GCC integration: Why & how?
Nitin Gogia

SINCE its formation in 1981, the aim of Gulf Cooperation Council has been to foster greater coordination, cooperation and integration among its member states. However, the organisation has never set a specific long-term objective for itself. The GCC currently has a mixed record on cooperation. Significant decisions require the unanimous support of all six members. As might be expected of any grouping of countries, national interests don’t always concur. On occasions when they do, the GCC acts as an effective bloc.
This was clearly demonstrated following the 1990 invasion of Kuwait by Iraq when the member states adopted a unified stance and deployed their forces. However, when consensus cannot be reached, decision-making is blocked, as when Qatar quashed a Saudi-proposed common media law for the GCC countries that it objected to. The current need for unanimity has therefore hindered decision-making. At present, the GCC lacks strong supranational organisations. Although members share many commonalities that could make integration feasible, they have yet to fully channel them into actual cooperation. National interests have previously prevented the formation of a unified Gulf army and have hampered the functioning of the GCC customs union. The Gulf states are also trying hard to outdo their neighbours economically in an attempt to attract a greater share of capital investment and resources. They are competing with one another as can be seen in the rival state-supported startups in every significant economic sector from air transport to banking.
The result is that in the absence of cooperation, the risk of permanent damage to the GCC is increasing. Yet, the GCC is not predestined to fail or doomed to break up. The success of European integration has shown that greater cooperation can lead to massive economic benefits as well as better relations between states. In the EU, foreign policy and defence decisions are increasingly taken in unison. The establishment of a large and successful free trade zone has meant that the majority of European countries’ trade takes place between complementary economies on the continent itself. Western Europe, where the EU began its existence, has been peaceful for longer than at any time in history. The EU can thus be the example par excellence of regional integration.
Tensions between EU member states have eased for two reasons. On the one hand, strong supranational institutions have helped mediate and resolve disputes. On the other, increased links between states have created vested interests in each one that favour cordial relations. France and Germany went to war three times in the century preceding the formation of the EU. However, each one is now the other’s largest trading partner and a military conflict between the two is unimaginable.
The GCC could easily adopt elements of the EU model. For instance, one way to bring about greater political integration within the GCC would be to create a new assembly with members selected by the national assemblies of all six countries. In order to safeguard it from excessive national interests, the assembly could be made up of technocrats, rather than ministers. It could use qualified majority voting and have a bicameral assembly where the membership of the upper and lower chambers is selected on the basis of nationality and population respectively. It could reserve that requirement for questions of vital national importance, like defence pacts.
This new assembly could initially have limited powers and discuss matters like education, culture and sports, none of which are central to state survival. If the assembly functioned well and national leaders acquiesced, it could eventually become the most important decision-making body at the regional level.
The assembly could take the lead in greater GCC integration by passing new legislation and asking national governments to review existing legislation that is incompatible with greater GCC aims. By standardising laws and requirements, it would become easier for Gulf citizens to do business throughout the GCC. Foreign investors might also find it more enticing to enter what would effectively constitute a large single market.
However, European levels of economic cooperation are not yet feasible in the GCC because economies in the latter still compete with one another. Here, regional champions could be created to avoid any duplication of effort. For instance, Saudi Arabia could take the lead in building new oil refineries, Gulf shipping could be routed through Dubai and Salalah when possible and Bahrain could serve as the region’s financial services hub. In each case, funding from other Gulf countries in the form of a joint GCC budget could help connect these facilities to neighbouring countries.
In many cases, even greater cooperation should be possible, in the form of an open skies agreement for commercial air traffic, or an agreement allowing Gulf nationals residing in other GCC countries to have the same privileges as citizens there. The latter would enable them to set up and run businesses without needing to search for local partners, to trade on level terms in each other’s financial markets and to invest more widely in real estate throughout the Gulf. All this would also allow for surplus capital in the richer GCC countries to be invested more easily in poorer markets. That, in turn, would bring returns to investors and lead to the development of regions lacking funds, thereby creating a situation benefiting everyone concerned.
A common GCC foreign policy would carry more weight internationally. Later, a common defence policy could also be initiated. The accompanying benefits would include compatible weapons systems and economies of scale during arms purchases. The third and final pillar upon which greater GCC integration could rest, along with economic cooperation and political integration, is people-to-people links. One step that could be implemented in relatively short order would be to put an end to all differences between the way governments treat marriages between the nationals of different GCC countries and the way they handle marriages between nationals of their own country.
Greater political integration could also help lead to the implementation of a Schengen-style border agreement allowing residents and expatriates alike to travel freely between the GCC countries. This will only be practical if the leaders are willing to undertake tricky negotiations in order to be able to permanently set aside their differences on territorial disputes. If they are successful, current proposals for rail links and better road networks would have more commercial viability - there would be a far greater need for business travelers to move between the GCC countries. The end goal of all these steps would be the creation of a Gulf identity, perhaps one that is in conjunction with existing national identities. Political will is the sine qua non of all the aforementioned steps towards integration. Political integration would greatly benefit GCC citizens and their countries. This would require overcoming several large - but not insurmountable - obstacles, including many intangible ones. Integration should be pursued aggressively to ensure an even better future for the region.

A Super Power big enough to know better
Fareed Zakaria

BY THE time you read this column, China’s economy will have jumped by 20 percent, or $300 billion. Based on a new nationwide economic census, the National Bureau of Statistics is making an upward revision of gross domestic product, which means that China is now the world’s fourth largest economy, bigger than Italy, France and Britain. If you want a glimpse into the not-so-distant future, note that China is growing more than four times as fast as the next two countries on the list (Germany and Japan) and more than twice as fast as No. 1, the United States. This upward revision is not fuzzy math. Most economists believe that the new numbers provide a more accurate picture of China’s economy, taking into account the service sector and small businesses, both of which have been hard to measure in the past. When it joined the World Trade Organization, China agreed to this new and more accurate measure of its GDP. Of course, had it counted this way before joining the WTO, it would not have been able to join as a poor country but as a middle-income one, which would have meant stiffer terms and fewer concessions. This distinction was surely not lost on Beijing’s mandarins.
Most people don’t really understand China’s economic story. It looks like an oxymoron: central planning that works. As a result, many assume that, like Japan in the 1980s, China will stumble and collapse. But this misreads the two situations. Japan was a relatively small country that had become a huge economy by turning very modern. In that era its per capita GDP was almost the same as America’s, about $30,000. But growing a super-sophisticated economy required that every aspect of Japan’s society be modern. As it turned out, there was much in Japan, from its banking system to its politics, that was not. China is a different story. Its per capita GDP, even after this revision, is just $1,700. At some point, it will face all the kinds of problems Japan did. But well before that, it will surely be able to double its GDP to $3,400 per capita, which would bring it up to Brazil’s level. When that happens, China, because it has 1.3 billion people, will be the second largest economy in the world. Size matters.
Of course, China cannot continue to move as fast as it has. Growth is already slowing though it is worth marveling at an economy that is having a soft landing at 8.5 percent! But even if it grows at an easier clip, say 7 percent, most of the projections about China’s future place in the world economy still hold true. My guess is that China’s problems will stem not from failure but success. China has grown for three decades at a pace no other country has ever sustained. Much of this has been possible because its government has been relentlessly focused on economic growth, doing anything necessary to achieve that end. But this strategy does have some downsides: 2006 might be the year that we begin to witness China’s problems, admittedly ones any developing country would kill for. Every time you see a gleaming new highway in China, remember that there were homes, shops and farms where it now runs. The government moved those people, gave them something equivalent (often an hour away) and kept building. Every time you see a new factory, remember that the community around it might have protested, but that rarely stopped construction. Every time you see a dam, remember that it displaced whole villages and towns. It is the very fact that local or political forces cannot stop development that explains China’s supercharged growth.
For one thing, the result has been, inevitably, lopsided. A new United Nations Human Development Report on China highlights the huge gap between the country’s cities and its outlying areas and concludes that “its urban-rural income inequality gap is perhaps the highest in the world.” Polling in China suggests that people there are not tolerant of large income inequalities. People are beginning to speak up. Ten years ago, Chinese government figures showed about 10,000 local protests a year. Now they show 74,000 about 200 a day. These are localised protests about specifics, not general attacks against the Communist Party. And, believe it or not, these are still small numbers in the context of China. An estimated 3 million people are involved in these protests — out of 1.3 billion Chinese. But new forces are being unleashed in the country. Chinese officials are well aware of this shift. That is why they are focused on “balanced growth,” moving economic activity inland and spending large sums of money in rural areas. They are also listening to local communities more carefully. The Communist Party is trying to make its officials more attentive, responsive and media-savvy. Beijing knows that it needs to open up, not crack down. But can a Leninist system do that? Two weeks ago, in Dongzhou, local authorities responded to protests against a new power plant by reportedly shooting 20 or more people and then tried to cover up the incident in a manner that would have made Stalin or Mao proud. Beijing has somehow found a way to do centrally planned capitalism. But now it seems to be attempting something far more complex: centrally planned pluralism.

Beyond the veil
Irfan Husain

FAR too frequently, Muslim women are victims of injustice and discrimination. Apart from the suffering this causes, such primitive attitudes have tarnished the image of Islam. Take the recent Guardian story reporting the efforts of the British High Commission in Islamabad to rescue citizens of Kashmiri and Punjabi origin forced into marriage and virtually kidnapped. According to this report, hundreds of such girls are brought to their ancestral homes in Pakistan on the pretext of a vacation. Once here, their passports are taken away, and they are forcibly married to cousins they have never met before. After being born and brought up in the UK, and suddenly thrust into a primitive environment with a total stranger for a husband, many of the victims try and escape back to Britain. In their desperation, some of them manage to smuggle a message to the British High Commission which, with the help of the local police, organise carefully planned rescue missions.
Once the victim has been freed, she is kept at a shelter run by a local NGO until her travel documents are ready, and she can fly back to Britain. But her ordeal doesn’t end there: she will have to face parents and brothers who connived in her kidnapping in the first place. The issue of forced marriages and honour killings have been the subject of much discussion and debate in UK and the rest of Europe for some years now. Earlier ignored under the notion of ‘political correctness’ which accepted such behaviour in the name of cultural diversity, these practises are now coming under fire. From another part of the world comes yet another threat to women: extreme Islamic groups in Bangladesh have vowed to kill women who do not cover themselves completely in public. The warning extends equally to Muslims and non-Muslims. This Talibanesque edict has sent a wave of fear though millions of Bangladeshi women, particularly in the wake of extremist violence there.
In terms of personal freedoms and access to education and health, Muslim women in the subcontinent lag far behind their non-Muslim sisters despite the many cultural similarities that obviously exist. It is glib to dismiss these inequalities by citing Islamic traditions or law. After all, women in countries like Turkey, Malaysia and so many others in Muslim world are not subjected to such repressive laws and customs. Even in a secular country like India, despite the Supreme Court decision in the famous Shah Bano case, the Congress government passed a constitutional amendment decreeing that Muslim family law would govern issues like divorce, child custody and so on. This opportunistic act has put Indian Muslim women at a huge disadvantage. In the Canadian province of Ontario, a similar attempt was made by a section of the Muslim community, but mercifully, better sense prevailed among lawmakers, and this initiative was rejected.
And if a woman does indeed transgress, surely that is a matter between her and her Maker, and not one to be adjudged by a family member or a mullah. In any society based on justice, the laws must be uniformly applicable to all citizens. However, our repressive Hudood ordinance targets women, and allows rapists to get away scot-free due to the requirement of getting four male witnesses to establish that the crime was indeed committed. Many Islamic scholars have argued that this interpretation is not based on the scriptures, and yet, successive governments have allowed this law to stand for two decades. Ultimately, the struggle to release women from bondage is a political one. Liberation is seldom handed over; it has to be fought for. We are fortunate to have a number of brave women who have waged a lonely and often silent battle for gender justice. But increasingly, this struggle is coming under the spotlight of international scrutiny. Unfortunately, Pakistani leadership is more receptive to outside pressure than internal criticism. As the Mukhtaran Mai saga showed us, the struggle for human rights is now often a global one. Repression is no longer a sovereign right of despotic rulers and societies. The foot soldiers in the gender wars are no longer alone.