The Arab Awakening, Hijacked?
The long hand of Washington reaches into Libya
by Justin Raimondo, April 04, 2011 go to article
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Libya: Big powers need new monster
28 February 2011. A World to Win News Service. The Western powers may have turned against Muammar al-Gaddafi, declaring him mentally unstable after discovering his unexpected political instability, but he has been their man.
He has ruled not only in their political interests, but even more basically in the interests of their finance capital and world economic system, and in turn their interests have been his. If they are ready to dump him now, it is not because his nature has changed but because he is no longer able to do the job.
Even as the US, UK and France were pushing through a UN Security Council resolution imposing an arms embargo 26 February, the Libyan regime was using British-trained security forces and British-supplied armoured cars, CS tear gas, shotgun shells and mortars against demonstrators. French-built fighter aircraft were being sent to bomb rebel strongholds. Gaddafi's most trusted unit, Brigade 32 under the command of one of his sons, was using hi-tech military equipment supplied by the US arms manufacturer General Dynamics.
The world and the Libyan people are supposed to forget the sight of US President George W. Bush (and later President Barack Obama), UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, French President Nicholas Sarkozy and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi warmly embracing Gaddafi, welcoming him back into their fold as if they were long-lost friends.
In the UN resolution these powers vowed to track down and freeze Libya's financial assets, as if their location were a secret or not already under their control. The bulk of Libyan funds abroad, the country's sovereign wealth fund, are managed by the JP Morgan Bank, part of Wall Street's second biggest financial institution, JPMorganChase. Since 2008, Blair, who orchestrated Gaddafi's return, has been a senior consultant to Morgan. Among the investments made on behalf of this fund are shares in the London Financial Times. The parent company owns part of Facebook; JP Morgan is currently seeking to buy into Twitter.
(For a naked description of Blair's 5 million-dollars-a-year job, see JPMorganChase.com. Blair also currently works as the unpaid special envoy for the Quartet – US, the EU, the UN and Russia – for the Middle East, where he helps oversee Palestinian-Israeli negotiations.)
The fact is that the wealth produced in Libya has mainly enriched the imperialist powers, both through the enormous profits their oil companies have reaped from the exploitation of Libyans and workers there from other Third World countries, and through the recycling of the share of that oil revenue that went through the Gaddafi regime's hands but for the most part was invested in European and American banks and companies. The riches produced in Libya are so much a part of the world capitalist system that world stock exchanges and especially the Milan bourse fell at the prospect of an interruption in this flow of fresh blood to their vampire hearts.
The UN Security Council resolution set what might be a new world record for hypocrisy.
It was revolting enough to see the Chinese regime – responsible for the Tiananmen massacre and now straining to keep out the wind of revolt from the Arab world, a government that for years has supplied cheap labour for exploitation in Libya – voting to condemn Gaddafi for repression. It was even more disgusting to see the US pressuring China and other countries to endorse a threat to bring Gaddafi regime members before the International Criminal Court, even though Washington has refused to join the ICC for fear that past, present and future American officials might be charged with crimes against humanity for their illegal wars, coups, assassinations and other violations of international law.
But even worse than the hypocrisy, the purpose of the UN resolution is not to help the Libyan people in their just cause, but to interfere in events in pursuit of the same kind of imperialist advantages that led them to support Gaddafi in the first place. Although the measure may give the Gaddafi inner circle no choice but to fight to the end, it is also a call to other regime members to jump ship and seek US protection now or face the consequences. The US is "reaching out" to last-minute defectors like Gaddafi's Justice Minister and even current members such as his long-time Interior Minister. There is reason to fear that the US is seeking to pull together some kind of new/old regime from such criminals.
While the proposals being made for imposing a no-fly zone on Libya might sound like a way to save lives, it should be remembered how such zones worked out in Iraq. The US and its allies claimed that a UN resolution gave them the authority to impose a no-fly zone in northern Iraq in the wake of the first Gulf War in 1991. Along with economic sanctions, this no-fly zone was part of the attempt to re-establish US (and British) domination in Iraq that led to the 2003 invasion.
This is not meant to argue that the US is as eager to invade Libya as it was Iraq, although it is striking that Obama officials have repeatedly said that they do not rule out anything, including what Clinton called "possible bilateral actions" (in other words, a "coalition of the willing"). American warships in the Mediterranean have been repositioned off Libya's coast. But there are major reasons why the US might prefer to avoid direct military action, including the fact that its invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan have gone so badly, and the likelihood that today's newly aroused Arab people would become even further enraged by the sending of American or even European soldiers to Libya. So far, it has pretended to be above the fray.
The Iraq experience
The experience of Iraq shows that the imperialists are never concerned about anything but their own interests. In his recently-published autobiography, Blair repeated that his religion justified ignoring the opposition of the majority of the British people to participating in the US-led invasion, and stubbornly argued that even if Iraq's weapons of mass destruction turned out not to exist, still invading was the "right thing to do" because it got rid of Saddam Hussein. Yet he turned around and took personal charge of re-opening relations with Gaddafi not long after, even though Gaddafi was as much an enemy of the Libyan people then as he is now.
This is not a matter of inconsistency, but of consistently pursuing the same interests. The UK expected to benefit from the invasion of Iraq both by advancing its partnership with the US at the expense of other imperialist powers such as France, and also by reopening Iraq's oil fields for British companies, also at France's expense. In reopening relations with Libya, the UK was both acting within its overall "special relationship" with the US and also pursuing particular advantage for BP, Shell and other British companies, in competition with Italy and France.
The US UK and other powers inflicted seven years of horror on the Iraqi people in the name of establishing a "democracy", as if any government imposed by invasion and occupation could be considered democratic. Now, with all the ultimate power over Iraqi affairs that the continuing presence of 50,000 American soldiers implies, the government that occupation has produced is repressive and hated. It is a target of the people's upsurge just as much as other regimes in the region.
For instance, on 25 February large demonstrations against the Nouri Maliki government in Iraq took place from north to south, from mainly Shia Basra through the capital and north through the Sunni regions to Mosul and Kurdistan, despite the opposition of the Iranian-influenced Shia religious establishment and also despite the unprecedented level of intimidation by the US-backed regime. Just before the Iraqi "Day of Rage", modelled on the upsurge in Egypt and Tunisia, several demonstrators were murdered by the Kurdistan government that was set up under the protection of the US no-fly zone in the early 1990s.
The government responded to the planned protests by sending security forces to occupy the streets of Baghdad and other cities. Helicopters swooped down over the heads of the crowds in Baghdad's own Tahrir Square. At least 29 protesters were shot or beaten to death. Security forces attacked a TV station and burst into restaurants and other places looking for journalists. The next day they rounded up about 300 people, including prominent writers, artists, lawyers and other intellectuals. Many are known to have been tortured.
When the Islamic Republic of Iran does these things, the US condemns it. This time not only did the US stay silent, most major Western media did too. (One exception: Washington Post, 26 and 27 February)
How could whatever the US might resort to in Libya, with whatever coalition of allies and rivals it might pull together, be expected to do anything positive for the people there?
Italy and Libya: a history that's not really past
Here something has to be said about Italy: it is the power whose fangs have been sunk deepest and longest into the Libyan people's neck, and it is also the power whose prerogatives other imperialist powers would like to grab for themselves.
Italy's connections with the Gaddafi regime are so close that the two countries even signed a mutual defence pact, promising among other things to help each other maintain internal security. Berlusconi was the last Western leader to come out against Gaddafi. Then, worried that Italy might be left out of a post-Gaddafi Libya, Berlusconi suspended that pact and made it known that the US was welcome to use its naval and air bases in Italy against Libya.
Italy began extending its influence into Libya in the late nineteenth century with the connivance of France, which had pushed Italy aside in seizing Tunisia, which was then considered far more desirable booty. In 1911 Italy invaded and seized the country from the disintegrating Ottoman empire. During the war of resistance in the 1920s, the Italians are believed to have caused the deaths of a hundred thousand Libyans, about half the population of the eastern part of the country, through bombings and other military assaults and the herding of the population into desert concentration camps and penal colonies in Italy where many died.
In 1939 Italy declared its Libyan colony an integral part of Italy itself, its "fourth shore". It should be remembered that while this happened under the Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini, Italy's policy of taking over and colonizing Libya had begun long before and was in fact a point of consensus among Italy's ruling class. Among its goals was to relieve social pressures in the countryside by sending Italian peasants to settle on stolen Libyan land – 20,000 in one convoy alone in 1938. In all more than 110,000 Italians went, eventually making up a third of the population of the capital and almost 15 percent of the Libyan population as a whole.
In this context, the fears expressed by Italy's Defence Minister Ignazio La Russa that Italy might face an influx of Libyan refugees of "Biblical proportions" shows that even a secondary imperialist power can rival the others in hypocrisy. The Italian government is now complaining about the prospect that some of those whom Mussolini once labelled "Muslim Italians" might seek shelter in what was once declared their country, whether they liked it or not.
But this is not just a question of historical justice. Italian and in fact imperialist capital in general have continued to dominate Libya without interruption, although not smoothly and not always in the ways the imperialist powers might have preferred.
Gaddafi's "Green Revolution"
With the defeat of the Axis powers in World War 2, France and Britain took charge of Italy's former colony. Following Libya's formal independence in 1951, when power was passed to King Idris, the UK and US each set up strategic military bases.
The opening of enormous oil fields in the 1950s was to change the country completely. The 27-year-old army captain Gaddafi, along with a handful of other lightly armed officers, overthrew the king in 1969. While the history of what Gaddafi called his "Green (Islamic) Revolution" is complex and needs analysis in its own right, the basic plan was to build up a political structure that could oppose the imperialist powers by nationalising oil and selling it to them instead of just letting them take it on their own terms.
Instead of freeing the country from imperialist domination, however, this dependence on the imperialist world market generally limited Libya's ability to oppose imperialism to futile proclamations and reactionary gestures such as bombing airliners and other civilian targets.
The rising price of oil in the 1970s actually propelled Libya's further enslavement to imperialism in the economic realm. Plans for agrarian reform and other developmental measures took a back seat to the perceived need to funnel resources into increasing the country's oil and natural gas production instead. From an agricultural exporting country that had not needed to sell oil to feed itself from before Roman times to the late 1960s, Libya moved toward its situation today, where it is almost entirely dependent on imports for everything. (Whether or not Libya could sustain its present population without imported food is debatable, but the huge growth of the native population, along with the large presence of foreign workers, amounting to almost 20 percent of the country's residents, are almost entirely linked to oil, gas and related industries.)
Further, oil and gas are not one-off investments. Selling them competitively on the world market requires constant infusions of capital to expand production and improve productivity and infrastructure, even for a country like Libya with the natural advantage of pumping crude oil that is exceptionally cheap to refine.
The process through which Libya came back into the arms of the US and UK during the course of the 1990s was not a smooth one, and again deserves more analysis than possible here. Among the factors whose role needs to be better understood are the collapse of the Soviet bloc, the stepped-up US and British sanctions and falling oil prices. One decisive moment came in an outstanding example of Gaddafi's signature combination of "anti-imperialist" rhetoric and reactionary deeds, when in 1995, supposedly as a punishment for the PLO's compromises with Israel in the Oslo Accords, he declared that all of Libya's large population of Palestinian refugees had to leave overnight and walk home if necessary. Although in the end some remained, many thousands were dumped over the Egyptian border or put aboard ships that spent weeks at sea because no country would take them in.
By 1999 Libya and the UK restored relations. It seems that Britain was especially anxious not to let Italy alone enjoy feasting off Libya. By 2004, Blair was making the first of several trips to shake Gaddafi's hand, sign trade deals and sell the Libyan regime the arms Gaddafi is using today.
Ongoing secret US-Libyan negotiations came out into the open after 11 September 2001, when Gaddafi publicly said that he wanted to enlist in the "war on terror" and put his intelligence (and torture) services at the disposal of the US. For Gaddafi, 9/11 represented both an opportunity and a confluence of interests with the US, since the kind of Sufi Islam on which his regime has drawn its authority is hated by Sunni fundamentalists of the Bin Laden (and Saudi) variety, who have threatened his regime. The years of talks and step by step rapprochement finally came to maturity in 2003, when the "Lion of the Desert" was said to be terrified by what the US did to Saddam Hussein.
It should be noted that for all Gaddafi's attempts to identify himself with the original "Lion of the Desert", the leader of the war against Italy Umar al-Mukhtar, he never broke with Italian capital. ENI, the Italian state oil and gas company, never ceased operations in Libya. In fact, the economies of the two countries became increasingly intertwined. Italy's dominant position in Libya was formalized at a 2008 meeting in Gaddafi's tent where Berlusconi and he signed a treaty purported to compensate Libya for the harm Italy had done to it.
This was another example of a Gaddafi gesture whose real content was the opposite of what it was said to be. Italy promised to pay Libya 5 billion dollars in reparations. But this money was actually to come from the exploitation of workers in Libya and further plundering of its resources, since its source was a tax on the (greatly increased) Italian share of Libyan hydrocarbons. Further, all of it was to be spent on hiring Italian contractors and buying Italian machinery and other imports, exclusively for infrastructure projects to be defined by the two countries. This meant building and upgrading roads, pipelines, docks and so on to facilitate Libya's dependence on exports and imports – again, to the profit of Italy.
In short, these "reparations" were to be the kind of "tied aid" that the US, for example, uses to reap yet greater profits in the name of "foreign assistance" – tying Libya more tightly to Italy in the name of "anti-colonialism". (See "Assessing Italy's Gran Gesto to Libya", Claudia Gazzini, Merip.org)
This assignment of much of Libya's known oil and gas reserves to Italy for the next decades has undoubtedly been a factor in spurring the UK to make its own moves, especially by buying rights to exploration for new fields that promise far greater wealth – bait which of course has been irresistible to the Gaddafi regime.
It is extremely important to note the relationship between politics and economics here. The "Libyan model" of seeking to tweak the imperialists' nose politically while maintaining dependence on the imperialist world market eventually collapsed. In the end, Gaddafi was not able (and ceased to even try) to exercise political independence from imperialism. At the same time, the imperialist powers were obliged, because of their general and particular (rival) interests, to make do with the political superstructure Gaddafi had built and adopt it as their own instrument for the domination of Libya.
Ironically, despite Gaddafi's flaming rhetoric, it has been principally the Libyan people and not the imperialist powers that have brought him face to face with the same ignominious end as heads of historically client regimes like Egypt's Mubarak and Tunisia's Ben Ali.
Looking for advantage amidst turmoil
As British journalist Robert Fisk wrote, right now it is the people and not the US who are the "shock and awe" factor in the Middle East. But in Tunisia, the imperialists and probably the US were able to take advantage of the existence of an imperialist-trained and dependent army to pull the plug on Ben Ali in time to preserve some elements of the old regime. In Egypt, the army has long been the US's key asset. In both countries, the old tyrant did not need to make a last stand; he could just shuffle off to retirement. The absence of any imperialist "Plan B" in Libya helps explain why the struggle there has been so bloody from the start.
None of these factors ensure continued imperialist control against the newly aroused and increasingly politically sophisticated mass movements, as the forced resignation of the Tunisian prime minister and the continuing face-off between protesters and the security forces in both countries attest.
But the US has even less to work with in Libya. The US and other imperialists have had very little contact with the Libyan military, or any other sector of Libyan society. In fact, it seems that the military is very weak compared to the militias, special brigades and other security forces personally led by Gaddafi family members. There certainly seems to be a major section of the population whose loyalty has been bought with privileges. Gaddafi was not just raving when he declared that Libya is not Tunisia or Egypt.
There is also the factor of the broader situation: while the US has far fewer direct economic interests at play in Libya than elsewhere, the last thing it needs is escalating uncertainty and possibly popular upheaval in between Egypt and Tunisia. Especially not in the midst of a region whose present instability is matched only by its strategic importance to the whole US-dominated world order.
This is the light in which we should judge the big powers' reaction to the situation caused by the people's uprising, and their attempts to continue dominating Libya amidst this splendid turmoil.
Drowning Pakistan: what it means for the people and who is responsible
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Drowning Pakistan: what it means for the people and who is responsible
30 August 2010. A World to Win News Service. "When the water came, we moved our women and children to high ground. Three of my daughters stayed behind to help the men pack up whatever belongings we could carry with us… within minutes, the current got too strong and the waters rose head high." This is how a villager from Sardaryab, a village in northwest Pakistan, lost two of his daughters aged 16 and 17. He was only able to save his youngest daughter. "Their bodies were found three days later, dumped on the bank by receding waters about 6 kilometres down the river."
Omar, another villager, describes the events in his village this way: "We could see the water rising across the entire area between my village and the river. At first we thought it was rain water, but it continued to rise," he says. Everybody rushed to the nearby railway track which is on high ground. But Omar was slightly late.
"Three of our women were swept off their feet. We saved two of them, but the third, my brother's wife, was lost. We found her body two days later." (BBC, 5 August 2010)
This is the kind of story that Pakistani families who lost their loved ones or their home or what little belongings they had gathered over their entire lifetimes would tell you. Millions had to leave the land they had worked on to go to a supposedly safer place or a refugee camp.
The flood began in late July in mountainous northwest Pakistan when exceptionally heavy monsoon rains caused the upper reaches of the Indus river to burst out of its banks.
It is reported that at least 1,600 people have been killed. An estimated six million are homeless. Some 17-20 million of Pakistan's 166 million people are said to have been directly affected, and 6 million are in urgent need of food. Tens of thousands of villages have been under water for days or even weeks and the process is still continuing. The rivers cutting through the middle of the country from north to south are beginning to recede as the surge empties into the Arabian sea, but it is expected to be another week or two before they return to normal – and even then, in some places floodwater will be trapped and remain for some time. (Map: bbc.co.uk/news/world-southasia-11128511)
These numbers alone are not enough to convey all the dimensions of the human catastrophe. What we have seen and heard is only the beginning for the disaster millions face. Livestock is an important source of income, but countless cattle have perished in the floods. By late August, about 14 percent of the country's arable land was damaged, according to the UN World Food Programme. Even many people whose fields could be replanted have lost their grain stores, and now lack both food and seeds for the next crop after the monsoon. For a large percentage of those who survive the flood, surviving its aftermath will be no less of a challenge. The impact of this loss will be strongly felt by the Pakistani masses for years or even decades to come.
Dr Marie Lall says, "This was not one cataclysmic event, but one which grew over three weeks. The fact that 25 percent of the country was or is under water is not understood. The low numbers of dead, relatively speaking, mask the disaster on the ground. The crisis has destroyed crops, killed livestock and damaged homes and infrastructure. Food prices are through the roof and there won't be a normal harvest. It will get worse. Farmers will starve." (BBC, 21 August 2010)
It is reported that of at least 6 million people left homeless, less than 10 percent are in the camps set up in the provinces. The camps consists of tents for 6 to 7 people, without any sort of sanitation or health facilities. Another aspect of the disaster is waterborne diseases. The UN has said that millions of children in Pakistan are at risk. Sindh Province officials said that out of the millions displaced, a quarter are suffering from some sort of flood-related illness.
The lack of sanitation and the malnutrition that will follow the flood might well increase the number of victims for a some time to come.
Those who no longer have a home are living alongside elevated roads with the few belongings they might have saved. Cities such as Sukkur located on the banks of the Indus have become like large refugee camps as increasing numbers of people seek shelter there.
At the same time, people already living in camps for displaced persons, like the 40,000 Afghans refugees living in Azakhel, on the banks of the Kabul and Swat rivers in north-western Pakistan, have been forced to flee yet again.
Who is responsible?
What made the flood so ruthless and why have 20 million mainly poor Pakistanis had to suffer so much?
Without the annual monsoon rains, agriculture in much of Asia and South Asia would not be so productive. Yet monsoon floods are often deadly and destructive. This year the rains produced particularly dangerous flooding in China, Korea and the South Asian subcontinent.
Monsoons are caused by temperature differences between land and sea. During summer when it is hot, the flat terrain of Tibet warms up the surrounding air and the hot air rises, drawing in moist air from the sea. This moist air also warms up and rises. As it cools in the higher atmosphere, the moisture condenses into rain.
According to the BBC weather centre the existence "of more spiralling air in the upper atmosphere sucks in more moist air, causing larger clouds and more intense rainfall." "This year's kink meant more moist air than usual was sucked up. The effect passed in days, but the extra rain at the start of the season caused severe floods." (BBC, 16 August 2010)
The Indus, almost 32,000 kilometres long, is one of the world's greatest rivers. Its valley is one of the places where human beings first gave up their nomadic ways and began to raise livestock and crops. Today, it is home to 100 million people, who rely on the river for drinking water and irrigation. Flooding is no stranger to those whose families have lived here for centuries, but this year saw torrents unmatched in recent history.
A plundered country on a plundered planet
There is credible evidence that global warming could be responsible for these stronger floods. "Professor Martin Gibling of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, a river expert who has worked in the region, thinks that changes in the strength of the monsoon caused by climate change may be to blame. He explains: 'Monsoon intensity is somewhat sensitive to the surface temperature of the Indian Ocean.' During times of cooler climate, less moisture is picked up from the ocean, the monsoon weakens, and the Indus river flow is reduced." (BBC Science and Environment, 13 August 2010)
Today, sea temperatures are increasing.
Stefan Rahmstorf, professor of physics of the oceans at Potsdam University in Germany, argues that extreme rainfall events will become more frequent and intense in a warmer climate.
"For each degree Celsius of warming, 7 percent more water is available to rain down from saturated air masses. Drought risk also increases with warming: even where rainfall does not decline, increased evaporation dries out the soils."
He warns that extreme weather-related events are already occurring after a global temperature rise of only 0.8 C. "With weak action, like that promised by governments in Copenhagen last December, we will be on course for 3-4 C of global warming. This is bound to outstrip the ability of many societies and ecosystems to adapt. And, with no action at all, the planet could even heat up by 5-7 C by the end of this century – and more thereafter. Knowingly marching down that road would be insane." (Guardian, 16 August 2010)
But while global warming may be to blame for the worst-ever flood in Pakistan, it alone cannot be held responsible for so much human suffering.
There is also the question of how rivers are managed in order to prevent such disasters. For example, some rich countries reduce the risk of flood by building embankments as barriers along the vulnerable parts of rivers to reduce the chances of their bursting their banks in extreme floods. Such a system might or might not work for the Indus river, but today's authorities in Pakistan (and India), like the British colonialists before independence in 1947, have done nothing serious to prevent such possible disasters. Basic facilities such as a system of dams to capture monsoon rains and glacial runoff are totally lacking. There is no flood warning system.
Lack of a proper drainage system or in most area any at all is another contributing factor. The Pakistani masses, especially in the poor areas, have to deal with water overflows even when there is only a couple of hours of heavy rain. In such cases the death of a dozen people is not unusual. The water often covers the streets and alleys for days or even weeks, providing conditions for the proliferation of insects, including malaria-bearing mosquitoes.
Further, the Indus is choked with sediment eroding off the Himalayas. Little has been done to clear its bed or at least reduce the amount of sediment build-up at critical points to allow its waters a swift route to the sea, so that they don't back up so much.
Another problem that has made the situation worse is deforestation. Tree roots help protect the land around the headwaters from being washed into the streams and rivers. But over the past half century, more sediment has been flushed down the rivers as forests have been cut down.
Deforestation of the north-western part of the country and along the Indus river has been very good business for legal and illegal gangs that have made billions of rupees each year from selling the timber over the last few decades. "One of the most powerful and ruthless organisations within Pakistan, the timber mafia engages in illegal logging... the group's connection to politicians at the local and federal level has been commented on in the media for years. The constant warnings about the timber mafia almost always include mention of the increased susceptibility of de-forested regions to flooding, landslides and soil erosion." (The Guardian, comment by Kamila Shamsie, 5 August 2010)
It is impossible that the extensive deforestation operations in the north-western part of the country could have taken place without the support or at least assent of the Pakistani army, whose forces are concentrated there partly as a consequence of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. The army is by far Pakistan's strongest economic institution and the core of its ruling class, as well as the heart of the state..
Class rule and foreign domination
Amidst this disaster, when the authorities did act in the name of flood management, their class interests have led them to make matters worse for the people in many instances. The army, big landowners and local and national authorities are often the same people, or of the same family, and at any rate tied together by common interests.
When the floods began in the northwest (what has been recently renamed Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province), they struck with little forewarning. But it took days and weeks for the full force of the flood to move downriver. This time was not used to warn the people and along with them organize preventative or other measures. Instead, when troops were deployed, it was sometimes secretly because they did not want people to know what they were doing. In Punjab Province, a traditional floodplain crisscrossed by dams, canals and sluices, there have been reports that landlords and the army chose which barrages to blow up and which land to flood based on who owned the fields and the location of army bases. (See The New York Times, 23 August 2010).
The young Pakistani novelist Ali Sethi witnessed an incident in which Sindh Province landowners and the army decided to deliberately dig a hole in a highway embankment. They flooded an adjoining area in neighbouring ethnically-oppressed Baluchistan under three meters of water. The writer was advised not to expose this incident to avoid the wrath of the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, the country's most powerful organization. The deliberate inundation of Baluchistan saved the rice fields of a Sindh big landlowner/politician, and a military air base on the Sindh side. That facility is home to a fleet of U.S.-supplied F-16 fighter jets. Local people also believe that it houses some of the widely-hated American drones responsible for many civilian deaths in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
As Sethi wrote, Pakistan '"is a place where peasants drown in rice fields they don't own, where mud-and-brick villages are submerged to save slightly less expendable towns, and where dying villages stand next to airbases housing the most sophisticated jets in the world." Behind the Pakistani military that rules Pakistan, he points out, stand its "American financiers". (International Herald Tribune, 27 August 2010).
The government's role and people's protests
After this disaster, like after previous ones, the authorities were largely useless in helping flood victims. While millions of people were fleeing their homes and villages, the leaders of Pakistan were running around excitedly using the opportunity to beg for donations from the rich imperialist countries. But this did not and could not do much to help the people. Apart from when journalists and their cameras were present, the people were mainly left on their own to deal with the flood and its consequences. The lack of action only added to the people's anger and frustration.
Some analysts have warned that Pakistan's government could face social unrest similar to that after 1971 when "authorities responded slowly to a devastating cyclone. A secessionist movement in East Pakistan capitalised on public anger to successfully fight for independence as Bangladesh… although secession was not solely due to the devastation of Cyclone Bhola. With the flooding, loss and suffering we are currently witnessing in the subcontinent, we must keep in mind that Pakistan is as volatile and precarious now as it was 40 years ago" (Delwar Hussain, the Guardian, 15 August 2010)
What the authorities have been telling the flood victims is that they should just be patient and wait for the water level to go down so that they can go back to their homes. There have been numerous reports of anger and protests by groups of people frustrated by the lack of government action. For example:
"Dozens of men and a few women tried to block five lanes of traffic outside Sukkur, in the southern province of Sindh, today. Villagers set fire to straw and threatened approaching motorists with sticks." One protestor said, "We left our homes with nothing and now we're here with no clothes, no food and our children are living beside the road."
"Last night, hundreds of villagers in the Punjab, the country's most populous and worst-hit province, burned tyres and chanted 'down with the government'. 'We are dying of hunger here. No one has showed up to comfort us,' said Hafiz Shabbir, a protester in Kot Addu." (The Guardian, 16 August 2010)
"On our return trip to the north-west, the two main roads were blocked again. This time it was angry residents protesting against a power cut that was in its third day…. 'We keep calling the government and their line is busy, busy,' shouted one protester, as black plumes of smoke rose from burning tyres."
"A resident from Nowshera, Fazal Karim frustrated by the government inaction said: 'I've been asking people to take off their shirts and hold a [shirtless] protest.' (BBC, 20 August 2010)
Why can't more help come?
A victim told BBC, "We called the government and asked them for help. They said they had no facilities in our area, no helicopters or people who could assist them." A Pakistani lawyer from the flooded town Nowshera put it ironically: "We have an atom bomb, but we have no helicopters and boats for rescue, no machinery to clear the roads and build temporary bridges quickly." (BBC, 5 and 9 August 2010)
Is it true that there were no resources available?
The Pakistani army, the world's seventh biggest, numbers 650,000. Pakistan army spokesman General Athar Abbas told BBC 20 August that it had deployed 60,000 troops for relief operations, and even that relatively small number might be an exaggeration. He also said that the Pakistani military only had 45 helicopters. Yet there is an enormous concentration of U.S. and Nato (specially UK) aircraft a short flight across the border in Afghanistan, including Huey transport helicopters and other planes that would be particularly useful for civilian emergency operations. General Abbas said that the U.S. military had sent 15 helicopters. On 30 August, a month after the flood began, the U.S. Defence Department Web site bragged that this number was going to be upped… to 19.
The problem is not a lack of resources, but that the interests of those who control them and the whole imperialist system are in antagonistic contradiction to the interests of the masses of people everywhere.
The U.S. – and its junior partner in crime, the Pakistani military – might as well just come out and admit that their arms and technology exist to oppress the people and that they don't give a damn what happens to millions of poor and common people in Pakistan – except insofar as "instability" threatens their interests.
What happens when "help" does arrive?
In the cases where some emergency supplies are distributed, if they are not just carelessly and inhumanly tossed down on refugees from the sky, they are often distributed outside a politician's house by their aids or by policemen who arbitrarily decide who should get help and who should not, a scene that could drive the people to extreme anger.
Another flood victim Karm Khan said, "For three days I have waited here from dawn till dusk, but haven't received a single grain of wheat. They only give it to their potential voters." (BBC, 5 August 2010)
In general, the nature of "foreign aid" is that even when it does not actually harm the people by wiping out their livelihoods and in other ways, it can do very little to help the masses. In this case we see yet another example of how the goal of imperialist "aid" is to increase their influence in the affected countries and strengthen their local brokers rather than helping the people. The U.S. provides billions of dollars in foreign aid – to the Pakistani army.
Right now, millions of flood victims in Pakistan, are fighting to survive. They – and everyone – will judge what the rulers of this world do to help save their lives.
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News, April 22, 2010
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News, April 21, 2010
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News, April 20, 2010
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News, April 19, 2010
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