The
Week In Review
Billions
around the world welcome Barack Obama
--
PARAMANAND SOOBARAH
Barack
Obama has lit the flame of hope in the hearts of billions in
America and around the world. The excitement of his election
as President of the United States has cooled down a little;
the immediate crying and screaming has stopped, but the
flame of hope is now burning bright in everybody's heart.
Not just in America – everywhere where there has been any discrimination
against people because of the circumstances of their birth.
Europe
-- led by Britain, France, Spain and Germany -- is the
continent where racial discrimination is more deep-rooted
than in America or anywhere else. This comes from the
history of these countries: they dominated the dark races of
the world located in Africa, Asia and South America for
several centuries, officially in an effort to save the souls
of the peoples of those continents and civilize them
(remember Kipling's poem about the white man's burden?) but
in actual fact plundering their wealth and destroying their
civilizations, and in the case of Africa, enslaving their
populations to develop continents and islands they had
confiscated from their rightful but dark owners after
decimating them. Most whites in Europe still consider that
they are somehow superior to any black, brown or yellow
person. Why else would crowds of thousands spontaneously
burst into racial chanting when black players take hold of
the ball in football games in European countries?
After
Japan defeated Russia in a naval war in 1904-1905, the
Europeans developed some respect for the Japanese, but
continued to despise others including the Chinese, who
Britain had humiliated in the so-called Opium War. The
British were cultivating opium in India and selling it to
the Chinese; when some Chinese leaders protested, they were
"taught a lesson" by being invaded, and had to buy
their freedom back by leasing Hong Kong to the British as a
trading post for a hundred years. If there is one thing the
West regards very highly it is military might. One can then
understand the change in European attitudes towards China
when the latter country demonstrated its technical and
military prowess by letting off nuclear bombs in the
sixties.
The
Indians remained by and large objects of contempt because,
even though they had demonstrated their capabilities with a
nuclear bomb in 1974, they had preferred to go
"non-violent" and not weaponise that capability.
Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, although by and large a
man of peace, understood these matters and decided to
reverse that policy. Things have changed since. One must
also note that if Pakistan did not have a nuclear weapon, in
the present circumstances it would have been overrun
throughout its length and breadth in the twinkling of an
eye. In the same vein, one may understand Iran's desire to
develop a nuclear weapon – even if one may not approve of
it.
The
next thing that the West respects and even worships is
money. The entire history of colonialism from the fifteen to
the twentieth centuries, and the suffering it entailed, can
be understood through the prisms of greed and the wealth
acquisition instinct. Better than even the British at this
game were the Spaniards and the Portuguese. When in 1493,
just one year after Columbus "discovered" America,
and before the rise of France and Britain, Spain and
Portugal, two Catholic countries, were already fighting
about the "ownership" of newly
"discovered" lands, His Holiness Pope Alexander VI
stepped in and drew for them what has since been known as
the Papal Line – everything lying to the west was
allocated to Spain and what lay to the East to Portugal,
except that Portugal got to keep Brazil. That explains why
it was the Portuguese who were the first Europeans to visit
our Island of Mauritius. The amount of suffering caused by
these two European powers during the process of saving the
souls of the locals in the countries they conquered is rivalled
only by what the Indians suffered during the mass killings
that had occurred earlier during the successive invasions
from the north.
The
British demonstrated their profound respect for money in
1980 when, because the royal Saudi family had been
displeased by the film "Death of a Princess" and
were threatening to cut off lucrative contracts. The film
told the story of the historically true case of the
beheading in modern times of a Princess who had decided to
marry a husband of her own choosing. Faced with this loss,
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher sent Foreign Secretary
Geoffey Howe over to Saudi Arabia to apologize in the most
abject manner to King Khalid about the film. Money was more
important than truth and freedom of information.
Self-respect had nothing to do with the matter.
Attitudes
towards Indians are changing slowly. In the UK, a number of
Indians are joining the billionaire-industrialist
class and, in education, the Indians (and the Chinese)
systematically outperform the natives in examinations. The
lesson for Africans is clear – they must find ways to
become wealthier in business activities and also concentrate
on the education of their children.
While
Indians have been developing their intellectual and
management powers, Africans in positions of power have been
secreting the wealth of their countries away into Swiss
banks. The revised international financial regulations
currently being mooted must attend to this aspect of
"globalisation". But the election of Barack Obama
to the most powerful position on the planet must give every
black man hope – hope that the colour of his skin need not
matter if he can concentrate his mind on the essentials.
Barack Obama is the Messenger of Hope to all people who feel
downtrodden because of the circumstances of their birth. He
holds out the promise that the attitudes of superiority
displayed by many because of the circumstances of their
birth can be deflated. In the meantime the Europeans must
hang their heads in shame for the public display of their
attitudes towards blacks during football games. It is not
true to say that only the uneducated display such attitudes.
I know from personal experience that the universities in
Britain are rife with such attitudes -- even among the
academic staff. That is why four-fifths of humanity welcomes
the rise of Barack Obama.
*
* *
Obama's
priority tasks
Following
his election, Barack Obama has gathered his principal
advisers and set to work on choosing a Cabinet and choosing
priorities of the first days of his government. He is faced
with a dire economic situation. At least he has been
providentially spared the charge that he is responsible for
it all – a charge he would have been lumbered with had the
meltdown come a few months later. We are confident that he
will address the problems as they affect America as a whole
and to the extent possible the world as a whole, not just as
they affect his friends in the capitalist world, had he any.
During the first press conference he held, a very short one,
he informed the nation the economic situation was more dire
than feared, and that was going to be his priority. But
things can go wrong even in Barack Obama's administration.
For that press conference, all his advisers were made to
march out in single file and stand to attention and wait for
for several minutes for Obama to arrive. That was probably
the doing of his newly recruited Chief of Staff. It reminded
me of one fellow who became prime minister in our own
miniscule country for a couple of years, and who every
single day of those painful years got all ministers and
other senior officials to line up in the morning waiting for
his arrival. This daily display of raw, arrogant power
became signature clip of the national TV news bulletin
everyday. God forbid that he should ever be our Prime
Minister again.
The
economic situation in America is really very bad. The stock
markets continue their giddying downward spiral.
Unemployment is rising frighteningly, and firms are closing
down one after the other. The mighty auto industry, the
engine of the manufacturing industry in America, is
bankrupt: the three giants – GM, Ford and Chrysler –
have no money to pay their employees. People have stopped
buying their gas-guzzling SUVs. The management of these
companies must have been in league with the Oil Industry to
increase the sale of gasolene. Why else would they have
continued to make and push gas-guzzlers when more economical
and environmentally-friendly cars made by Japanese
manufacturers were gaining in popularity. Barack Obama is
conscious of the problems that American families will have
to face if these three companies, and their suppliers of
parts and services, have to close down. He is advocating a
$50 billion dollar bailout for the industry. But one hopes
that at least he will not be rewarding the incompetent
managements of these companies: they ought to be handcuffed
and marched off to jail.
Barack
Obama has to attend to electoral promises he made during the
campaign, but it appears that the American public expect him
to attend to the unforeseen emergencies first. Healthcare,
education, energy and tax cuts may take second place.
But there are certain foreign relations matters that
may not wait. Pure coincidence has brought one foreign
relations matter to the fore. It just happened that the
Russian equivalent of the State-of-the-Union address by the
Head of State happened on the day after Barack Obama's
election. For Russia the Bush Administration's plans to
install missile-launching sites in Eastern Europe is
understandably a matter of great concern. The Bush
administration says that these installations are directed
against Iran. That may well be the case, but the Russians
can be forgiven for feeling threatened. The direct path that
a long-range missile from Iran to America would take does
pass over Poland – this becomes evident if you look at a
map of the world in an atlas that is centred on the North
Pole, particularly the variety of it that goes under the
name of "gnomonic" – but you will see that the
path also goes over Scotland. Possibly a missile site in
Scotland or the Scottish Islands would have been less
disquieting for the Russians than the one in Poland. Barack
Obama is under strong pressure by the military not to
abandon the missile siting project. Barack Obama will have
to move very cautiously on this issue. Everything ought to
be done to avoid a new cold war without sacrificing vital
national interests.
*
* *
The
Middle East
While
people around the world, including the Middle East and South
Asia, have enthusiastically welcomed the election of Barack
Obama, perhaps the most pressing foreign relations for
America are in those regions. Chief among them is the
Afghanistan-Pakistan conundrum. Not too far behind are the
Israel-Palestine and the Iran militarisation issues. One
problem that does not get mentioned, but which is perhaps
the source of them all, is Saudi Arabia whose current ruling
family is propped up by Wahabism and who are bent on
spreading that particular brand of Islam throughout the
world.
Both
Prime Minister Al Maliki and President-elect Barack Obama
want the American troops out of Iraq, so there should be no
problem. However there is the thorny question of the
jurisdiction under which American soldiers and the American
civilian agencies will operate during the rest of their
stay. It is not widely known that there are more civilian
operators in Iraq than military ones, for much of the Iraq
"mission" was outsourced by then Defence Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld to his friends in Haliburton and Blackwater
companies. The personnel of the latter move around with guns
and have been known to kill Iraqis indiscriminately – and
get away with it because they are under American
jurisdiction. The Iraqi government is understandably unhappy
about this situation and wants to see it changed. These
discussions may drag on until the Americans are all gone.
There
is one danger with a swift American withdrawal. The Sunni
community has been more or less disinherited from the power
and wealth of Iraq, which they actually "owned" in
Saddam Hussein's days. Central power now lies in the hands
of the Shias who are very friendly towards Iran, while the
north is for all practical purposes an autonomous area under
the control of the Kurds. The eruption of civil war is not
impossible under such circumstances. Turning over all
political planning to the Shia-dominated government may not
have been the wisest thing to do in the circumstances, but
there is little that a Barack Obama administration can do to
change this state of affairs. Iraq is moving on rails
engineered by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld together with
their appointee Paul Bremer, and things will have to work
themselves out as best they can.
South
Asia
Pakistan
is the hardest nut to crack for Barack Obama. To an outside
observer, it appears that Pakistan is a multiplicity of
nations. There is the westernised, highly educated Pakistan
of the Benazir class. Surprisingly former President
Musharraf also supported this class – he was fond of
showing off his pet dog, an animal which is anathema to the
fundamentalist. Then there is the equally educated legal
community who think that Pakistan should be following the
Indian path where the British-style Supreme Court has the
final say in what is right or wrong. They have many
followers in the community at large who believe that there
will be no development in the country if there isn't also a
British-style justice system. There are others who just want
to be left in peace and lead their lives. Then there are
others who believe they must live in the prescribed Islamic
way – according to their interpretation of the texts, but
will not meddle with others. There are others who will not
only lead such lives but who would also want all their
neighbours and the people in public lives lead such lives.
One
man of this class, a butcher by trade, shot and killed a
lady minister in the Musharraf government because she was
not properly dressed (she was addressing a meeting
bareheaded – without the prescribed head scarf). As a
guardian of the true religion, he would do it again, he
said. Anybody who has strong religious views considers
himself a guardian of true religion and is prepared to kill
to make sure others respect that view of religion.
Then
there are those, in no way a majority of Pakistanis, the
Talibans, who think it important to support the Afghan
Talibans and Al-Qaeda to wrest Afghanistan back from that
Western puppet, Hamid Karzai. Finally there is the Army with
its Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI), who somehow
think that the country belongs to them and act in what they
think to be its best interests, mostly without reference to
the elected representatives of the people.
If
a neighbour's child throws stones into your yard, and the
neighbour does not move to stop that behaviour, and there is
no police force that you can appeal to, you might think it
reasonable to take some action with the children yourself.
But when neighbouring countries behave this way, there
arises the notion of sovereignty. This is a highly developed
notion in Pakistan – never mind that successive Pakistani
governments have extended "political and moral
support", a euphemism for all possible types of
material and logistical help, to "jehadis" who
went out to attack neighbouring countries. George W. Bush
had decided he was not going to put up with this nonsense.
Barack Obama will have to consider the matter over again,
will hopefully negotiate with the new government, and then
take a decision. The world is waiting with baited breath.
In
the meantime the Pakistan government and the Pakisani
population are beset with all sorts of problems: bomb blasts
are as common as in Iraq, and nobody feels safe. To cap it
all the country is beset with the worst economic crisis in
its history. The official interest rate has been raised to
15%, and the country is awaiting a decision from the IMF
regarding its application for a loan.
In
Afghanistan, Taliban attacks from across the border in
Pakistan are on the increase, and bomb blasts within the
country are also more frequent and more deadly. Side by side
with this, a bill is before Parliament re-introducing the
strict Taliban-style Islamic morality codes for the
population. This will specifically affect women and girls
who may not wear lipstick and will have to wear the hijab.
Places of entertainment will be closed down. The only hope
is that President Karzai will not sign it into law. In the
meantime people are increasingly taking matters into their
own hands. Girls attending school had acid sprayed over
their faces this week; a couple of them were blinded. For
others, the hijab they wore provided some, but not total,
protection.
In
India, the ongoing singing competition featured on Zee TV
has two Muslim girls taking part – one from Pakistan and
one from Oman, but none at all from India. The days when
Muslim women singers use to enthrall India seem to be over.
Fortunately we still have the recordings of Khurshid,
Shamsad Begum, Suraiya, Noorjehan and others. Begum Akhtar's
"Abhi to main jawan hoon" will always be there to
soothe our dreary moments.
Away
from these matters, the Indian lunar satellite has now been
positioned in its final orbit around the Moon. It will today
be releasing a probe that will hopefully come to rest on the
lunar surface and conduct some experiments. It will also be
carrying an Indian flag which it will deposit on the surface
on the moon.
*
* *
One
important national matter: The Diego Garcia Question*
What
is perhaps not sufficiently known is that the main purpose
for which the United States wanted the Island of Diego
Garcia way back in the sixties was to install a monitoring
station for the military Satellite Navigation System it was
planning under the name of Navstar, which has subsequently
come to be named the Global Positioning System (GPS). This
is a vital military tool used by all its aircraft including
the drones that fire the rockets into Pakistan. The system
needs to be monitored from the ground preferably from places
not too far from the Equator. Three places outside American
territory were identified roughly 90 degrees of longitude
apart for this purpose. They were Ascension in the Atlantic,
Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and Kwajalein (Marshal
Islands) in the Pacific.
The
United States has negotiated directly with the government of
the Marshal Islands and obtained a lease on Kwajalein. Why
couldn't a similar arrangement be found in the case of Diego
Garcia with the Government of Mauritius? The British
practice of bribing the Islanders with British nationality
and taking over their Island is illegal and immoral. What
will Britain say if the people of Bradford take Pakistani
nationality, and ask to be attached to Pakistan? Next
we will have some European power offering citizenship to
Rodriguans and taking the Island over.
We
trust that the government will try and address the question
with the Obama administration and come to some solution
modelled on the Marshall Islands case.
PARAMANAND
SOOBARAH
*
Note added on November 21, 2008:
The
Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean includes the atoll of
Diego Garcia which is used as a US military base and also
houses a GPS monitoring station. This archipelago used to be
part of the territory of the Colony of Mauritius until the
sixties when, shortly before granting the Colony
independence, Britain excised it from Mauritius to lease it
to the Americans. This action was in violation of United
Nations resolutions. The Republic of Mauritius wants the
Archipelago back under its own jurisdiction, though it is
widely understood that it would not be averse, subject to a
satisfactory agreement being concluded, to leasing it back
to the Americans, after first ensuring that th
e needs of the islanders have been met.
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