The New Nation - Internet Edition

Alamgir Mohiuddin

Yet another year, a time frame man has created for his own convenience, has lapsed into eternity. And tradition is to welcome it. We welcome 2009 and as we do it we recall with pain and pangs how the past year has been individually and collectively and step into the new year with equal apprehension. We also watch with a bit of frustration how little man has progressed on their cherished desire for peace, security and welfare. The cardinal question for many of us is: Will peace remain illusive as ever?

As this article appears in print, a sea change has already taken place in political scenario of Bangladesh and in the same breath the world is bracing for a change, long awaited with hope and apprehension. Remember that quaint, nostalgic struggle during the cold war, which was associated with the phrase "Peace On Earth." That politicians masquerading as god's conscience often ordered wars the way economists ask for planning studies. The western leaders swamped by bogeymen drunk with greed for wealth and power, supported by antiseptic media invasions and patriotic warmongering fever launched war which people wished absolutely to avoid. As a result the half a decade long pain imposed on the human race culminated in a promised change. In the past 50 years such foisted-wars brought more miseries to the human race than it solved any. Those nations generally consider war a good thing, not the way of cowards?

But this still does not answer the question. Wars may not again be on world scale, but the pangs and pains that the regional ones are inflicting are enormous and more pernicious and grievous. With 1.3 million Iraqis dead since the American occupation, million more maimed or wounded, the western claim of good war only starkly reveals its hollowness. When the collective will of the United Nations is decided by a few usurpers of wealth, punishments as benign as sanctions cause more deaths as in Iraq (where some six hundred thousand children died for lack of medicine and food for the sanction) and retard progress of a nation like in Libya. The new global war is being fought under different garbs and different levels.

American think- tanks called neocon or neo-conservative claim that the world can be safe only if the human race listen and practice their prescription. But this is belied in post- occupation of Iraq. Even the bogeymen there now feel that they had been used but they do not find ways to get out of the quagmire that they themselves created.

The justification for America's invasion and occupation of Iraq--- the establishment of (Western) democracy in Iraq and in the Middle East and removal of dictatorship appear as greater danger to them. But neocon logic is the only true guarantor of peace and prosperity. Whether this stand of the occupiers will continue to haunt the Iraqis and, for that matter, the world will be tested in 2009. Even they do not profess it loudly and clearly the true intentions which is to occupy and control the oil-rich region of the world and establish Pax Americana, this is no longer a secret. This they are doing under an absolutely correct argument that people want and deserve the right to determine their own, and their societies' own, fates. But that right cannot be imposed with the bullets of a gun.

Therefore, the call for establishing democracy in the Middle East and other poor and disadvantaged countries are but a ploy to keep them under control with in an empire.

Sober thinkers and writers have pointed out that it's America, more than any other single force in the world, that's standing in the way of global democracy. Whenever and wherever they are present an orderly transition of power is found to be stumbling.

From thrashing the United Nations to routinely breaking global treaties to mounting unilateral invasions, official US policy is now to use force to get what it wants, regardless of whether it's what the majority of the world wants. That's not democracy. In another word, world's most powerful nation is also associated with most of its record number of armed conflicts. Afghanistan is a case in point. US troops present themselves as daily targets in bases across the country, bases ostensibly still devoted to hunting Al-Qaeda and Taliban remnants, but instead mostly focused on protecting themselves from rival warlord armies and gangs who resent their presence and who completely control the entire country save daylight hours in the capital city, Kabul. Now "moderate" Talibans are working with US forces, a sign of American desperation. And nothing has changed for better as starvation still stalks the length and breadth of the country and other problems unmitigated.

According to one American commentator, most of the Islamic world, and a lot of the rest of it, considers the United States to be the force that makes the ongoing brutalisation of Palestine possible. Israel is the largest recipient of US aid, most of it military, even though Israel, with the world's fourth-largest military, hardly needs it. It is now clear that terrorism is bred because Israel is there to cause it. If Israel is allowed to violate international law and human rights at will, obviously those with their backs glued to the wall will move before they die. That famous law of physics, 'very action has equal and opposite reaction' will operate.

In Central Africa, a brutal war, largely invisible to the commonman has now claimed a staggering four million lives since 1995. A confusing morass of invading armies and mercenaries -- where the forces of Rwanda or Uganda are, on a given day, either being trained by or outgunned by the forces of Bechtel and Halliburton -- has as its heart the mineral-laden eastern region of The Congo, which among other prizes has most of the world's supply of several rare minerals. The riches wind up in American pockets.

The guns come from America, and Washington is far more directly involved than virtually anybody realises. But it's Africa, so almost nobody here knows or cares. Similar is the story for Darfur. It's only crime is that its possible oil wealth is equal to that of Saudi Arabia and the USA wont allow others to have any share or influence there. The simple question will answer the reason for the current death and destruction there. There are other examples where Washington continues to quietly expand its support of and direct work with the military (and paramilitaries) responsible for the worst human rights record in the Western Hemisphere: Colombia. The US provides political and economic support for Russia and Vladimir Putin's regular genocidal assaults on civilians in Chechnya; establish bases and provide military, intelligence, and secret police training in Uzbekistan and other dictatorships across Central and Southwest Asia. It deploys "War on Terror" troops throughout Indonesia and the Philippines and "War on Drugs" troops throughout the Andes and provide arms and training to police in Nigeria, an oil ricjh country where the US corporate interests are well entrenched. And not for nothing the US maintains some 720 army bases across the world.

All told, according to a study, the US military is now active in some 60 countries around the world. The dozen or so examples above are among the most egregious -- and what is the US doing killing people in even a dozen countries? -- but they have several factors in common: 1) No war has been declared against any government in any of them; 2) none are on the same continent as the United States; 3) All target poor countries' civilian populations; 4) In few of these cases have serious attempts been undertaken, especially by the US government, to find a just and peaceful resolution to the situation; and 5) Most Americans know very little about any of them, as national corporate reporting is generally either uncritical or, more commonly, nonexistent. The exception is Iraq, where the "factual" reporting is so markedly different from that in Britain and Europe that it might as well be describing a different conflict.

In this background it is right to pause and question whether 2009 will bring in a respite? Sweeping change rarely happens overnight. As such, it's often not even obvious to people when they are in its midst. Over the last two decades, despotic governments of all kinds, in over 30 countries, Communist to fascist to democratic dictatorship, have fallen in the face of the demands of ordinary people to determine our own destinies.

But those were at the cost of huge bloodshed. But the situation for the common people has not much changed partially because the vested power has only changed the tactics of their programmes. However, a silver line is that the current collapse of capitalist economy led by the USA and the subsequent efforts by them to control their own greed and exploitation. Whether this will come to the benefit of the poor majority of the world is to be seen in 2009.

Now, with extraordinary speed in our unipolar world, we're seeing a second wave of nonviolent revolutions, one with a more explicitly economic component.

The "Washington consensus" that imposes neoliberal economic and political straitjackets so as to make poor countries poorer and to send their wealth to the banks and gated communities of the rich countries faced critical opposition in many Latin American countries where pro-US government had been overthrown paving way for some sort of international balance. These developments represent the demands of ordinary people, as filtered upwards through their governments, that they be allowed to determine their own policies and futures. The force at work is both so simple that politicians ignore it and so powerful that politicians cannot control it. It is hope, particularly the hope of ordinary people in all parts of the world. It is our hope for peace and for lives without fear of hunger and privation and a better future for our children and grandchildren. Revolutions, the political scientists say, happen not when conditions are most desperate, but when hopes have been raised and are then threatened. And so it is today. The government of the United States, with its guns and its extraordinary wealth, represents not the hope but the threat. Whether under new dispensation, the US policy will change to favour peace or extend the rule of threat will determine is to be seen. A change will obviously bring some respite.

Another favourite neocon axiom is that countries strongly linked in the global economy are far less likely to be ravaged by economic downturn. The theory has been proved wrong this time.

They wanted to say that as the globe shrinks, no country can be an island unto itself any longer. The sooner that the United States starts behaving as though it is one country among many, rather than a global bully, the better the prospects for peace on earth become.

The irony is that the post-9/11 bellicosity of the Bush Administration has been so extreme that in the long run it may lead more directly to a world with a common aversion to wars and empires. The reason why the US issue occupied major part of this overview is simple. In this uniplolar world the leader decided directly or indirectly the going-on, even the everyday activities. According to Pentagon budget, it is about 900 billion only for espionage and motivation, etc.

This can map the depth of the activities. If we give a little longer look into the incidents, activities and developments around they world, none of them is free of US touch. The only thing is that the superpower decides to ignore some minor details in some cases leaving it to its regional agent or support such as in this subcontinent. Therefore, the shape of thing in those cases will be little different and will be allowed to roll so long it does not clash with the interest of the superpower.

Since the economic slumpdown in the past year has been a deterrent factor the US may decide to behave differently partly to reshape its image and partly to re-rail its home front. Its economy faltered for its support to the military machine which is intact and marching ahead.

Therefore, the military-led policy will hardly change unless there is realisation that the human race will be in jeopardy if the stress remains only on the military front and peace is derided. Smaller countries like Bangladesh and others with their leaders changed or ushered in so long they fulfil the demands of the world masters. This year the developments in the subcontinent clearly show the dark possibility that the fate of Bangladesh may face yet another test where its existence will be examined. It appears there has been enough motivation among the people for collective suicide.

It appears that the small minority of powerful publicists working for the vested power has effectively enlisted support of the people and joined their forces. The event in Mumbai is just a harbinger. That is the map of the subcontinent will be changing once again after three decades where not three but several countries will emerge.

Thus those who hope for peace after the turbulence of the past year, caused by pervasive greed for wealth and power, will be disappointed.

(The writer is the editor, the Naya Diganta and a former editor of The New Nation).