bring the world to a standstill almost instantaneously. Less important targets of Israel of US installations elsewhere in the region would also have to contend with the first barrage. It also has Russia and China attending to its corner in the diplomatic sense.

The retaliation by the US however would be swift and decisive paying homage to the “most rich and powerful” epithet it carries, invoking a possible nuclear retaliatory attack against Tehran and other strategic centers it houses across the country. The fallout being that anywhere between one hundred thousand and one million Iranians civilians would be killed in the process and another one or two million injured or displaced as a consequence for a decade. The actions by both sides will afford a trillion dollars or two in collateral damage to the region setting oil production and the economies of the Gulf States back twenty years.

What at the end of the day is the beneficial consequence? Will it bring the surviving Iranian people closer to the US? Will it eliminate the existing government and enable the US to introduce a democratic state of affairs as it has done to Afghanistan and Iraq at either side of it? Will it provide the oil security the US craves from the region or will it just be a matter or two crowing roosters demonstrating who has the largest appendages and are prepared to plunge the world into a state of virtual darkness?

The posturing by both nations has been reduced to name calling and displays of arrogance and wild rhetoric on both parts and most noticeably by the US administration. The idea of a nation going to war because of the irresponsible language of one party or the other has gone beyond ludicrous. It is reminiscent of the Kubilai Khan and the Mongol hordes taking offence by the oppressed in their marauding conquests across Asia Minor.

The difficulty for the US is that with this administration it has lost the capacity to negotiate and an understanding of what its position is in the world relative to that which the world holds them. For decades preceding The US has been able to provide the stability and leadership across all boundaries that is necessary in an aggressive world yet in this last decade in particular it has lost its way and become the visible aggressor, enamored with its own self importance and military capacity, loosing sight of its world prestige and power yet all the while failing to address the most basic requirements of diplomacy, the ability to talk with the opposition.

The UN Conundrum

The difficulty for the United Nations is that is still represents a time in history that reflects the imperialistic nature of its main proponents. Formed in 1942 when 26 nations joined together in their pledge to continue fighting the Axis powers headed by German and Japan, it continues to largely reflect that “victors” democracy that prevailed then. Even to this day both these leading economies that were vanquished are still excluded from the core functionality of the UN at the Security Council.

The UN has not kept pace with the state of the world and the rapid transformations of stated that have occurred up until today and continue to metamorphose into the future. The majority of the 192 nations now represented were in many cases former colonies of the major powers that have since gained their independence. However, if the present structure of the UN is anything to go by, their former colonial masters in a way still guard and control that independence.

UN General Assembly and Security Council reform is long overdue and the functionality of the UN is criticized remorselessly, particularly by it most significant stumbling block, the United States, as it is finding it increasingly difficult to force or persuade the General Assembly to accept its various and often seen, self-serving foreign policies. It is this issue that often leads various US politicians somewhat petulantly to call for the US to leave the UN altogether as it is an expression of the world’s growing independence from the US. This matter of reform has been discussed at length without any final resolution so far being arrived at, as those with the present monopoly of power are not prepared to shift from that position anytime in the near future. The final say as it stands rests with the five countries that maintain the power of veto over Security Council decisions.

To reform the UN, there needs to be a system that reflects a democratic positioning and country role based on a more equitable basis, populations, economic factors such as GDP, international investment, international aid etc. are all aspects that need to be factored in to the voting power of a country in both the Assembly and the Security Council. The concept of one nation – one vote is in itself undemocratic if countries such as Nauru with a population of 13,000 and a GDP of 60 million or San Marino with a population of 26,000 and GDP of 850 million have a comparable vote to say China with a population of 1.3 billion and a GDP at 10.5 trillion or the US with population of 300 million and GDP at 13 trillion dollars. The difficulty for the United States however is that countries such as China and India with their increasing prosperity are rapidly approaching that same economic reach as the US and diluting their world power status.

Yet in terms of parity, it is these countries that are grossly under-represented even though China does retain veto privileges and is largely unconcerned and expresses little in the way of discussion about the democracy for the excluded nations.

The other difficulty for the rest of the world is that the foreign policy is largely managed by these five nations and often fails dismally to meet their regional national and foreign policy expectations. The vast number of unfulfilled resolutions concerning Israel’s territorial actions in the Middle East highlights this dislocation from the Arab block in particular.

Can it be brought to a satisfactory conclusion or is it destined to self-destruct from within remains a probable question. Will the major powers relinquish their hold over the control of the UN or will they hold on until it completely fails. As an international medium it was to bring the ideals of peace and prosperity to the world as a whole and as defined in the Charter of the UN below and for which we perhaps need to constantly remind ourselves:

·        to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and

·        to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and

·        to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and

·        to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

AND FOR THESE ENDS

·        to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours, and

·        to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and

·        to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, and

·        to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples,

It remains to be seen. From that was expressed in the original ideals, the UN is the best international organisation to bring harmony to the world however it needs some sacrifice on the part of some of its promoters to bring that ideal about.