It´s Afghanistan, stupid!

Following what President Obama stated during his campaign, the new American administration has started shifting its foreign policy efforts away from Irak to focus on Afghanistan. Along with a deployment of additional troops, however, comes the news that the administration is seriously considering displacing Afghan President Karzai from government, in favor of some new and apparently more reliable and potentially effective candidates.

Despite the corruption cases in Karzai´s government, and the presence of warlords both in the national and local administration, the US should not involve itself in the daily political management of the country. On the one hand, it comes as no surprise corruption is thriving in one of the poorer countries on earth; on the other hand President Karzai had to co-opt certain warlords as the only way to mantain peace and keep some provinces (more or less) under Kabul´s rule. Politics in Afghanistan is a chaotic and undemocratic business but, what were we in the Western world expecting after a 30 years war in a country that always remained stuck in a sort of economic and social Middle Ages? What do we expect after failing to live up to our promises to assist them with substantial economic and financial help and the deployment of enough troops to guarantee peace in the country? We are helping them, somehow, though this is far from enough, and also far from what we committed ourselves to do, but nevertheless our patience is running out with countries such as Afghanistan, which do not democratize at the pace we want them to become Jeffersonian democracies.

After the tragic failure of the ill-conceived experiment in Irak, it should be clear for everyone that Afghanistan is the primary token if the West is to be trusted in its claims to be working to bring democracy and prosperity to countries that still enjoy no political freedom. If we are to succeed here, both in our terms -international security and democratic principles- and in theirs -Afghans are asking for our help to build a peaceful, viable State-, we should devote our efforts not to the realm of micro-politics but to building capacities, that is, infraestructure, roads, hospitals, schools, telecommunications, police, internal safety, law enforcement, market development, criminal justice, women´s health, education and protection… All this implies devoting money and personnel, and lots of it, but also trusting locals and working with them in identifiying their own needs, as opposed to imposing our goals. Only as a consecuence of a long term economic and social transformation could this place start its journey towards a viable, sustainable and fair democracy. We cannot change overnight what has remained like this for ages. We cannot allow ourselves to be inpatient. We should be ready to commit ourselves for a long time. It is worth it, and not only for Afghanistan itself and their inhabitants, but also as an example of what we are willing to do to help other countries and even as a proof of the coherence between our beliefs and our democracy promotion efforts.

Photo: ‘Kabul, Afghanistan’, 2009 © Lyndsey Addario, The New York Times

A double-edged Olympic sword

As a part of a diplomatic offensive this week, the Chinese government has criticized American human rights record, poverty and racial divides, after the American Department of State only mildly critiziced Chinese human rights abuses, and even erased the country from the list of the serious human rights abuses, to the outrage of international human rights NGO´s. China´s protest constitutes a shameful and hypocritical move, since China´s performance in these fields is among the worst in the planet. The offensive tries to counteract Western condemnation of Chinese human rights abuses just before the Olympic Games in Beijing. China has staked enormously in the gigantic public relations operation the Games amount to, whose aim is to show the world how far has China reached in its quest for development. However, the idea Chinese officials have in mind when thinking about development may have nothing to do with the image it conjures up for the Westerner, since the latter includes not only living conditions but also freedom and respect for individuals, whereas the former just points to a kind of competition to attain material and technological goals. In other words, it is all about national pride, a very Asian concept, by the way.

The Olympic Games should have never been granted to China, probably the most serious human rights violator in the world. Once the appropriate international bodies took the decision, the only action left for democratic governments and peoples is to actively boycott them. And for the boycott to be really effective, it should be a widespread Western decision, regardless the Chinese reaction to it. During the Cold War, the Moscow 1980 Olympic Games Western boycott did not lead us to the Third World War; if anything, it contributed to the Soviet regime´s collapse. Moreover, China needs Western markets desperatedly, so here we have a powerful tool to exert influence on the country. And to those claiming we should not mix sports with politics, let us note an event such as the Olympic Games is one of the best examples of global politics nowadays. Besides, the political nature of the Games is officially recorgnized by the Chinese government, which rightly weighted the huge opportunities to improve its international image the gathering offered. However, when betting on the Games, Chinese officials seemed oblivious to the fact that in our globalized world, they are a double-edged sword. Therefore, a big-scale fiasco would project a multiplied image of incompetence, corruption and, ultimately, backwardness. That would imply losing face, again, a very important concept in Asian cultures.

It is this multiplier effect we need to take advantage of to expose China´s abusive public policies towards its own citizens, raise awareness about its immoral international behaviour -i.e.: its role in the Darfur crisis-, and show our solidarity with Chinese dissidents and human rights activists. No one is denying China its right to economic and social development, but the Free World -a Cold War expression which is nevertheless relevant today, unfortunately- should send a clear message: if the Chinese government wants its country to be accepted as a major actor in the international community, it should respect life, freedom, and human rights.

Read on:

Human Rights Watch last report on China´s abuses on Beijing´s migrant construction workers.

On China´s disastrous environmental record.

On China´s international public relations setbacks as a consecuence of the Olympic Games exposure.

On Chinese officials defending China´s stand in Darfur and criticizing the Olympics tie-in.

Photo: Woman holding a dog, Beijing, 2007 © Nataliebehring

Not so modern now

Watching Charles Chaplin´s Modern Times (1936), I wonder how accurately it reflects daily life in the thirties, at least for the average American people. Though it may not be the main argument of the movie -I think it points more toward the confussion and perplexity of the common folk in a whole new social and economic environment-, I guess it gives a rather precise portrait of the difficulties -stagnant unenployment, great numbers of working individuals living in sheer poverty, 12-hour workdays, repetitive tasks in the working line, a biased system of criminal justice- the working masses had to face back then. However, and contrary to what many collectivists would like us to believe, this is not the situation we witness today. At least in the Western world -obviously, in other regions things are quite different, but nevertheless their way out is just the same- knowledge is the main characteristic of labour markets. In developed economies -and let us not forget our modern socioeconomic systems necessarily grew out of the one Chaplin shows in his movie- aiming to produce high value goods and services, and whose markets strive to find out the tastes, needs and desires of a wide variety of consumers, independent enterpreneurs, individually taylored careers, and high skilled, flexible workers are needed in great numbers, and less so massive unskilled work. Paramount among other factors, this development has changed for good labour markets and industrial relations, often blurring distinctions between bosses and subordinates, thus making collectivist forces -trade unions, socialist parties, enemies of globalization, advocates of a much dreamed radically egalitarian paradise, and the like- look anachronistic and out of touch with reality, with all their rethoric of working classes vs. capitalistic tycoons and views of wage earners as common fellows crushed by the whimsical wishes of greedy proprietors. Very seldom tales of good and evil succeed in accounting for a complex world which is best described by its multiple shades of grey.

Photo: Charles Chaplin in the set of Modern Times, 1936 © Max M. Autrey

Post-colonial hypocrisy

In the EU-Africa summit that took place in Lisbon this past weekend, the Libyan dictator Muammar Qadhafi declared Europeans ought to compensate Africans for their past colonialism. He said a billion euros would be a suitable figure to start with. Notwithstanding how ill-managed most foreign financial help has been in the hands of corrupt and incompetent African governments, and the fact that such a sum would never reach ordinary Africans, Qadhafi shows an endless capacity for hypocrisy. Like many others, he is merely banging the drum for the idea that African backwardness is the direct consecuence of colonialism. Of course, this kind of language suits well the Western illiberal, antiglobalization ideologues and their supporters, but historical facts point otherwise. That evidence should not lead us to deny, for instance, the pernicious colonial policies of the British Empire in late ninetieth and early twentieth-centuries in Southern Africa, which destroyed a whole functioning social order and replaced it with a great deal of disarray and suffering. However, this is not equivalent to stating that without Western intervention in the continent, it would now be composed of peaceful and developed nations. Most probably it would have not, since African problems are rooted both in the past and in modern times.

In any case, being a former colony does not necessarily amount to dealing with a corrupt government and a backward and caothic economy. Many former colonies are now success stories, challenging the partial and biased claims of dogmatic populists and nostalgic collectivists. Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea are good examples of ex-colonies which made policy choices that, in turn, eventually prompted a ‘virtuous circle’ in terms of development and modernization.

Singapore was a British crown colony from 1867 until 1957, when it became a self-governing nation, though it was only in 1971 when the British withdrew their military presence. After the first and second Opium Wars (1839–42 and 1856-60), China was forced to put Hong Kong in British hands. Then, the Convention of 1898 stated that Hong Kong would be leased to Britain for 99 years (it returned to Chinese hands in 1997, though keeping a special status). Korea was a Japanese colony from 1910 to 1945, and then suffered a war from 1950 to 1953 -between its Northern and Southern parts- that cost four million lives. Nowadays -data are for 2006- Singapore enjoys a per capita income of US$29,473, the equivalent figures for Hong Kong and South Korea being, respectively, US$27,342 and US$18,220.

The complex array of reasons behind present African developmental and political difficulties lays not in its colonial past but somewhere else, and it deals more with the lack of respect for human rights, the non-existence of the rule of law and the aversion towards free markets and their necessary institutional frames (independent judiciary, democratic checks and balances, a stable economic-legal system). Some African leaders should stop looking so often for those reasons abroad and take a closer look at themselves and the policies they are pursuing.

Photo: Seme Beach, Southwest Province, Cameroon, 2005 © phil h