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US long term plans in Pakistan & Afghanistan
Afshain Afzal
IN THE light of my lecture
“Reconstruction Opportunity Zone in Pakistan and Afghanistan” I received
a number of e-mails requesting for some newspaper article on the subject
for the education of general public. I feel obliged to respond. In fact
back in July 2006, US Intelligence officials told a House of
Representatives’ Committee that Al Qaeda had become progressively active
in Western Pakistan and Afghanistan, where they apparently enjoy safe
haven and increased financial support. In order to reduce the threat of
attack on US interests from these regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan,
which home to a large number of Mujahideen, a plan for by creating
Reconstruction Opportunity Zones, was approved by US. The proposed
Reconstruction Opportunity Zones are intended to create job
opportunities by allowing goods produced in designated zones of Pakistan
and Afghanistan to enter the duty-free and quota-free to the United
States. Potential imports from Reconstruction Opportunity Zones in the
two countries are to include agricultural goods, clothing, textiles and
handicrafts. In fact in the name of trade with Pakistan and Afghanistan,
a long term plan has been chalked out by US, Israel, India and other
partners to separate frontier regions from both the countries. It is not
something new; the British also came to subcontinent and took similar
steps to disintegrate the states into independent strips and nations
into groups of people.
Tracing back the history, US top Trade Representative, Karan Bhatia, who
is reportedly a staunch Indian supporter, said in an interview to
Reuters in 2006 that there are very troubled regions of Pakistan and
Afghanistan and the key to resolving political challenges would be to
spur economic development in these areas such as the Northwest Frontier.
Later an Act was introduced in this regard in which the zones declared
as Reconstruction Opportunity Zone would solely encompasses portions of
the areas of Pakistan, which may include the FATA (Federally
Administered Tribal Areas), areas of Azad Jammu and Kashmir which were
harmed by the earthquake in October 2005, areas of Baluchistan that are
within 100 miles of Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, the NWFP (North
West Frontier Province) and territory of Afghanistan. The President of
US may on the designation by the competent authorities in Pakistan or
Afghanistan include other area in which merchandise may be introduced
without payment of duty or excise tax as a Reconstruction Opportunity
Zone. The sole purpose of the Act as also given in the text of the Act
is to stimulate economic activity and development in the border region
of Pakistan and Afghanistan, critical fronts in the struggle against
violent extremism. The purpose includes to reflect the strong support
that the United States has pledged to Pakistan and Afghanistan for their
sustained commitment in the GWOT (Global War on Terrorism) as well as to
support the 3-pronged United States strategy in the border region of
Pakistan and Afghanistan that leverages political, military, and
economic tools, with Reconstruction Opportunity Zones as a critical part
of the economic component of that strategy.
The US President has powers to withdraw, suspend, or limit the
application of duty-free treatment with respect to Reconstruction
Opportunity Zones in Pakistan or Afghanistan or enterprises if either
Pakistan or Afghanistan fails to adequately take the actions described
in Act or when US national security is threatened or foreign policy
interests are undermined. As an eligibility criteria, Pakistan or
Afghanistan, as the case may be is bound to establish, or is make
continual progress toward establishing a market-based economy that
protects private property rights, incorporates an open rules-based
trading system, and minimizes government interference in the economy
through measures such as price controls, subsidies, and government
ownership of economic assets. Another criterion is progress towards
establishing the rule of law, political pluralism, and the right to due
process, a fair trial, and equal protection under the law. The economic
policies should reduce poverty, increase the availability of health care
and educational opportunities, expand physical infrastructure, promote
the development of private enterprise and encourage the formation of
capital markets through micro-credit or other programs. The countries
have to develop a system to combat corruption and bribery, such as
ratifying and implementing the United Nations Convention against
corruption and protection of core labor standards.
The aim of Reconstruction Opportunity Zones is to establish US backed
market-based economy that protects private property rights so that
governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan cannot exercise their influence
and interference in the economy of these selected areas through measures
such as price controls, subsidies, and government ownership of economic
assets. Thus US intends to establish its direct control over
Reconstruction Opportunity Zones so that more or less these zones become
independent from Pakistan and Afghanistan. Stringent conditions have
also been set by US for Pakistan and Afghanistan to show continuous
progress towards establishing the rule of law, political pluralism,
right of a fair trial and equal protection under the law. Further more,
the agreement demands from both the countries to tune their economic
policies in such a manner that it should reduce poverty, increase the
availability of health care and educational opportunities, expand
physical infrastructure, promote the development of private enterprise
and encourage the formation of capital markets through micro credit or
other programs. From these conditions it is quite evident that there
would be no control of the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan in
Reconstruction Opportunity Zones while INGOs (International Non
Governmental Organizations) would be running the show. Although the
agreement is not very much in interest of either Pakistan or Afghanistan
but one of the options still available for both these countries to
correct the bad agreement is devise link agreements with stakeholders on
the same terms and conditions as they inked with the donor country or
organization. This may allow Pakistan or Afghanistan, as the case may
be, to pull back from the agreement wherever they feel threatened that
their national security or foreign policy interests are undermined.
There is no doubt that Reconstruction Opportunity Zones is a long term
plan chalked out by US, Israel, India and their other partners to
separate frontier regions including Kashmir from Pakistan and
Afghanistan.
An agenda for change
Oliver Stone
FOR eight years, George W. Bush hurt my country deeply. He pushed every
button to the extreme, in every which way, and heightened the madness
that’s possible in this country. He heightened the violence and he
heightened the greed. Then came last week and with it hope, elation and
great joy.
Barack Obama’s election was not a landslide, that was clear. He did not
carry a lot of the rural areas, and that’s going to remain an issue. But
it is the beginning of a beginning. What we are hearing is a wonderful
message, both to ourselves and the world, that America is capable of
change.
Bush was, I believe, the grandson of Richard Nixon in many ways. Now I
genuinely hope that Obama can be the heir to John F. Kennedy, who was a
great spirit and to whom very strong goodwill was granted. I felt that
in 1960 and I feel it now with Obama. The majority is rooting for him.
He’s good-looking. He has a beautiful family and people wish him well.
He has that youth and that outsider feel, that leanness of mind and
spirit. As with Kennedy, he carries the refreshing spirit of human
freedom.
The issue of colour only goes so far. I have the optimist’s worldview of
America as a tolerant place, where anyone can grow up to be the
President. It’s an amazing mythology and remains the central reason why
people want to come here. Of course, we have far from lived up to that
ideal. I grew up in New York City, where benign racism was harder to
spot than in other parts of America.
When I went into the US army in Vietnam I noticed it on another level
completely because there was such a divided culture between black and
white, and I got into that heavily, having dealt with it, to some
degree, in my films Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July.
That division between race, gender and culture empowered Nixon in the
long run. He achieved office on a platform of ‘law and order’,
emphasising the polarities and splitting the country. Bush followed this
path of splitting the country again. He used the terrorist attacks of
9/11 to create a pre-emptive war state, that divided and recreated the
fear, appointing himself as the provider of hope. It was the classic
Nixon approach: spread fear and then give them hope and then get elected
again, and then spread more fear, and then give them more hope. This is
a form of tyranny — the tyranny of fear.
They call it many things, but in Nixon’s case it was law and order,
whereas in Bush’s case it was called the ‘war on terror’, which is such
a dangerous terminology. Even as late as Thursday, he was outrageous
enough to describe this transition as the first wartime presidency
transition, warning us against any kind of softening attitude towards
his view of the ‘war on terror’. It will go down in history as a great
con trick, one of those distortions like the Crusades. ‘War on terror’:
it sounds like a religious term. It angers me that we still live in a
war state.
With luck, Obama can be the antidote. His legs may be skinny, as Arnold
Schwarzenegger said, but I think his will is strong. He’s got lean,
‘basketball’ strength. I met him twice and was highly impressed with
him.
His biggest problem is going to be the huge amount of pressure from
establishment forces that will seek to push him into corners, into
gridlock. To resist those pressures will take tremendous will and
purpose.
But he’s shown goodwill and vision and stick-to-it-ness in his thinking.
He’s as good as it gets in the American mould. He’s a smart cat and I
think that he can handle it.
Thanks to the likes of Nixon and Bush we’ve spent a lot of money on war,
on creating war, on feeding it, on living off the concept of security,
and it’s undermined the concept of what America stands for. Whenever the
agenda gets set in this country, it’s based on security, war and money.
Like the Romans had many gods, we worship three — a god of violence, a
god of greed and some sort of a Judeo-Christian god of great authority
and spiritual determinism.
Take your pick. We are spending close to a trillion dollars on our
Pentagon budget. You spend a trillion dollars on that, but spend so
little on the things that matter to the people who live in that national
security state that all priorities go out of whack - you don’t take care
of your own family.
Why can’t this new President decide the agenda? Could he determine that
maybe he would like to make healthcare reform or welfare or education
his first priority? For Obama it would be very difficult to say, as a
first point in his agenda, let’s cut 25 per cent of the defence budget.
If he insisted on reinvesting money in that way, it would shock the
world; there would be such resistance to it. Special interests,
lobbyists, corporate interests are so strong in this country; they
haven’t gone away. There’s a hard-line security party in opposition, led
by McCain and Bush, that’s a frightening and daunting machine for Obama
to go up against.
As I put in my film W, we have bases in 120 countries. Despite our
democratic intentions, we are a military empire. We don’t call ourselves
that, but we function as that. We have this enormous support structure
of men and women overseas. It’s a form of national employment, but it’s
a profoundly mendacious, dangerous, costly worldwide position to
maintain, so similar to Winston Churchill’s impossible dream during the
Second World War of preserving the British Empire. Obama will have to
decide: do we continue this debacle of empire?
There is no doubt the job is enormous. It’s equivalent to what Franklin
D Roosevelt faced in 1932. There’s that sense of a huge change in
America. And I think the expectations are so high of him they become
dangerous because they can lead our egos to the edge of disaster.
The mood this weekend is similar to the dawn of Kennedy’s Camelot. But
perhaps it is more accurate to say that Obama has the potential to be a
Roosevelt. I don’t know that he can change things radically, but he can
start to move things in another direction.
He has talked about serious alternative energy research, climate
control, co-operating with our allies, racial tolerance and diversity,
education, reassessing security, changing the concept of the war on
terror into something more manageable and real. He can do so much. Just
changing the angle of perception a little bit in another direction, and
educating a younger generation to think in a more humble way about our
empire and its real ?goals, is an epochal choice still available to us.
Oliver Stone is an eminent Hollywood filmmaker. His latest movie is W, a
biopic on US President George W Bush. This article first appeared in The
Observer.
—Khaleej Times
Keep a sense of proportion
Linda Heard
A LONG with most people around
the world I’ve been rooting for Barack Obama, now America’s
president-elect. This time, the American people chose well. With the
country’s economy and foreign policy in a shambles it wasn’t difficult
to opt for change rather than McCain — more of the same. But unlike
most, Obama’s Nov. 4 triumph was a hopeful rather than an emotional
moment for me. While acknowledging his rise to the top as a historic
civil rights milestone I don’t give one jot about the color of a US
president’s skin and neither am I interested in his spouse’s wardrobe
choices or what breed of puppy the new first family will opt for. In the
final analysis, it’s his policies and the way they are implemented that
count. Will they alleviate suffering, help quell conflicts, heal
divisions and successfully battle the ongoing global financial tsunami
are questions I want resolved. However, we’re going to have to wait many
months for answers. For following his Jan. 20, 2009 inauguration into
office he will be wrapped up with tackling the economy and dismantling
the more myopic of his predecessor’s executive orders...at least for a
while.
Obama out there on the stump definitely talked a good talk but whether
or not he can walk the walk is yet to be seen. I hesitate to prejudge
him when he hasn’t even arranged his Oval Office desk but I can’t help
noticing that his choice of advisers thus far is inauspicious when it
comes to the Middle East. Take his new White House Chief of Staff Rahm
Israel Emanuel, born with dual American-Israeli nationality and an
Israeli Defense Forces civilian volunteer during the 1991 Gulf War. IT’S
doubtful he’s capable of impartiality on the Israel-Palestine conflict
given that his father Benjamin was in the Irgun and saw fit to name his
son after a fallen member of the Stern Gang. Judging by a quote in an
Israeli daily, this former member of a terrorist organization must be
proud of his offspring. “Obviously, he will influence the president to
be pro-Israel,” he said. “Why shouldn’t he do it? What is he, an Arab?
He’s not going to clean the floor of the White House”.
Needless to say, Rahm Emanuel is a friend to AIPAC and may well have a
“to do” list on its behalf. There is speculation that Rahm’s appointment
was Obama’s thank you gift to this powerful pro-Israel lobby. For people
here, the fact that the new incumbent sees fit to surround himself with
unsuccessful old guard such as Dennis Ross, co-founder of the pro-Israel
think tank the Washington Institute for Near East policy, and Clinton’s
former secretary of state the hard-headed, hard-hearted Madeleine
Albright who thought the death of half-a-million Iraqi children due to
US-led sanctions was worth it. At the moment the tendency here is to
make excuses for Obama. People who disapprove of his new best friends as
well as his self-alienation from the Palestinian issues he once claimed
to support tend to think, ‘Oh well! What can he do? He has no choice but
to show goodwill to the overwhelmingly pro-Israel Congress and country
if he wants to have any chance of succeeding”. Even if there is credence
to this view, Obama should be careful not to go overboard. If he really
plans to change the world, as he says, he will require the cooperation
of many more countries besides Israel. Middle East leaders are currently
welcoming his election and giving him the benefit of the doubt. This is
the honeymoon but like all of them it won’t last forever. You may have
noticed, too, that Obama’s rhetoric on Iran has hardened. From declaring
his desire to talk to America’s enemies, including Iran, without
preconditions, he is now issuing demands and couched threats which
dampen bilateral US-Iran dialogue before it even begins.
—Arab News
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