The New Nation - Internet Edition

Contaminated milk powder

BANGLADESH depends heavily on imported milk powder for children. Following the report of melamine contamination in Chinese milk powder the government of Bangladesh banned procurement, stocking and sale of three brands of milk powder imported from China. Simultaneously, Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institution (BSTI) was asked to test imported milk powder of all origins. As BSTI is not equipped with necessary facilities to detect melamine in milk powder, the Department of Chemistry, Dhaka University, was requested to conduct the test. According to the findings of the test, melamine has been found in 8 brands of imported milk powder. Countries from which these 8 brands have been imported include China, New Zealand, Australia and Denmark. Milk powder of 28 more brands are awaiting testing.

The findings of the test are extremely alarming. It appears that almost all the milk powders imported are fatally contaminated with melamine. The situation demands urgent action from the government to complete the remaining tests. There should be total ban on import of brands that have been found to be contaminated and their stocks in the country should be destroyed. Retail sellers should be prohibited from selling of milk powder without up-to-date certification from BSTI. To accelerate testing and improve the capacity for it, BSTI and other bodies should be equipped with necessary facilities without delay. To meet the shortfall in the market resulting from the ban on import and sale of contaminated milk powder, import of brands that are found safe should be arranged jointly by the TCB and the private sector. Side by side, campaign should be strengthened to encourage mothers to breastfeed babies.

The situation is not only serious but also very alarming. It demands action from the government on an emergency basis. Unfortunately, the sense of urgency appears to be inadequate so far.

Narrowing trade gap with China

CHINA has agreed to reduce its trade gap with Bangladesh through duty-free access of more Bangladeshi products. Bangladesh's annual exports to China are very insignificant compared to its imports from that country. During the fiscal year 2007-08, this gap stood over as high as three billion US dollars. Bangladesh imported Chinese goods worth over US$3,100 million against export of over US$100 million during the year. The trade gap during the preceding year was more than US$2,444 million.

Bangladesh's poor export performance is responsible for this. Under the Asia Pacific Trade Agreement (APTA), Bangladesh has been given duty-free and quota-free access for 84 of its products but the opportunity could not be utilised as reportedly there are only seven items to get the facility. Against this backdrop Bangladesh requested the visiting Chinese trade team to allow duty-free access to 74 more products to narrow the gap. The team is exploring the possibility of increasing import from Bangladesh. The Chinese importers signed 12 contracts with Bangladeshi exporters worth US$80 million that will help narrow the trade imbalance. China has shown this gesture at a time when many developed countries have shown reluctance to allow access to products under the Doha round trade negotiations.

Trade balance with most partners is against Bangladesh. To come out of this, Bangladesh must strive hard to exploit its export potential to the fullest. This can be achieved through diversification of exports. The Chinese market may be surveyed for exploring exports. Information about the Bangladeshi products, their quality and competitive prices must be made available to potential buyers. Trade fairs may be organised in different cities in China. Chinese importers should be invited to fairs that are organised within the country.

UNDP performance in Bangladesh

Dr. M. S. Haq

A brief analysis of media (print, electronic, others) reports, from time to time in recent times, on developmental activities (etc.) of resident donor organizations in Bangladesh would reveal inter alia: performances of UNDP in the country, under the stewardship of resident representative Ms. Renata Dessallien, have apparently been trailing behind performances of other resident donor organizations such as the World Bank, USAID, UNICEF and WFP in certain substantive areas of the country's development at local, national and other levels. It now appears to me UNDP-Dhaka is perhaps suffering from a kind of illness in above areas that would require an immediate and effective clinical attention, among other things.

One of the concerns here is, a failure on the part of UNDP - a predominantly grant based development support organization - to maximize, on a continuous basis, the return on investment in areas say, poverty reduction and human development could affect, in a negative fashion and among other things, the donors' confidence, motivation and participation in a somewhat crumbling domain of development related grant businesses.

Further, factors such as and as appropriate - -

1. a continually poor management of aid money and other aid resources by poor countries;

2. a continuous holding of shares by aid givers, aid takers, aid intermediaries and concerned others (used in a wider sense) in almost unaccounted for aid money and other aid resources in concerned countries;

3. a continually unacceptable wastage of aid money and other aid resources at policy, program, implementation and other levels of say, donor supported local and national programs - due, among other things, to reluctance on the part of donor countries, program countries, beneficiaries and concerned others to change for better in a timely, collective and result oriented manner for optimization of mutual benefits in relevant areas (per se), a general lack of futuristic elements in donor driven programs, and a dearth of breakthroughs in areas of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, engineering and technology associated with local developments and world developments, to mention a few;

3. an impending global recession and its impact on aid economy, in particular on grant economy;

4. the need for what I would call development and implementation of more balanced and result-oriented interfaces between development loan approaches and development grant approaches and vice versa for bringing about more ownership, more accountability, more realism (I mean, developmental realism) and more return than that at present in the domain of external aid and cooperation at state, people and other levels;

5. Development programs focusing on areas for example, poverty, hunger, climate change, human rights, human development and governance are yet to benefit maximally from outcomes of for example, cross-fertilization of pertinent comparative, competitive and other advantages of donor countries, client countries, beneficiaries and concerned others in a harmonized and sustainable manner and to the satisfaction of all stakeholders - at least to an acceptable extent. I believe the shortfall mentioned above is, at this point in time, one of the core challenges to efforts towards what I would call - a 'full' globalization of development;

6. failures on the part of aid managers, aid workers, aid beneficiaries and other aid stakeholders to harnessing and recycling maximally the product of chain reactions of forward, backward, sideway and other linkages of pertinent development programs - in pursuits of for example enhancing quality impacts of development programs at a minimal cost on concerned beneficiaries at least throughout their life time, for an instance; and

7. an average lack of commitment on the part of all concerned to build upon existing capacities (as feasible) on a continuous basis in pursuits of for example, helping world poor to help themselves - - could pose inter alia a formidable challenge to for example UNDP supported national programs in Bangladesh and else where in the world, as appropriate.

I believe the ongoing effort of UN Secretary-General Moon, members of UN teams, the World Bank (WB) and other development partners, member countries of UN including inter alia the US, India and Japan, and concerned others towards UN reforms - used in a wider sense - would focus on, among other things, growing short falls in the development dimension of the big UN. In that respect, it is expected UN, WB, governments and others will step up their effort towards for example delivering, in the near future, products of development - wrapped up fully (I mean, as required) in developmental synergies - to beneficiaries at local, national, regional, global and other levels.

I also believe UN resident coordinator (in Bangladesh) Mrs. Renata Dessallien and her team should focus - at this critical hour of the country's history - on inter alia: how best and quickest the UN system in Bangladesh could, in a non-partisan manner, assist maximum number of Bangladeshis in their effort towards exercising their voting rights in the election - slated for December 2008 - without any problem and to their maximum satisfaction.

The last word: UN should not be seen violating what it stands for. Let us work towards that with strong commitments, determinations and foresightedness and in an intelligent, as well as sustainable manner.

Time to look beyond Hamid Karzai

Moeed Pirzada

Lies, denials and propaganda don't change realities. Truth has a nasty habit of sneaking out. And sometimes it even bombards. In the last two weeks it blasted like a hailstorm on Bush administration's Afghanistan policy.

First it was the Brigadier General Mark Carleton Smith, the outgoing top commander of the British forces in Afghanistan who admitted to Sunday Times in London that absolute military victory in Afghanistan is impossible. This bombshell from the good general soon lost its value with the news that Saudi King has arranged a meeting between the representatives of Hamid Karzai, the Afghan President, and those of Mullah Omar, elusive fugitive leader of the former Taleban regime and that the former Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif, the most popular of the Pakistani politicians, is somehow part of these negotiations.

Whatever doubts could have been there were removed by Karzai himself who offered, in an interview on GEO Television, that he will personally guarantee the security of Mullah Omar if he decides to come to Afghanistan. This was certainly the biggest over-commitment of 21st century in the sense that Karzai cannot guarantee his own security outside Kabul's green zone and that too with the help of US Special Forces. But let's move forward as more interesting things followed.

French, jumped in with the leak of conversation between Sherard Cowper-Coles, the British envoy to Afghanistan and Francois Fitou, the French Deputy Ambassador to Kabul in which that top British diplomat predicted that Nato-lead military campaign against Taleban is destined to fail. But this was not all; the British Ambassador went on to argue that the foreign military presence is not part of the solution but that of the problem and that the best solution for Afghanistan would be installing an "acceptable dictator"

General David Petraeus, Bush Administration's hero of Iraq, who is now taking over the US Central Command from end October, then joined with his own prescription. While speaking to a forum hosted by Heritage Foundation, he said that negotiations with some members of the Taleban could provide a way to reduce violence in parts of Afghanistan.

This was enough for any columnist to draw his or her own juicy conclusions about the shape of things to come but it looks like that the good Americans did not want to take any chances; lest there is any ambiguity. So we had another leak. New York Times disclosed that the draft National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), the first serious compilation of 16 Intelligence Agencies on the situation in Afghanistan, admitted that beyond the cross-border attacks the situation in Afghanistan is a mess created by the corrupt Karzai government that is not capable to stem the rise in Taleban's influence.

I have always wondered: do leaks just happen or are done to send messages; to shape things along? The leak in Le Canard Enchaine, the Parisian paper, was certainly an expression of the French unwillingness to move along with a war that is increasingly not making any sense to European governments and the media - but then what is the significance of the leak of the National Intelligence Estimate?

I think we now have sufficient meat at the table to conclude a few things: One, US desperately needs a period of relative stability to declare victory in Afghanistan; Two, US and allies have concluded that such period of stability will not be possible without engaging at least some parts of Taleban resistance; Three; this marks the beginning of the end of the regime of President Hamid Karzai in Kabul.

At this point Hamid Karzai's situation now resembles that of General Musharraf towards the end of 2007 when he was asked to take off his uniform and hold elections with promises of continuing support from White House. No one knows how quickly General Petraeus, Pentagon's Houdini sets things into motion on this roadmap but the sooner he does the better it will be for everyone: for Afghanistan, for the US and its European allies, for Pakistan, Iran and even the Indians. And trust me this may be the best happy ending for Karzai too: safe with a lucrative future as lobbyist in Washington.

However, what frightens is that while the rational feedback and assessments flow from Pentagon and the Intelligence community there is no end to irresponsible political rhetoric in the US.

If I were George Bush or any of his intellectual cronies or even an ordinary American of any sort that supported all those gory actions since 9/11, and I now look around at: the mess in Iraq, failure in Afghanistan, suicide bombers popping up like Champagne bottles in nuclear Pakistan; or the melt down of the US economy with three of the five major investment banks disappearing and America the quintessential Mecca of capitalism embracing a half socialist economy after lecturing the whole world on the benefits of free markets, I am sure looking at all this I would either end up in a confession chamber in a church or worse: on a coach with a Freudian or Jungian analyst - preferably that looks like Sarah Palin - getting at least that part of my head examined that dealt with my foreign policy aspirations.

No! But this is not what we see inside the US. Instead we still see a public, a media and political elite that are so disconnected with ground realities, so obsessed with their own propaganda that the Presidential candidates try to outsmart each other in conceiving ever more aggressive military strategies for Afghanistan. Can you believe that they still think that the utter rot, the failure of the last seven years, can be managed by sending another three brigades to Afghanistan?

In reality whosoever wins the elections, America and the world needs a political leadership in Washington that can demonstrate wisdom and responsibility to fix up the economic mess, rejuvenate the markets and can take steps to restore America's lost prestige. And preparing for a phased, ordered withdrawal from Afghanistan can be an important first step in that direction.

Many in this region will like the US to ultimately leave Afghanistan in haste and disgrace.

But this will further embolden the forces of medieval Islam and increase the regional chaos. America must be able to leave with a stable functioning system behind and if we reflect on all the disclosures, leaks and assessments of the past two weeks then the only way it will be possible is: by distinguishing between Taleban and Al Qaeda; by inviting Taleban to join a broad based government in Kabul and by working with both Iran and Pakistan to ensure the stability of a post-Karzai regime. May be David Petraeus understands that.

Embedded reporting and real face of war

Phillip Knightley

Martin Bell, a much-respected British war correspondent, has recently completed a half century in war zones, much of it as a reporter for the BBC. He has written in "The Death of News", a moving obituary for war reporting.

Bell says war reporting as the world has known it since William Howard Russell first sent news of the British expedition to the Crimea, is over. "Twenty-first century warfare as conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan offers no foothold for independent and free-ranging journalism. Reporters are driven back into green zones and fortified compounds where they no longer have a function as eyewitnesses.

"Embedded reporting is so limited in scope that it serves as little more than a recruiting movie. Wars which are fought among the people are no longer reported from among the people. The news agenda has also retreated from the real world into a comfort zone of its own."

Bell reserves his most telling scorn for television war reporting. He says it is not for journalists so much as for performers. "Some networks even have a style coach to teach their people to talk and walk and wave their arms at the same time. . . Television is also deeply culpable for th e censorship it imposes on itself. This has nothing to do with operational security. It is applied to cut out from the coverage of armed conflict the images of real world violence that might upset the viewers."

Bell says that he fought this battle with his editors, and lost it, throughout the Balkan wars of the 1990s. "We showed the outgoing fire and not nearly enough of the effects of the incoming: the death and destruction, the bloodshed and the horror, the waste of young lives, even in some cases the grieving of relatives, because that would be too upsetting. We were not just prettifying war, we were falsifying it. And this is dangerous because if you obscure the reality, it then becomes an acceptable way of settling differences. No wonder this generation of peacetime politicians resorts to it so easily."

Bell calls on a "thoroughly-modern soldier", General Sir Rupert Smith, and his book, The Utility of Force, to help make his case. The book, published after the Iraq war of 2003, has been as influential in analysing the nature of war in our time as Clausewitz was in his. Bell says that no aspiring commander of forces in the field, "from West Point to Sandhurst to the Emirates of the Gulf can afford not to have read it."

General Smiths central thesis is that war has ceased to exist. "Confrontation, conflict and combat undoubtedly exist. States still have armed forces which they use a symbol of power. None the less, war as cognitively known to most non-combatants, war as a battle in a field between men and machinery, war as a massively deciding event in a dispute in international affairs, such war no longer exists."

It has been replaced, Smith argues, by what he calls "war among the people", in which the application of military power on an industrial scale, is actually counter-productive. "Go in amongst the people, and every time we use our strength, we fail to achieve our objective. Instead we often reinforce our opponent's ability to achieve HIS objective because his strategy is to get us to over-react."

Bell comments: "This was one of the lessons of the war in Iraq. Another was that, like war itself, war reporting as we have known it no longer exists. Hence the death of news."

Bell accuses no war reporter of outright lying. But he argues that lying by omission is common. He says the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission reported a two-day battle in Helmand province in June 2007 between British forces on one side and the Taleban on the other. Neither side appeared to suffer any military casualties. But air strikes left 27 civilians dead including 17 children.

"At the time the incident went unreported in the media. Either by accident or design, the embeds were nowhere near it. It is hard to escape the conclusion that in the absence of independent journalism that has been driven from the field, embedded reporting is by its nature deeply and dangerously misleading."

But where is the outcry from the readers and viewers accusing the media bosses of failing properly to report wars? The sad truth is that in the new millennium government propaganda prepares its citizens for war so skilfully that a change in the media attitude would probably make little difference.

A study by David E. Morrison, Television and the Gulf War, showed that viewers made little demand to be shown the "true face of battle", many saying that images of bomb victims and battle casualties would be "too upsetting". If fact, if viewers had any complaint about television coverage of the war it was that stations devoted too much time to it ("squeezed it for everything it was worth") and that this disrupted their favourite programmes. It is hard not to despair.