Sean McLain, journalist, writer

Solutions aside, Anna Hazare has touched a nerve

noreply@blogger.com (Sean McLain) — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 19:37:00 +0000

The following first appeared in The National on August 22, 2011

On Monday last week, my morning tea was disrupted by loud chanting. A group of six college students were carrying a banner down our street and shouting slogans in support of Anna Hazare, the now famous champion of India's anti-corruption drive.

I remember thinking: "That's it?" Only six kids?

Actually, these were just the first trickle of the torrent of people amassing on the Indian capital.

Most people did not expect Mr Hazare's second fast to amount to much. His first, in April, had ended in acrimony. But while his methods and solutions for addressing India's crippling corruption might raise eyebrows, his power to galvanise is now unquestionable. He has the government's own missteps to thank.

Mr Hazare has sought to strong-arm the government into adopting his version of an anti-corruption bill called Jan Lokpal, or Citizen's Ombudsman bill. The government balked at including the president, prime minister and high court judges under the oversight of an independent watchdog, with good reason.

Mr Hazare would have had the country's Central Bureau of Investigation rolled into the Lokpal, creating a police service outside the control of the government. In theory, it would allow impartial investigations and prosecutions of corruption scandals like the recent ones which have cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of rupees.

But in actuality it would have sought to solve the problem of public accountability by creating yet another unaccountable body. One can only imagine the sort of potential chaos that could ensue should the head-of-state and the arbiters of the law be put under the eye of a super-empowered and unaccountable police service.

So the government is right on its stance on the Jan Lokpal.

But that has ceased to matter.

Less than 24 hours after those angry college students marched past my home in south-east Delhi, Anna Hazare was in jail and 5,000 of his supporters were detained in a disused stadium. The government has been in crisis mode ever since.

As news broke of Mr Hazare's early morning arrest, protests erupted across the country. In the capital people travelled hours from neighbouring states with the sole purpose of being arrested to "fill the jails" - a reference to a tactic used against the British in India's freedom struggle.

Mr Hazare himself has capitalised on this sentiment by calling his fast and multiple efforts to strong arm the government a "second freedom struggle". It isn't, but that is what those who support him believe and that is why the situation has spun out of control.

The government, it seems, has failed to realise the depth of the people's anger. Ordinary Indians, tired of being made to pay corrupt bureaucrats for every government service, do see corruption as the single greatest evil in their lives.

To the farmer, corruption is the reason he can't get electricity to power his machinery, or the bribes he must pay to claim government subsidies on grain. To the housewife, it is the reason she must pay several hundred rupees to get a food ration card to feed her family.

Mr Hazare is their champion. He has a largely unblemished record of fighting for the rights of the downtrodden, and is seen as one of the few upstanding public figures in India.

The government, meanwhile, has played into his hands. It first tried ignoring Mr Hazare by agreeing to consult with him following his first fast and then disregarding his suggestions. Then it tried bullying him with a smear campaign.

It was not until after his arrest and the country's explosion in outrage that it sought to debate Mr Hazare on the merits of his bill, something it should have done in the first place.

The fast of eccentric yogi Baba Ramdev in June should have been instructive. He too sought to force the government to agree to the Jan Lokpal. His fast attracted popular and global media attention. But he offered few real solutions (not to mention some questionable theories on cancer, yoga and AIDS). One plan for tackling corruption was to outlaw 500 and 1,000 rupee notes so it would be harder to pay bribes. In short, he talked himself out of a following.

Had the government opened the forum to Mr Hazare, many of his more harebrained schemes might have failed the sanity test as well. But it is too late for that now. The protests and the fast have ceased to be about the Jan Lokpal. This is now a referendum on the government and the Indian political establishment as a whole.

Ordinary Indians believe that every politician is corrupt and any truth spoken by a politician, no matter how it is couched, will be seen as a lie.

I remember a friend once relating a conversation he had with a member of a major political party. "How much is a Lok Sabha seat worth?" my friend asked. "If he does nothing?" the party member replied. "100 crore (Dh9 million)." That is how much a politician can be expected to earn over his five year term by virtue of his position.

In short, Indian politicians raid the public purse as a matter of routine and the people are tired of it. Mr Hazare merely provided the spark to ignite this powder keg.

The government has few avenues to escape this crisis, but it must immediately seek to halt the escalating anger, or risk implosion. The decision to allow him to return to his fast for 15 days is a start. But it must now bring Mr Hazare to the table and fully and openly engage with him on the Lokpal.

Only then will the protests cease to be directed against the government and actually become about tackling corruption.

It's 3am and Abu Dhabi is awake

noreply@blogger.com (Sean McLain) — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 13:53:00 +0000

The following first appeared in The National on June 18, 2011

Laura Collins, Sean McLain, Tahira Yaqoob and Faisal Al Yafai

"I want to wake up in that city that doesn't sleep," the lyrics go. And it is perhaps not too culturally insensitive to say everyone recognises them as being from the New York, New York. Locally, it is Dubai, that siren city, which has the reputation of being jazzed up and ready to roll. Yet the "little town blues are melting away" in the capital city. Yes, the hotels are open late and you just might hear someone lip-syncing Sinatra, but there's more to life here than clubbing.

We are a city of 1.5 million people, about the size of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the sixth largest US city, and a bit larger than Amritsar, the 29th largest in India. And as such we have the needs of a city of 1.5m, whether we're at work or play: filling up with petrol because there's no line in the middle of the night, grabbing a shawarma and a carrot juice just because, relaxing at the end of a work day, or rising at 3 because the shift starts at 4 and someone has to keep this sundial city running. And who is out there at that hour? The National encouraged a team of four feature writers, three photographers and two videographers to stay awake (or get up early) to find out.

Mina Zayed

As locations for moonlight picnics go this isn't the most obvious choice. It is flanked by the rust-streaked hull of a looming dredger, the Willem Van Orange, and grease, dirt and debris mingle underfoot. No matter how dim the light or late the hour, the end of the dock at old Mina Zayed could hardly be described as aesthetically pleasing.

But brothers Nabeel, 24, and Basel, 19, and their friend Mohammed, 25, are perfectly content to sit at the end of the dock drinking from cans of Sprite and sharing pistachios, crisps and conversation.

It is just after 3am. They have been here for more than an hour and are in no hurry to leave. It is 32 degrees but with 80 per cent humidity it feels 10 degrees hotter in town. Here, a soft coastal breeze brings some respite. That it carries the pungent smell of the tens of hundreds of onions being unloaded in the nearby fruit and vegetable market and the fetid stench of yesterday's rubbish, presumably still kicking about somewhere as the smell is borne here on the wind, seems of little concern to this trio.

"We come here for the sea," explains Nabeel, pointing into the damp darkness to where black sky blots into black water. "And for the wind. Today the weather is much better here."

Nabeel is back home in Abu Dhabi for a month, on vacation from university in Damascus, where he studies pharmacy. His younger brother studies engineering in the emirate where Mohammed also lives and works.

Earlier, the guys went to the cinema to see The Hangover 2. Then they drove here, bumping past skeletal dhows and closed-up shops, moored boats and parked lorries. Basel and Mohammed unrolled a large yellow and green rug while Nabeel popped open a small white deckchair. And here they sit in the quiet moments before life really begins further back along the port, at the fish and vegetable markets and the Iranian souq.

"There is nowhere quiet to come in Abu Dhabi," Nabeel says. "Only here and the breakwater. We sometimes go there, too."

Around the dock as 4am approaches so too does the end of a long shift for the 300 workers at Al Dafra Tourist Village, a catering company.

From Saturday to Wednesday 16,000 school lunches come out of this small factory down by the shore and are driven to 32 schools across the emirates. They are loaded onto air-conditioned lorries as lithe feral cats, their tales high in expectation of the rich pickings available here at the docks, skip about underfoot.

Each meal that is prepared is the same: one sandwich, one cake, one piece of fruit, one cup of water, one fruit juice and one yogurt. Wednesday night/Thursday morning, the last of the working week, is everybody's favourite shift. Remarkably affable for a man who works such harsh hours, Aswan Adahab has been catering supervisor here for the past five years working from 10pm to 4am. Mr Adahab smiles and explains: "No work tonight. Just sleep."

Midtown

The neon sign and fairy lights illuminating the Lebanese Flower restaurant act as a beacon, drawing in the city's hungry. The city centre in Abu Dhabi goes to bed early, but the shawarma stand at Lebanese Flower does brisk business long after most of the shops and restaurants have closed for the night.

The rush is greatest at around 1am, but a steady stream of cars pull up with orders until the lights go out promptly at 3.

"They come for the rolls, lamb or chicken," says Khalil al Hariri, night manager, from Syria. Outside he puffs shisha and chats with his boss, Jihad Sharafuddin, the general manager, whose family has owned the restaurant for more than a decade. Both are here every day, from 7am until 3 at night (with a three-hour break at 4pm), but they are not the last staffers standing.

Abdul Rafik is the Indian chef in charge of the graveyard shift at Lebanese Flower. He and 20 other compatriots will be busy for the next four hours marinating chicken and chopping vegetables, preparing the shawarma for the next night's crowd of hungry insomniacs.

Three in the morning is the only time Naveed Khaled Mehmood and Jahanzeb Aurangzeb have a quiet moment to themselves. Taxi drivers, roommates and best friends, the two meet up at the same hour every night at a 24-hour cafe, Rawabi al Shams, next to the taxi station at Abu Dhabi Central Bus Terminal.

"You can't find customers at this time, so we come for a cup of tea, conversation and a little rest," said Mr Aurangzeb. He and his compatriot have been working the night shift exclusively for the past two years, waking up a few hours before sundown and going to bed at 9 or 10 in the morning.

They prefer to work nights to avoid the searing midday heat, but in Abu Dhabi sunset brings little comfort. Even at this early hour the mercury hovers around 30 degrees and with a wet blanket of humidity driving the heat index nearer to 40.

The speciality of the cafe is biryani, and every table in the cafe is full. As the hour hand ticks nearer to four, the stream of customers only seems to grow. Taxi and lorry drivers dominate the clientele, but every segment of the city's society seems to be here. The cars parked two abreast outside the entrance are a mix of Toyotas and Lexuses, old Nissans, a few Mercedes and even a Porsche 4x4.

The Rawabi al Shams, with an air-conditioning unit on every wall of the five-sided building, is an oasis from the heat for denizens of the night. Threnve Tecsom, however, is sitting outside in the heat. He has just arrived from Dubai. "On the weekends I visit my wife in Dubai, where she works," he said. "Now I'm headed to the airport where I work."

At 4am, the azaan rings out from the bus terminal's mosque calling the faithful to prayer. More than 60 sets of shoes sit in the shelves or lie scattered on the floor outside the entrance to the prayer room.

In Rawabi al Shams, Jassem Ali al Nuami is exchanging jokes with a group of young Emiratis arguing over who will pay for their tea. For the past two years he has sat at a counter selling gum, breath mints, tissues and cigarettes - essential supplies for this late-night crowd. He sees only a few hours of daylight, but he enjoys his job and the company. "We are open 24 hours, and every night it is like this."

The Corniche

Down at Special cafe, there's a convivial fug as waiters scurry back and forth, a wood-fired oven merrily churns out pizza and saj bread; shisha smoke hangs in the air.

There isn't an orange leather banquette free in the house as a waiter shouts an order for another shish tawouk and a strawberry shisha for a weary customer coming in from a 12-hour shift.

But this is not the close of a working day: although it is 3am, this lively hub with its blue neon sign - one of a string of three round-the-clock cafes garlanding the Corniche - is a magnet for a motley crew of insomniacs, night-shift workers knocking off in the early hours and revellers who have run out of places to go.

Salem Obaid, 31, an Emirati foreman for Enoc, the petrol company, draws deeply on his shisha, gulps down tea and turns to play a computer bowling game by his seat, content to sit in silence with his friend Mohammed Salmeen, 31, an army security officer.

"I work a fortnight, then have a fortnight off, so when I have a break, I like to come here to relax. I prefer the city after 10pm and can survive on a few hours' sleep," says Obaid.

Carmen Potecka, 26, and Svetlana Shcherbakova, 25, both Etihad cabin crew from the Czech Republic, are incongruously dressed in bright, skimpy frocks - outfits at odds with the cantina-style setting - as they attack a shawarma and chips with gusto after a night at the Hilton Hotel nearby.

"Because of our jobs, we sleep a lot during the day," explains Potecka. "This is a nice place with a good atmosphere and a pleasant crowd. It is always packed."

Across the road at an Adnoc petrol station with a fast-food outlet, a stream of 4x4s pull up, full of the sleep-deprived who just happen to have a hankering for a McDonald's Happy Meal or a Dunkin' Donut.

A celebratory meal at McDonald's marks the end of an era for four friends, Youssef el Rahimy, 15, an Egyptian; Nanja Miseljic, 16, of Bosnia; Pedro Barros, 16, of Brazil, and Tynmar Yoghi, 16, a Palestinian. All pupils at the American Community School, they decided to hold an all-nighter as el Rahimy is returning to Canada, where he grew up, in two days. As they are too young for shisha cafes, they have instead spent the past 15 hours alternating between playing video games and wolfing down fast food.

Gulping down energy drinks, el Rahimy says: "This is one of my last days in Abu Dhabi and we are trying to spend as much time together as we can. This is not a regular thing, it is a special occasion - but it is part of Middle Eastern culture to be up at this time. It is too hot to go out during the day."

Three Emirati friends, Mohammad Ateeq, 27, of the Coastguard; Mohammed Ibrahim, 21, and Ali Hamad, 24, students at Al Ain University, have fallen into a pattern of going to the gym after work or study, playing cards until the early hours and snacking on burgers and salad.

"Turkish coffee keeps me going," says Ibrahim. "We don't mean to stay awake; it just happens."

Mohammed Salem, 18, Saeed Bakheet, 19, and Fahad Amer, 18, have not even made it inside the restaurant, admitting from their parked car: "We have nothing better to do. Once a week, we just drive around."

Outside Special, Muhammad Suleman, 28, a taxi driver from Peshawar, Pakistan, waits patiently to ferry customers home. It's a busy shift, especially at this hour, but he will make up for it by sleeping all day until he starts work again at 6pm.

As the first dawn light starts to filter through steamed-up windows at the cafe, the crowd finally begins to thin. By 6am, there is a lone Emirati, puffing contemplatively on a shisha. Staff sweep the floors around him, tidy chairs and prepare for the day's customers. Tonight will be another busy night, but for now, he has the place to himself.

Musaffah

The deep orange of the street lamps stretch away, ahead and behind, left and right. In every direction there are only shadows on tarmac, lighter patches of road like zebra stripes. In the distance, a flame burns above the warehouses, above the concrete buildings that house the sleeping people of Musaffah. Occasionally, we turn a corner and see queues of lorries, their engines idling, but there are no people in them. An area built by the hands of men is deserted of human movement. The hands that build Abu Dhabi are resting.

Three am on the outskirts of the city and only a few people are still awake. At a petrol station, two bus drivers languish in the passenger seats, waiting for their shifts to start, unable to doze in the clammy night heat.

Outside a Romana water plant, with trucks idling all around, stand two workers, one wearing a towel bunched up around his thighs. "Kerala style!" his friend Abhishek says. They are preparing the water to be delivered to corner shops and news-agents in time for their morning customers. "We have to work now," says Abhishek. "Because if no water, no life in all Abu Dhabi!"

We walk for a while, around the backstreets of Musaffah. Occasionally dogs rush past on their secret, silent journeys. The factories and workshops are all dark. Outside a Porsche building, four young men are walking purposefully towards the road. They turn out to be welders and engineers working extra hours, finally coming off a shift that began at 8am the previous day.

They are all from various parts of Kerala, in south India, and in their mid-twenties.

"It's better to work now because we can, when we are not too old," says Paul. "We work like this many times because the money is always better. For our families." They are exhausted and there are no taxis. We offer them a lift in the car and they shyly pile in, three in the back, two of us in the front passenger seat.

Left and right, right and left, once off the main arteries of Musaffah, the roads look the same. We are somewhere in the depths of the industrial zone, in streets that look similar to us but must be full of small landmarks to those who live here. There are piles of uncollected rubbish, empty cars with doors left open and the vague uncertainty of the maze-like darkness.

We drop the four workers off at their home, a large four-storey building, plain white, very much like the buildings all around. Inside, strip-lights illuminate corridors packed with boots in neat lines. The workers wash briefly and slump into bunk beds; although talkative a few moments before, the fatigue is calling them and they forget about us. Feeling awkward for intruding on such a personal scene, we leave them to their dreams.

By the time we find our way out of Musaffah, the sun is rising. At 5.33am, the street lamps switch off, marking the moment the living infrastructure of the city moves into the day. The rest of Musaffah is moving, too: lorries and buses have found drivers, cars queue for petrol, street cleaners move across their patches. The hands that build the city prepare for another day.

Endangered exotic animals are not your pets

noreply@blogger.com (Sean McLain) — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 13:50:00 +0000

The following first appeared in The National on June 4, 2011.

Sean McLain and Tahira Yaqoob

Lions and tigers and bears. Snakes on a plane. A barrel full of monkeys. Newspaper headlines for the recent spate of smuggling cases involving exotic and endangered animals nearly write themselves.

While the headlines may be amusing, the facts of the illicit trade in wild animals are from a laughing matter. Most people will have fumed in anger at the Emirati man who is alleged to have tried to leave Bangkok with a suitcase stuffed with four leopard cubs, a Malayan sun bear and a red-cheek marmoset, all endangered species. And they will no doubt have felt a sense of impotent indignation at the news on Tuesday that he got on a plane and fled the country, thereby escaping justice.

The heart-wrenching story of the two young lions recently rescued in Abu Dhabi will have induced even deeper outrage. The ends of their paws had been amputated to remove their claws and their canine teeth had been filed down until the roots were exposed. The cruelty shown by their owners is contemptible. Sadly, it is not unique.

On Sunday, a cheetah was spotted limping through the streets of Karama in the capital. Malnourished, the eight-month-old animal broke its chain presumably out of hunger and leapt from a rooftop, breaking a foreleg.

Reports have trickled in over the years showing a slow, but steady trade in exotic species, often endangered, often imported in violation of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) and UAE law. The National has reported on tiger cubs being sold openly in the markets of the Emirates.

Under the law, potential owners of exotic and dangerous animals such as lions and tigers must apply for a permit with the Ministry of Environment and Water, which monitors the origin and care of these animals. This process is necessarily onerous and time-consuming to protect both the animals and the public, however many people simply choose to bypass this process, encouraging a thriving global black market for rare and endangered species.

The effects of the trade in animals goes far beyond the sad cases we read about. Most of the traded animals are captured in the wild, often when very young and often illegally; their mothers are frequently killed in the process. So two generations of an already dwindling species are removed from the wild population, with little prospect of the young being able to be reintroduced when they are adult. Human-reared animals are rarely capable of fending from themselves in the wild.

Luckily, there are organisations and private citizens across the UAE that take in these animals. They give them homes, ensure that they are properly cared for and - where appropriate - introduce them into breeding programmes. You can see the fruits of their labour the next time you visit a zoo.

Zoo is next-best thing for some

Arshad Toosy is not your average veterinarian. When the call came from the Fujairah municipality that two baboons were "running around the city", Dr Toosy and his crack team were called in to capture them.

"We have a team of four vets who are trained in remote capturing, armed with dart guns and nets," said the manager of veterinary operations at the Al Ain Wildlife Park and Resort. "The drugs are quite dangerous so only the vets are allowed to use them." He likens the vets to a sort of Swat team. "We get a lot of requests from other emirates when an animal escapes or they need veterinary assistance."

Dr Toosy has had to deal with a lot of baboon-related cases in the past months. "We received 20 baboons from the Ministry of Environment and Water last year; they were seized at the border with Saudi Arabia." He says the increase in the number of baboons being caught is a sign of the increasing popularity of primates as pets.

The Hamadryas, or sacred, baboon is indigenous to the region, found in Yemen and southern Saudi Arabia. Kevin Budd, an assistant operations manager at the Arabian wildlife centre in Sharjah, agrees that baboons are increasingly sought by lovers of exotic pets.

"The baboons are clearly coming through in the pet trade right now," he said. "The baboons aren't endangered. They are probably one of the few [in the exotic pet market] that aren't." His centre helps care for such indigenous species as the baboon. "Since the beginning of the year, I think we've received seven baboons. Some of them are in such a bad condition that there's nothing we can do."

The Al Ain Wildlife Park contains one of the world's largest exhibits of big cats, partly because of their popularity as pets in this region. One in five of the lions it has on display was either someone's pet or was rescued after being smuggled into the country.

Two lions rescued this month ended up at the park, and Dr Toosy hopes to eventually introduce them into the existing population of 34 lions.

The exhibit also includes white lions and white tigers, genetic mutations that are rarely found in the wild. Their colouring makes them prime targets for poachers. As a result the zoo in Al Ain, which rescues the rareties, is one of the few places in the world you can see these beasts.

The park maintains breeding programmes for its big cats, hoping to bolster the numbers of endangered species and reintroduce them back to the wild whenever possible. The nature of poaching, however, makes that difficult. "The origin [of an animal] is very important for breeding because there are many subspecies," Dr Toosy said. Unfortunately, animals smuggled into the country do not come with information regarding which population they were taken from. Genetic testing can help determine the place of origin in some cases, but not in all.

Dr Toosy blames the buyers of these animals for the harm inflicted on them. "If there is a demand, there will be a supply," he explained. "The public should understand that these animals are wild and by importing them they are jeopardising their lives."

These animals are also a disease risk. Not only can they introduce harmful diseases to the desert's fragile ecosystem, but they can also transmit diseases such as rabies, hepatitis or tuberculosis to humans.

Some owners do eventually realise the dangers and ask the park to take their pets. The park usually accepts without asking awkward questions, although Dr Toosy has his own hypothesis: "These animals, when they are small, they are cute and cuddly, but when they get older they can be dangerous."

Sadly, her menagerie is growing

There are 232 animals living in Ayesha Kelaif's 12,000-sq-ft villa in the Al Barsha district of Dubai, but among the chinchillas, tortoises and assorted cats and dogs, a few stand out.

Minkey, a Sykes monkey, was found in Jumeirah leaping around a villa. The distressed owner of the villa called Mrs Kelaif, who captured the primate. She is now looking after Minky until he can be placed in a welfare centre.

"He is very tame and friendly, but monkeys live in groups so it's very sad he doesn't have any companions," Mrs Kelaif said. The monkey was malnourished and underweight when found, but "he has been with us for two-and-a-half months and is now much healthier".

Rango, a baby fox, was mistaken at first for a pet chihuahua when he was discovered running around the streets with a leash and collar. He was taken in by Mrs Kelaif three months ago and has been treated by a veterinarian. "He was being kept as a pet and was so distressed, he was chewing his hind leg. He is looking much better now."

Sid, a boa constrictor, was also being kept as a pet in a tiny glass box by his Indian owner and was so emaciated, his bones were sticking out. "We put him in a special enclosure and lined it with a heated blanket. He gets fed live rats and baby mice and has grown by more than one foot in the six months since we took him in. He is now extremely healthy."

Mrs Kelaif's extraordinary menagerie began when she rescued a stray cat, which she named Crystal. Since then, her refusal to turn away any abused or mistreated animal has led to her giving refuge to hundreds of creatures over the years, including alpacas, owls, possums and ferrets.

Every spare inch of her home and garden has been taken over to build huts and kennels for the animals - yet most days see her receiving a phone call or two asking her to take in still more.

She is worried at the increase in the number of exotic animals people attempt to keep as pets. The Emirati mother of three says: "People want to own lions and cheetahs because they are status symbols, like owning a Ferrari.

"They are becoming more easily available because they are bred here. The government is getting tougher on the practice but unfortunately, there is a market here. It worries me because all wildlife should be in its natural habitat. Animals like lions do not belong in this climate, nor should they be kept in cages."

Although she has never taken a big cat into her care, her home is overrun with smaller exotic animals. The unusual creatures are nursed back to health, then given to animal welfare centres in Sharjah and Abu Dhabi; the more domesticated animals find homes with new families.

Mrs Kelaif, 46, says animal cruelty and abuse comes down largely to ignorance. "There are a lot of Emiratis who love animals but generally, there is a lack of awareness about how to look after their pets, and culturally, they are thought of as dirty. The conception is that they are not as important as humans.

"But to us, our animals are part of the family and we are devastated if we lose any of them. I get so much love from them. They are much safer here. When I go to the pet shops in Satwa, I get so depressed at seeing the animals living in tiny cages."

She said the country's animal cruelty laws are rarely enforced.

Mrs Kelaif regularly invites schoolchildren into her home, where she runs Dubai Animal Rescue Centre to teach them the importance of caring for animals.

Her devotion doesn't come cheap: veterinary bills amount to about Dh70,000 a year while the animals gobble up food worth thousands of dirhams every month. Their carer rarely takes a holiday, preferring to spend her money on them.

Abu Dhabi's corner stores are stocked with memories, pickles and sweets

noreply@blogger.com (Sean McLain) — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 13:27:00 +0000

Most people of a certain age remember their local grocery shop. In the US they were called five-and-dimes, dépanneurs (literally "to help out of difficulty") in French-speaking Canada, corner or village shops in the UK. There is an iteration of the local grocery in every culture. With the advent of the big box supermarket or its even larger offspring, the hypermarket, corner shops have either died or become stale shadows of their former selves, the convenience store.

The UAE has managed to avoid this trend. Our neighbourhoods are full of tiny stores with amusing names like the Unicorn or the Spike of Prosperty (sic), selling everything from soft drinks to sweets, from hair gel to toothbrushes. They are part of the fabric of Emirati life and culture. National business columnist Manar al Hinai sang the praises of the "dekkan" for their "retro look" and a taste of nostalgia.

A dirham or two short? The owner will let it slide, or you can pay later. They remember you, and know what you buy. Children come by after school to buy sweets or trinkets, and the shopkeeper will bill the parents later. Children in the Emirates might be among the few in the world for whom the song "The Candy Man," from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory still resonates.

That may change, at least in Abu Dhabi. This month, the Abu Dhabi Food Control Authority announced plans to modernise the corner shop, make it more hygienic and enforce food safety measures. All of these are good things. Stories of expired foodstuffs on shelves, refrigerators being shut off at night, or, as this reporter witnessed on one occasion, frozen chickens being left to defrost on top of bags of rice are enough to send you to the nearest Lulu permanently.

Many are already slowly dying; choked by the pace of development and chained by rising rents to ageing buildings while customers move on. Most people now shop at hypermarkets or have moved outside the city centre to Musaffah or the suburbs. Shopkeepers are concerned they may not survive the transition, which would be a shame.

These shops have a character and convenience hypermarkets lack. They are a focal point for the community, children play impromptu cricket or football matches outside their doors. Need a dozen eggs and a loaf of bread? Most corner shops will deliver it to your door free. According to a recent study by the Abu Dhabi Government, there are more than 1,300 such stores open an average of 16 hours a day and generating income of Dh1 billion a year.

The concern is that the UAE "dekkan" will become an Adnoc convenience store, handy for a quick refuelling but devoid of soul.

And what of the corner shopkeeper? Who are they? They smile, when they see us, and they know our flat number by heart, but do we know anything about them? The men behind the counters of those 1,300 corner shops no doubt have interesting stories to tell. These are just a few.

The Cheese and Pickles Centre, King Khalid Street near Elektra

The store certainly lives up to its name. Outside, it's advertised with a garish green and yellow neon sign; inside is a dizzying number of pickles, more than 40 types from all over the Middle East and North Africa, and an even wider selection of cheeses - from fresh, unpasteurised, locally made varieties to imports from all over Europe.

In the pickle aisle, Amar Basanboul sells five assortments of mixed pickled vegetables. One is made with harissa, a North African paste made with chilli peppers, one without chillis, and there are two made with beetroot, tinging the pickling liquid purple. "This one is an Egyptian recipe made with preserved lemon. This one is made with cucumber; it is from Lebanon," Mr Basanboul explains. "What they eat, we provide."

It was Mr Basanboul's father, Mohamed Basanboul, who started the store. He came to Abu Dhabi from the Hadhramaut region of Yemen. The Hadhrami have long been known as sailors and traders, and their descendants are found as far away as India, where they established some of that country's oldest mosques, and in Singapore. In more modern history, the region is known as the birthplace of the bin Laden family.

Like his forebears, Mohamed Basanboul left looking for business opportunities. He established Cheese and Pickles after spotting a gap in the market. "When my father set up the store in 1980 he found that no one sold traditional Arabic cheeses, no one sold pickles or cheese," Amar Basanboul says. Now the store sells three types of labneh, fresh local goat cheeses among others.

Amar, who is 41, took over the store after his father died in 1996, but its raison d'être never changed. "These are Arabic cheeses that you can't find anywhere else." He has to have so many varieties to please the Arab diaspora that wants a taste of home.

Then there is the olive bar: 27 sorts from Italy, France, Greece, Syria, the Palestinian territories and just about every other country that has ever grown olives. He has olives stuffed with cheese, green olives stuffed with tiny, whole chillis. "Westerners love these ones, but they are spicy," he says.

Most customers are Arabs looking for a taste of home, or a cure for an ailment like thyme water for stomach aches or gas, or fresh and ground carob bean for constipation. Olive oil he sells by the crate. "The best tasting oil is from Palestine, and you can use it to treat paralysis, hair loss or to lower cholesterol," he claims. "If your body is weak you should have your wife rub you down with olive oil, take one Panadol and go to sleep. The next day you will feel revived."

He also caters for flights of fancy. "This is the doum fruit," he says as he points to a desiccated, rock-hard husk that looked like a brown lemon. "Egyptians and Sudanese children pull these off trees and eat them, and [as adults] they come here to relieve childhood memories." Like most everything in the store, Mr Basanboul claims, doum is good for your health. "Like hibiscus, it helps with blood pressure. If you drink it cold, it brings it down; if it is hot, it brings it up." He does, however, qualify this particular claim. "I don't know if that is true, but that is what they say."

Mr Basanboul's mission is to keep alive the Arabic food culture in Abu Dhabi. Business at his store has declined by a third in the past years mostly because of construction of what might become a new landmark building. The building, however, has been under construction since 2006, limiting parking and obscuring his store from view. Though he also blames the popularity of fast food for the decline in foot traffic through his store, he remains optimistic. "When they get sick from the Big Macs, they will go back to natural food."

Middle East Flour Mill & Foodstuff, Muroor and 25th Street

Abu Dhabi was a different place when Abdul Rashid Kunduerel, 61, arrived 42 years ago as a taxi driver. He followed his brother, Mohamed Kunduerel, 65, with dreams of a better life for his family. They found it. Six years later they owned a store and brought their wives to Abu Dhabi. Their children were born and raised here, and they have gone on to have successful careers in the UAE. Mr Rashid says this is rarer these days.

"There are less families here now because of the cost of rent," he says. "Many are going back." That has changed the neighbourhood along Muroor Road where he and his brother have their shop.

In 1980, when the brothers got together the money to set up their corner store, the area around Muroor and 25th Street was largely empty except for a few villas and a handful of low-rise apartment blocks that housed families. "It used to be about 20 per cent locals with a mix of Indian and Pakistani families and bachelors; now it is 50/50 families and bachelors," Mr Kuduerel says. The Emiratis have moved to Khalifa City and most of the rest have returned home. The only thing keeping any families in his area is the Pakistani school across the street. There have been many evictions from illegally partitioned villas recently and that has shrunk an already dwindling pool of customers.

The store sits nestled between the Commando Saloon and the Ideal Bakery. The mill for which the shop is named lies in a back corner of the store; it's still used, but infrequently. "Families used to come to me to grind the spices they bought at the market, but now there is no business for that - everything comes in packs," Mr Kuduerel says.

Business was slow on Monday despite the stream of children heading home from school. "Now there are a lot of bachelors and they all go to Musaffah, and most of the families go to the big shops like Carrefour."

Mr Rashid feels he has to stock just about everything to keep competitive. You can't get an iPod in the Middle East Flour Mill, but you can get a close facsimile, an AM/FM radio shaped like an iPod that costs only Dh30.

"I try to keep prices down. I cannot compete with Carrefour, but between other groceries and me, there is a huge difference." The difference appears to be that he has turned his shop into an off-brand market, crammed to the rafters like Noah's Ark with everything you might need for daily life. His customers appear to be mostly South Asian bachelors. One, a Pakistani gold-and-white taxi driver plops a super-sized can of Tang on the counter and asks, "Discount?" Mr Rashid laughs at him. Maybe in the past, he might have given a discount or store credit, but not now.

Mr Rashid struggles to keep up with a rapidly changing city. He points to his biggest adjustment: a TV screen showing feeds from six different security cameras. A year or so ago children began stealing from his store, coming through his now-shuttered back door to steal candy and sodas.

He speaks wistfully about Abu Dhabi in its early days. "The city centre used to be full of small businesses and shops, and now that is all being sent to Musaffah." Not all the change has been bad. "When I came here there were few roads and no signals. There was sand everywhere and the only cars were Land Rovers. There was one landmark on Hamdan Street - the TV building - that everyone used to navigate."

Now, he struggles to find his way around. "When we go, we are not sure how we will ever get back. Even Musaffah is becoming like Abu Dhabi - crowded."

Grand Supermarket, Rotana Mall, Khaleej al Arabi Street

"The flats here are all empty," complains Ebrahim Mohamed Haje, the bespectacled Indian proprietor of Grand Supermarket. A lot has changed in the eight years since he came to Abu Dhabi. Back then, Grand Supermarket may have indeed been grand, as no doubt was the Rotana Mall, the small Khaleej al Arabi Street shopping centre to which the store is attached.

A decade ago, it towered over the other buildings. Now it is imprisoned by a sheer wall of gleaming high-rises and luxury car showrooms. The new construction has locked out and strangled the businesses within. What was once a thriving, if crowded, neighbourhood near the Corniche has emptied as parking became impossible to find and rents skyrocketed. Many of the existing buildings are either slated for demolition or refurbishment, although little of either has been done in years.

As a result, business is down. Rent for the premises is about Dh65,000 a year, cheap for Abu Dhabi, which allows Mr Haje and his colleagues from Calicut in Kerala to make a decent living. But there seems little hope that business will go anywhere but down.

One employee, Abdul Rashid, is relatively new to the UAE, having spent only four years in Abu Dhabi. He handles the accounts, going over a list of customers on a register made of a discarded carton of cigarettes. He barely looks up when a customer wanders in. Mr Haje, meanwhile, spends most his time pacing the store with his hands behind his back, gazing at items on the shelf.

There is a steady stream of customers despite the fact most residents in the area shop at the Choithrams Express half a block away. A security guard comes to buy snacks before his night shift; a man asks for a pack of cigarettes; another comes for a pint of milk. A dirham here, a dirham there: this is how Grand Supermarket stays in business.

Tucked in an alcove next to the register is a children's paradise. Shelves stacked to the ceiling with sweets ought to make Grand Supermarket a prime destination for children - the Willy Wonka's of Abu Dhabi - but most of the children have long since left. One girl wanders in to gawk at the towering racks. She's one of the few who live in the area, Mr Haje says. The girl must just be killing time. She leaves without buying.

What remains are mostly residents of company-owned apartments, the nearby Corniche Towers, for example, a mix of westerners and South-east Asians.

The mall, full of tailoring shops with obscure Italian names and souvenir shops selling gilded plastic, is empty. Shopkeepers sit in a circle in the middle of the atrium gossiping, but look up expectantly whenever a head pokes in through the entrance.

Like many of the older parts of Abu Dhabi, the mall was built quickly and forgotten almost as quickly. Partly, the inability to find parking relegated it to becoming one of the many forgotten warrens of the old city, invisible from the road, nearly inaccessible by car. People shop at bigger stores or have moved to new neighbourhoods. "They don't come here," Mr Ibrahim says.

Still, in that typical Abu Dhabi take on evolutionary theory, Grand Supermarket has found a way to survive. It has created itself a niche service, with a delivery business the bigger stores do not provide.

Najla Grocery, Al Bateen Co-op, Defence Road

Tucked between the far larger Shaheen grocery and a branch of the Abu Dhabi Co-operative Society, Najla Grocery stays in business by catering to shoppers in a hurry. "My prices are the same as the co-op, but it is faster to come here than go into the market," says Abdul Ghafour, 36. Shoppers stay for a few minutes, buy what they need and leave, or they simply park in the street, honk, and have goods delivered to them.

To accommodate the desires of his customers, Mr Ghafour seems to have tried to stuff an entire hypermarket into a shop the size of a modest bedroom. Footballs dangle from nets hung from the ceilings, toothbrushes are found between the soy sauce and breadcrumbs on the shelf. Bulky items unable to fit on any rack litter the floor. Navigating the shop requires you to look down as often as you do forward.

Customers squeeze themselves into the rare gaps through which two people can fit so that one or the other can pass by. The effect is rather like a third-class carriage on an Indian train; little wonder, then, that customers linger for as short a time as possible. Perhaps that is also why Mr Ghafour has employed a small man as a stockboy. The man, from Mr Ghafour's hometown of Tirur in Kerala, declines to give his name, but he proves adept at navigating the narrow spaces in the back, all but invisible as he scrambles through the jumble fetching items for the long queue of waiting customers.

Business remains good for Mr Ghafour; customers are constant and plentiful. Unlike many of his compatriots in the small grocery business, he does not have to offer home delivery to stay competitive and seems to be unconcerned with pleasing his customers - they seem to come to him by compulsion. One man complains loudly at being forced yet again to carry the jugs of water to his car himself. "This is the last time," he says angrily. Mr Ghafour shrugs. The man will be back.

The Najla sits along a strip of stores in the bustling Al Bateen co-op, an old and still popular strip mall in the western edge of the city. The KFC there does brisk business, and traffic spills out of the parking lot and onto King Khalid Street, which is always busy. As the sun goes down an entire lane of traffic disappears as cars jostle for position to get into the shopping centre, which has seen better days. Parents bring their children for a taste of their own childhood; as evening prayers end, herds of boys and girls loiter; bachelors sit out on the green spaces to have dinner or just chat; taxi drivers come for a break during their 14-hour shifts. It seems to be one of the few places in the capital where each cross-section of society is present and mingles. This is partly a function of its location. Unlike much of the island, Al Bateen has gone relatively untouched by the building boom; there is still room for old Abu Dhabi here.

This, too, may go, however, as a result of the Abu Dhabi Food Control Initiative's 2030 plan, which will target stores such as the Najla for modernisation or demolition.

"I have heard that I may have to move," Mr Ghafour says. "I am trying to find new premises." He pays about Dh95,000 a year in rent, which, judging by the mobs swarming his store, he can pay easily. Should he be forced to move, Mr Ghafour feels, he will be hard pressed to find a location as profitable.

When a normal Ferrari won't do, join the Corsa Clienti

noreply@blogger.com (Sean McLain) — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 13:25:00 +0000

The following first appeared in The National on February 25, 2011

A press conference was the last place the assembled group of hacks wanted to be on a sunny Thursday afternoon. However, this time it was not because the end of the work week loomed, but because there were far too many interesting things going on outside the window.

The event was the official press conference for the inaugural Ferrari Festival for the Middle East, and the interesting bits were the roar of V12 engines coming from the cars racing around the tracks. We had been unceremoniously yanked from the garages to an upstairs conference hall to hear about how great Ferrari's sales had been in 2010 (up five per cent from 2009), and how important the Middle East was to the company (exhibit A, Ferrari World).

Organised by the Ferrari division, Corse Clienti, or "client racing", the Ferrari Festival is part of a travelling roadshow, putting on a dozen or so appearances around the world's most famous racetracks every year. Besides the allure of driving their road-going Ferraris without the hindrance of things like speed limits, a select group of "Prancing Horse" owners flock to these events for the chance to drive one of the so-called "laboratory cars".

The laboratory cars programme began in 2005 with the FXX, which is based on the Enzo - a car so exclusive Ferrari got to decide whether you deserved one. That, I suppose, is part of the appeal. Only 400 Enzos were produced, but the FXX programme is even more exclusive.

About 30 lucky Ferrari owners paid €1.3 million (Dh6.5m) to own a car they could only drive on a racetrack. What was the appeal? A 6.7L V12 engine that produces 850hp, which takes you from zero to 100kph in a blistering 2.5 seconds and has a top speed of about 400kph. This is a car for serious drivers. Based on the successes of the FXX programme, Ferrari released the 599XX in 2009 and the 33 available cars were swiftly bought up by the uber-wealthy. Sometimes, just owning a regular, humdrum Ferrari is not enough of a statement.

They are called laboratory cars because of the black box contained onboard the 60 cars. These record data from every drive, which are then logged and analysed by Ferrari technicians and used to produce future cars. Information garnered from the 599XX programme was used to create the 599GTO, the fastest street-legal Ferrari yet.

This was explained to us by Pietro Innocenti, or Peter the Innocent to non-Italian speakers, who is the general manager of Ferrari Middle East. He has an appropriately papal name for his position as the high priest to Medici-esque crew of Ferrari owners assembled at the event. The owners at the Yas Marina Circuit that day were the elite of the elites, chosen by the company to own some of its most prized creations.

One of them was Frank Kanyet, the 56-year-old Colombian executive chairman of the oil consortium Petrotesting. He is the proud owner of a 599XX, and the epitome of what Innocenti refers to as the "gentlemen drivers", the patrons of Corse Clienti's annual racing events. Heavy around the middle and of average height and looks, Kanayet lacks the physique of a hardened racer, but he certainly has gravitas. He sat sprawled on a couch in a luxury villa adjoining the track with his racing suit down around his waist.

The public relations woman taking me to the interview repeatedly assured me of the privilege I was being granted in this brief interview. "Most of the clients do not want to be seen by the press." This sort of conspicuous consumption is best done in private, I suppose.

Despite only getting to drive his car 10 times a year at Ferrari-approved events, Kanayet is completely enamoured of his purchase. He owns the car out of a passion for the brand - and fast driving. "We got the car a year ago in Valencia," says Kanayet. "It's absolutely amazing; it's an experience that you cannot describe. It's the performance, the instant power, the fast shifting and the security in knowing that if you brake you will stop."

The combination of safety and power is what all 599XX owners and test drivers rave about, but if you want to be a little less safe and a bit more Felipe Massa, there is a traction control dial on the carbon fibre dashboard. It goes from one to nine; turn it to nine and the car handles with all the security of a Volvo; turn it to one and you'll be fishtailing around corners as if the roads were iced.

The traction control ensures that if you hit a corner too fast you won't send your million-euro toy careering into the safety barriers. All of the fun, none of the risk. Well, almost.

It's not hard to see why Kanayet fell in love with the car. Turn the key on the 599XX and it roars to life like some prehistoric beast marking its territory. It is a predator engineered for one purpose: to destroy previous lap times. Hit the accelerator and the car gives off a satisfying, eardrum-destroying howl. The FXX sounds like a house cat by comparison.

A car this powerful requires special treatment. So, like most laboratory car owners, Kanayet keeps his 599XX at the Ferrari stables in Maranello, Italy where it is lovingly watched over by an army of engineers and mechanics. The same goes for the owners of retired Ferrari Formula One cars, which were also on display.

The car disrupting Innocenti's press conference earlier in the day was the F2005, which had previously been driven by Michael Schumacher and was now being driven by some unnamed Scuderia Ferrari enthusiast. Ferrari sells off all its Formula One cars two years after each season ends.

One of the other strange perks of owning a Ferrari F1 car is that you also inherit most of the pit crew. Engineers that worked on the car throughout the season tend to stay on with the car as it is retired and maintain it in Maranello for its new owner. So, you not only get Schumacher's car, you also get his mechanic.

The logistics of running these sorts of events is mind-boggling. Kanayet and most of his fellow laboratory car owners pay an extra fee to Ferrari to store and maintain their vehicles, which includes transporting them around the world so that they can play with their toys.

There is luxury, and then there is the stratified world of Ferrari ownership. It is difficult for the peons and the working stiffs of the world to understand the appeal of owning a car you can drive, let alone see, only a handful of times a year. However, you can't help but feel a twinge of jealousy when you see the joy on face of men like Kanayet. They squeeze their middle-aged bodies into the cockpits of Formula One cars designed for men half their age and trouser size, but for the two minutes it takes them to drive around the Marina Circuit they are Fernando Alonso, sitting astride some of the most powerful machines ever designed by man.

Money, it seems, can buy happiness.

Not just for soldiers - Idex is a playground for gadget geeks

noreply@blogger.com (Sean McLain) — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 13:20:00 +0000

The following first appeared in The National on February 24, 2011

There were, unfortunately, no shopping carts outside the entrance to the International Defence Exhibition and Conference, which is a shame really, because it was love at first sight. The IST 14.5 anti-material rifle at the Azerbaijan booth is a thing of beauty.

It was its size that first caught my eye. At 2.25 metres, it was 30 centimetres longer than I am tall. There's an appeal to owning a firearm that's bigger than you, especially one that can put a 50-calibre round through the side of an armoured car 2,000 metres away.

The staff, however, paid me no mind. The steely woman at the display, who bore a rather strong resemblance to the James Bond villain Rosa Klebb, sniffed at me when I asked about price. I half expected her to come at me with a poisoned spike in her sensible shoes. Perhaps I lacked the appropriate demeanour and import certificates to justify her attention. An elderly gentleman in a seersucker suit and a 10-gallon hat, however, earned her undivided attention.

Idex, as the exhibition is known, is the biggest of its kind in the region. Plenty of coin changes hands as governments choose to sign major contracts with manufacturers from all over the world. But the majority of the folks, myself included, were simply there to play with the displays. In this respect, Idex is the county fair of international arms shows.

Casual visitors and tourists poked, prodded and hefted a thousand different models of assault rifles, grenade launchers and even a few Gatling guns. They peered into the innards of gigantic armoured vehicles and tanks with the same naked interest they'd have shown a mastodon skeleton at a natural history museum.

The best fun, however, is to be had at the Virtsim booth. The company sells "virtual reality tactical training". You don a motion capture suit and a headset that lets you see the virtual 3D environment. Your movements are tracked by cameras and translated into the virtual world. To the outside observer, you are wandering aimlessly around an empty stage, but in your reality, you're battling against a team of terrorists.

Perhaps in an attempt to overturn cultural stereotypes, the terrorists you are fighting are not your run-of-the-mill Taliban types. They are instead Kalashnikov-wielding hipsters in ironic T-shirts. It turns out that there's an enemy out there nearly everyone can agree on.

Idex is obviously not for everyone, and those with an under-active humour gland might accuse me of making light of devices designed to kill or maim. They would be right. My only excuse is that I react with the same exuberance when presented with an iPad - gadgets are gadgets, and the gadgets at Idex are par excellence.

I was entranced by armour designed to disguise 50-tonne tanks from thermal sensors by giving the vehicle a pitted surface. Apparently, the difference in heat created by the uneven surface breaks up its heat signature, making it disappear; simple, elegant, amazing.

There is no doubt that an inordinate amount of human ingenuity is devoted to making weapons. Take, for example, Whitebox Robotics. The Korean company designs remote-controlled vehicles for patrols, which clients kept crashing. Their solution was to create a helmet that allowed you to see and hear what the robot did, and direct its camera with a turn of the head.

The obvious follow-up project was applying that technology to a machine gun turret, which the technician demonstrated to me. That its ultimate purpose is to shoot intruders does not detract from its technical brilliance.

Under the florescent lights of the convention centre, it is sometimes hard to put the items on display in the appropriate context. Cochrane International builds security barriers, but what catches your eye is not the barbed wire or fencing made out of tempered steel. You are immediately drawn to a large orange orb covered in concentric circles from which jut steel spikes. It looks sinister, like something that might drop on your head if you pressed the doorbell at the home of someone like Dr No.

It is, however, a buoy designed to stop boats from entering ports. The effects were explained by a helpful series of photos in a glossy brochure. They showed a boat hitting the barrier and mannequins flying out of the boat before landing in the water, several metres away. While it is a simple and effective strategy, I couldn't help feeling a twinge of regret that my initial assessment wasn't accurate.

Not everyone shares an objective love for gizmos. If you can't look at a smoke grenade without seeing Hosni Mubarak, don't go. The rest of you have one more day to take in the sights. You won't be disappointed.

The power behind Egypt's unrest

noreply@blogger.com (Sean McLain) — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 13:18:00 +0000

The following first appeared in The National's Review section on February 4, 2011

The revolution will be Twitterised, said one young Egyptian on January 25, the day that the protests in Cairo began. Her tweet was meant both to praise the social networking site and to condemn TV news channels, which at the time seemed more interested in the rioting in Lebanon than in the mass demonstrations in Cairo.

For years, pundits and social media activists have heralded the internet as the great leveller, a forum for true democracy. To the internet evangelists, sites such as Facebook and Twitter can be used to bring governments to account. And yet the internet is unlikely to fulfil the utopian visions of its most ardent advocates.

The power of the medium has been evident in events in Tunisia and Egypt, which were organised online. There have been other breakthroughs in the past weeks. In China, so-called "human search engines" - web users who perform research to humiliate targeted individuals - recently scored a coup when Li Qiming was sentenced on Monday to six years in prison for drunkenly driving over a young college student.

The 23-year-old Li reportedly tried to escape arrest by saying "my father is Li Gang". The phrase and the story went viral and a human search engine revealed that that Li's father was a local police chief. Both father and son were subjected to online ridicule, and attempts by the Communist party to hush up the controversy failed.

All the same, the web's limitations as a tool of rebellion are striking. This becomes clear when one considers the shadowy organisation known as Anonymous. A group of so-called "hacktivists", they are, in their own words "the hardened war veterans of the internet". The group was responsible for interrupting service on the websites of Mastercard, Visa, PayPal and Amazon, punishing those companies for halting payments to Wikileaks. More recently, Anonymous sought to offer alternative means of web access to protesters in Egypt after the Egyptian government took the country offline.

In many ways, the members of Anonymous and their ilk typify the internet - Clark Kents who become Che Guevaras when they get home and log on. And as of last Thursday, dozens of them have had their cover blown.

The FBI arrested 40 purported members of Anonymous for their alleged participation in the web assault on credit card companies. One of those arrested reported in surprise that the agents had pointed "real guns" at him. Another turned out to be an 18-year-old computer science student at a university in the state of Georgia.

It is debatable whether the FBI needed to kick down doors with pistols drawn, but it is a sign of how seriously governments take online activists. In the US they arrest them. In many other countries they incarcerate them as political prisoners. The Man, it seems, also runs the internet, and in Egypt, he did something unprecedented: he shut it down.

The fact that protests continued points to another underacknowledged aspect of the web. As revolutionary a tool of communication as it is, that's all it is. The message is more important than the medium, and the audience has to be ready to hear it.

Egypt furnishes other proofs of this. In 2008, when the April 6 movement used Facebook to bring thousands on to the streets in El Mahalla El Kubra, the world was abuzz. Advocates for democracy in the region praised the site and some governments considered blocking it. Yet a similar protest called on the same day a year later attracted almost no support.

Something much older than the internet has fuelled the latest protests in Tunisia and Egypt. It is the same thing that sparked revolutions in America, France, Iran and Eastern Europe - anger at a government that people feel is out of touch, repressive and corrupt. That's something that can't be unplugged, and which retains its power even when it steps out from behind the keyboard.

Jobless youth tell of their frustrations

noreply@blogger.com (Sean McLain) — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 08:54:00 +0000

The following first appeared in The National on January 29, 2011

A report released last week on employment trends by the UN's International Labour Organisation painted a stark picture of the Mena region. One would have to travel to a former Soviet republic to find unemployment rates anywhere nearly as high as are found in the Middle East and North Africa. Unemployment in the Mena region is the highest in the world, particularly among young people, and the work that is available is often poorly paid. Financial security? Non-existent.

About 40 per cent of the working population in the Middle East and 32 per cent in North Africa earn less than $2 a day, according to the ILO report. About a third work in conditions the ILO calls vulnerable employment, "characterised by inadequate earnings, low productivity and difficult conditions of work that undermine workers' fundamental rights".

In 2010, one out of every four young people in the region's labour market was unemployed. The scarcity of work seems to have discouraged many from even trying to enter the workforce. Only about 35 per cent of young people in the Muslim world have a job or are actively looking for one; in the rest of the world, that figure is closer to 50 per cent.

Queen Rania of Jordan warned in 2008 of the dire situation facing Arab youth. That year, 15 million Arabs under the age of 30 were unemployed, many of them university graduates. About 30 per cent to 40 per cent of young people in the region attend university, but that does not make it any easier to find a good job.

Mena is the fastest-growing region in the world and, according to the ILO, many economies in the region have not kept pace with the booming population. That means more competition for too few jobs.

Here, four young people from across the region and from various walks of life tell us what it is like to be looking for work. They are either seeking employment or working in jobs well below their education and qualifications.

Mohammad Anwar Abdallah, aka Matouk

Age: 25

City: Cairo

Level of education: Vocational diploma

I have been selling socks in Cairo streets for nearly five years. I graduated from vocational school in 2002 with a diploma in furniture carpentry, but I couldn't get work in carpentry, or even a steady job. All I found were odd jobs.

I worked for a while in a bakery, had a stint handling luggage at the customs in Sallum, near Libya, and was for a while working on a microbus, not as a driver but as tabbaa, the man who calls out to passengers and helps them to get in and out.

I would have loved to have a steady job with social security and all. I am engaged to my cousin but cannot marry her because I cannot save enough money. I make about 500 pounds [Dh315] a month selling socks and half of that goes for rent on my room in Bashtil [an informal housing area] in Imbaba.

There is no work in my village. It is a small mountain village and nothing much goes on there. This is why I come to Cairo to work. I don't own the merchandise I sell.

A supplier provides me with the socks and I write him an IOU note for the value of the merchandise, 700 pounds. I work illegally, so the municipal police can confiscate my merchandise at any time. If this happens, the supplier would give me another batch of merchandise, but I will have to pay for both, the one that was confiscated and the new one. So instead of paying him 100 pounds every day as I do now, I will have to pay him 150 pounds or so every day.

Some of my friends work in Saudi Arabia and the UAE and others have gone back to the village in Asyût and now work in agriculture.

I don't work in agriculture because my family plot is too small, about a quarter of an acre, just enough for my father to work on.

I dream of having a microbus of my own and working on it, either here or in my village in Asyût.

I sell socks from 11am until 11pm every day except Fridays. It's a tough life, but it's what God has ordained for me.

* As told to Nabil Shawkat

Khaled Kapoun

Age: 33

City: Dweila suburb of Damascus

Level of education: University graduate

I graduated in English literature from Damascus University two years ago. I have been looking for a permanent position as an English teacher ever since, but I have only found short-term contracts for three to four months at a time. I worked briefly for a university and then for a language institute.

I want to work in the private sector because the wages are better, but it is as hard to get jobs in both areas. No company wants to take people on for the long-term, while the public sector is very competitive and you have less control over where you work.

For the past month I have been unemployed. In the first days I worked on my CV and I walked around the city handing it to language institutions. Some days I start at 10am and don't get back until 10pm. They smile and say they'll call me, but they never do. I am surviving on my savings and I live with my parents.

I left school when I was 14 and worked various jobs, including as a blacksmith, before deciding to take up my studies again at the age of 24. But having a university degree has not given me more opportunities than I had before. Now that I have studied, I do not want to try to find work in another area. I want to use my skills and teach English.

The main problem in Syria is that employment is via networks. Even if there are teaching jobs, the institutions are more likely to interview and employ someone they know. I cannot afford to take a job away from Damascus because it would mean paying rent and the salaries are rarely high enough to do that. I am looking outside the country as well.

Being unemployed is having an effect on my life. I cannot save to buy a house and I could not afford to get married even though I am in my thirties. It is also bad for our society. If many people are unoccupied and poor, it encourages behaviour such as stealing.

Everyone knows it is very hard to find a job. But it is hard not to get frustrated. I feel as though I am in the Samuel Beckett play Waiting for Godot, which I studied during my degree. I keep hoping that tomorrow a job will come along.

* As told to Sarah Birke

Fadi Quran

Age: 22

City: Al-Bireh neighbourhood of Ramallah

Level of education: University graduate (two bachelor's degrees)

I studied at Stanford in the USA and have a BA in international relations, focusing on international law, and a BSc in physics. I got back to the West Bank in July because I want to put my skills to good use here, in my country: I want to start an alternative-energy company. The issue here is not just the lack of jobs but the lack of opportunities for entrepreneurs who want to innovate, to start up something here that would also create opportunities for others.

I live in Ramallah, the most prosperous of the West Bank cities, but the Israeli occupation is a major obstacle as it puts a lot of bureaucracy in the way of a start-up; for example, in getting materials or recruiting skilled people, because of the difficulty in travelling both within the West Bank and from outside, for Palestinians. For instance, Gaza has many great engineers, but it is impossible for them to come and intern here for me.

Most of the jobs that are available for skilled people are within the Palestinian Authority or within the NGO sector, but that also creates a problem because they take all the skilled people out of the market and don't use them to innovate or develop skills that can expand the economy. Instead, skilled Palestinians end up working as low-level clerks.

Right now, I decided to look for jobs that are less entrepreneurial and have more to do with the NGO sector. I am frustrated by the circumstances that people here are suffering. I feel like if I moved somewhere else I would easily - thankfully - get a job. And I know that if I could work on my start-up, without these obstacles, I could help to create more jobs and be innovative. I have the potential to do that, but I can't use it and be of benefit. Sometimes I think that my energy would be better spent trying to remove the structural obstacles, by non-violently challenging the occupation. I feel that would be less difficult than what I am trying to do now. But I have to be optimistic for the future: I know something must happen to change things, and soon. The Arab world is boiling right now, and a part of that is because of this lack of opportunity for skilled young people.

* As told to Rachel Shabi

Ramzi Hajji

Age: 31

City: Tunis

Level of education: Master's degree

Geometry is for me like a kind of music: I just feel it. I can't explain why, but since I was a kid I've wanted to be a teacher.

I grew up in Regueb. It's a small town near Sidi Bouzid, in the interior of Tunisia. My father works as a labourer, mainly on construction sites, and my mother is a housewife.

We were eight children originally, but one brother and one sister died around 10 years ago from anaemia. My father always had to spend money as fast as he could earn it on our food, health care and on books and clothes for our schooling.

I used to help my father during school holidays, but my favourite thing was school. I dreamt of going to university and becoming a professor and, in 1999, enrolled in the University of Tunis. As a student I was living as I am now - hand-to-mouth - but I loved the experience.

We used to eat bsissa every day - it's a paste of grains, herbs and olive oil that students in Tunisia practically live on. Each morning it was two spoonfuls of bsissa, a coffee, two cigarettes, and then studying.

I graduated in 2005 with an MA in mathematics. I spent a couple of months at home in Regueb, then came back to Tunis to look for work.

I put up lots of adverts as a private teacher, but I didn't have much success: I was earning around 200 dinars month, and I was living on sandwiches.

I ended up working in cafes and hotels. Today I have the use of a schoolroom to give private lessons, but I'm still working without a contract. And now I'm taking home about 150 dinars a month.

Ideally I want a full-time job in a private school, but I don't have the connections. And I can't even find work in a state school.

When you're a student, you feel that your education equals a job later. You visit home and they're proud of you. But when you return home unemployed, it's different. They're not angry, but it's awkward. I hesitate to return home nowadays.

But I did visit Regueb this month to join the protests there - peaceful protests with reasonable demands for work and an end to corruption. I never imagined it would end with Ben Ali leaving. The revolution is wonderful. I feel I was reborn that day, January 14. And I hope things will keep improving.

* As told to John Thorne

Israel-Palestine: The implausibility of peace

noreply@blogger.com (Sean McLain) — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 08:52:00 +0000

The following first appeared in The National's Review section on December 31, 2010

When Barack Obama was preparing to take office in late 2008, Israel-Palestine was in shambles. Operation Cast Lead was in full swing. Israeli troops fought Hamas in the streets of Gaza, that conflict ending two days before Obama was sworn in as president.

Two years later, on the anniversary of that conflict, the situation appears just as parlous. Small militant groups in Gaza marked the anniversary of the conflict by firing mortars and rockets into southern Israel. Israel responded with airstrikes. There is little reason to believe that 2011 will improve the situation. None of the parties are in a position to negotiate for peace.

The US appears to have played its hand already. After trying and failing to force Israel to halt settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the US was forced to settle for a 10-month "freeze". Meanwhile, attempts to pressure Arab states into a goodwill gesture toward Israel to accompany the settlement freeze collapsed in the face of Israeli intransigence. When the 10 months ended, peace negotiations fell apart.

A string of diplomatic failures culminated in the US's offer of 20 next-generation fighter jets, worth $3 billion, and security guarantees for Israel in return for a three-month extension. Israel's rejection of the deal humiliated the US and all but destroyed hopes for renewed peace talks.

There was never much chance that the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu would agree to an indefinite halt to settlement construction. He loses nothing by stalling for time, and every time he thumbs his nose at Obama and the Arab world, he scores points within his fractious coalition of right-wing parties. And he does need to score points. Netanyahu is under fire from almost every direction in Israel.

The left suffered huge losses in the last election, but they lose no opportunity to snipe at Netanyahu for his troubled relationship with Israel's closest ally. The slightest provocation of the right sparks revolt: settlers clash with the police and the army and municipal leaders find any loophole they can to take the brakes off construction in the Occupied Territories. The main opposition party, Kadima, sits on its hands and hopes that in-fighting will destroy the coalition and catapult them back into government.

There is a temptation to cheer on the squabblers. The labour minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer raised eyebrows on Sunday when he told the cabinet that peace talks must resume or the world might unequivocally recognise a Palestinian state. It was a nod to the Palestinians' PR campaign to build a worldwide consensus on their right to statehood.

Since the end of the settlement freeze, Palestinian diplomats have gained the support of South American nations for an independent Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. Norway elevated the status of Palestine's mission to just below that of an official embassy, and 10 other European nations are reportedly considering similar moves.

Mr Ben-Eliezer's statements are more political opportunism than a validation of the Palestinian Authority's PR blitz. The fact that the left appears increasingly uncomfortable aligning itself with a government which is both antithetical to its political beliefs and incapable of forging peace might tempt the Arab world to hope for a new government in the future. That would be a mistake.

Israeli politics has become a scramble for power, not peace. In the absence of US pressure, Israel appears content with the status quo. Meanwhile, America has ever fewer levers with which to limit Israel's expansionism. For now, the US's role in the peace process seems to be contracting, perhaps necessarily. Having spent so much political capital in futility, Obama must step back or risk losing what credibility he has left. Peace will have to wait.

While there is little risk that a new war in Gaza will erupt, the peace process is in a markedly worse state than when Obama took office. Direct talks have died prematurely, and even indirect talks seem unlikely. That does not bode well for 2011.

Guantanamo – more a comedy of errors than a foil to terror

noreply@blogger.com (Sean McLain) — Sun, 01 May 2011 11:43:00 +0000

The following was originally published in The National on April 30, 2011

In 2010, the black comedy Four Lions premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. It told the stories of four British Muslims and their attempts to become members of al Qa'eda. In one of the climactic scenes, the men agonise over what to blow up. One, Barry, wants to bomb a mosque "to radicalise the moderates". Two of the others had been kicked out of a training camp in Waziristan for being soft city boys; they also accidently killed Osama bin Laden. Like all the best comic dramas, wrapped up in the farcical antics are kernels of sorry truth.

Nine years after the first 20 prisoners were taken to the Guantanamo Bay Detention Centre in Cuba, portions of the classified case files of all 772 persons held at the camp have been released by WikiLeaks and numerous news sites. There isn't much that is funny in these files, but there is plenty of farce.

Barry may have wanted to blow up a mosque, but Majid Khan - the only legal resident of the United States held at Guantanamo and one of 16 so-called "high value detainees" - wanted to use his experience working as a petrol pump attendant in Baltimore to stage co-ordinated attacks on fuel stations across the US. The wheeze was vetoed by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the September 11 attacks.

Khan also had the bright idea of renting a number of flats, then leaving on the gas with the pilot lights lit. That plan was also placed on the back burner.

Khan was instructed to go home to his wife in Baltimore - the city where he had been brought up and where he went to school - but he was insistent that he wanted to die for the cause. So al Qa'eda told him to wear a suicide vest to a mosque where Pervez Musharraf, the then president of Pakistan, was supposed to be visiting. Khan obeyed his orders, but there was no Musharraf and the vest was a dud.

Khan's dedication to the cause was mirrored by Abd Rahim al Nashiri, one of three detainees the US authorities admitted waterboarding - an "advanced interrogation technique" that most people, including the authors of the Geneva Conventions, would consider torture. Born in Saudi Arabia, al Nashiri was alleged to have been the mastermind for the attack on the USS Cole in 2000 that killed 17 US sailors when it was at anchor in Aden. So single-minded was al Nashiri that he confessed he received injections to render him impotent. The al Qa'eda operative was determined, he claimed, to avoid distractions from the fairer sex "so that more time could be spent on the jihad".

Some of the seemingly inconsequential details revealed in the WikiLeaks files about al Qa'eda's training camps are almost as bizarre as the stories of the wannabe terrorists themselves. For example, graduates of al Qa'eda's bomb-making school all receive a plastic Casio digital watch instead of a formal diploma. The detention assessments of more than 50 prisoners cited possession of this watch as evidence that the men posed potential threats to the US.

Britons might be surprised to read that the relatively prosperous north London district of Finsbury Park is Europe's version of the Tora Bora mountains. Abu Hamza, the Egyptian-born imam who lost both hands and one eye in Afghanistan, is singled out as a prime recruiter for the Taliban and al Qa'eda. As a firebrand preacher at the Finsbury Park mosque he is alleged to have recruited 35 of the Guantanamo detainees to fight in Afghanistan. His extradition to the United States has been prevented by European human rights law. Meanwhile, his sojourn in the UK has been paid for by British taxpayers, causing no little resentment.

A former Libyan detainee, Abu Sufian bin Qumu, is now one of the leaders of the Libyan rebels. He fights in the town of Darnah, previously infamous for sending more suicide bombers per capita to Iraq than any other city in the world. The entirety of eastern Libya, in fact, sent more foreign fighters per capita to Iraq than any other region in the Arab world. But then, the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter is often in the eye of the beholder - particularly if the beholder is an American.

Some of the cases are already well known, such as the shameful detention of Sami al Hajj, an Al Jazeera cameraman. According to his captors, al Hajj financed a global terrorism network while working as an executive secretary to a beverage company. He was also accused of distributing pro-jihad propaganda designed to recruit more people to the cause cleverly disguised as interviews. One of the reasons used to justify his almost seven years at Guantanamo was to extract additional information on Al Jazeera's suspicious links to Osama bin Laden.

Al Jazeera was not the only media outlet to arouse suspicion. Among the "pocket litter" found on several people sent to Guantanamo was a number linked to the BBC World Service. According to an analyst's note from a file quoted by the UK's Daily Telegraph: "Numerous extremist links to this BBC number indicates a possible propaganda media network connection." Note to all war correspondents: think twice before handing out those business cards.

What about the inevitable question: was Guantanamo worth it? When you weigh the evidence contained in the files against the many reports of inhumane treatment and the worldwide outrage that they generated, the answer is probably "no". In fact, it could be argued that in acting as a recruiting sergeant for militant groups across the globe, the detention centre did far more harm than good.

Empirically, the potential intelligence trove that was used to justify keeping so many of these men in prison failed to stop the July 7 bombings in the UK. It failed to win the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. It destroyed the moral standing of an entire country and a war initially built on righteous anger at unprovoked attacks on New York and Washington. It may have radicalised detainees further or provoked them into committing acts of terrorism once they were released, which a considerable number of them did.

In time, Guantanamo might come to be considered a joke, if one in very poor taste. Closing down the detention centre is an undeniably difficult task, one that confounds legal experts. Trying the worst of the actors has become nearly impossible because of US congressional opposition to civilian trials, tainted evidence and a litany of bad legal decisions. Any way that Barack Obama looks at this situation, the president must see a losing proposition, but close Guantanamo he must.

The White House alleges that WikiLeaks's misguided activism does more harm than good, and that might be true. But that does not make the stain on the moral fibre of the US any less indelible. The information in these files will shock and horrify readers more than it will amuse them, but it is also a stark reminder that no one has a monopoly on wrongdoing.

Burden of Gulf security must shift away from the West

noreply@blogger.com (Sean McLain) — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 06:42:00 +0000

The following first appeared in The National on 10 December 2010

At the recent Manama Dialogue on Gulf Security in Bahrain, a brief debate between allies showed how the strategic posture of western nations in the Middle East is slowly changing. As a result, GCC states, working together, will have to play a more active role in the region’s security.

Dr Liam Fox, the UK secretary of state for defence, outlined the traditional stance while stating Britain’s policies of strategic reassurance and deterrence: a “flexible and agile” British military “providing nuclear and conventional deterrence” would not stand for “an Iranian nuclear weapons capability”. In short, the UK and others would intervene, militarily if necessary, should Iran obtain nuclear weapons.

In response, Jean-Claude Mallet, arguably France’s top national security strategist, asked a series of questions, which should serve as a wake-up call: “What does this mean to France, the UK and others to utter this sort of sentence? What is it we can say to them as we did in Europe here, in a different part of the world with different logic?”

The thrust of Mr Mallet’s question is that the UK and other western powers must be cautious in assuming that military intervention, nuclear or otherwise, is what this region wants. The subtext, of course, is that the Gulf is not Europe, the GCC is not Nato, and that the UK and France just signed an historic defence cooperation agreement. France would probably prefer its new partner not commit itself to war with a potentially nuclear armed enemy.

More importantly, though, is how Mr Mallet’s comments should be read by a region lacking military unity.

Greater GCC military cooperation should take on renewed urgency, not simply because of Iran’s ambiguous plans for its nuclear programme and its steady, if slow, mastery of ballistic missile technology. The GCC must improve the ability of their militaries to work in concert, because they are increasingly going to have to take greater responsibility for their own security.

That is happening gradually. The UAE’s purchase of advanced missile defence capabilities, its highly capable air force, increasing integration with Nato through deployments and joint training exercises, as well as its investment in surveillance aircraft and equipment, are all gradually transforming the Emirates into a deterrent force in its own right.

Other Gulf states have made similar expenditures, with Saudi Arabia spending far more on its armed forces than any regional country. Yet little has been done to unite these forces in an effective manner.

There has been talk of a Gulf missile defence shield for some time, most recently at the Middle East Missile and Air Defence Symposium, which ran concurrently with the GCC summit. With Kuwait and Saudi Arabia planning to join the UAE in purchasing the latest version of the Patriot missile, something approaching a unified missile defence infrastructure looks to be occuring.

To date, though, Gulf security has been backed chiefly by the United States, while the UK, France and Australia also maintain a sizable military presence in the region. A domestic regional security infrastructure has never grown out of infancy.

Reliance on the US and other allies to guarantee the stability of a region surrounded by volatile neighbours has worked thus far, but Mr Mallet’s words is a reminder that Gulf States will play a much greater role in the region’s stability. They have to live with the consequences of regional hostilities in a way the French, the British and the Americans don’t.

Furthermore, the reductions in the size of European militaries should lend an additional sense of urgency. The US went through its own round of reductions after the end of the Cold War, and it too concentrated on building what Dr Fox called a “flexible and agile force”.

Admittedly, the current cuts to the UK and French militaries are not crippling, but they do represent the broader trend.

The main goal of both Gulf and foreign forces in the region is the deterrence of enemies and the reassurance of allies. Deterrence requires an enemy that sees a credible opponent, and reassurance is effective only if your allies believe you can deliver on those threats. Recent conflicts have shown the region – and especially Iran – the limits of the West’s military capabilities.

In the game of nuclear brinkmanship, the perceived cracks in western military power may have changed the calculus of Iran’s strategic thinking. For many reasons, Iran is feeling emboldened and its regional ambitions have broadened as a result.

Where deterrence falls short, those gaps must be filled by indigenous military prowess, working not just individually, but in concert. This is not simply because it is proper, but also because the West is looking for them to do so. As the British government and military leadership were keen to emphasise, western powers rarely go to war alone, therefore they don’t need huge armies anymore. The trend may reverse itself at some point, but for now, as Mr Mallet reminded us in Bahrain, multilateralism is the watchword of the West.

UAE sets peaceful precedent in nuclear design

noreply@blogger.com (Sean McLain) — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 17:00:00 +0000

The following first appeared in The National on August 23, 2010

When the nuclear reactor in Braka begins generating electricity sometime in 2017, the UAE will not only be the first Arab nation to produce nuclear energy. It will also have the first nuclear programme in the world that is "peaceful by design".

This phrase has been used to describe a nuclear programme that cannot produce nuclear weapons. According to a UAE official involved in the programme, this was the government's intent when it set about to bring nuclear energy to the UAE. "We wanted to make our programme not only safe and transparent but completely proliferation-proof." This is an important consideration in a region long considered a hub and possible source for the proliferation of nuclear materials.

Some members of the US Congress gave proliferation concerns as reasons to block the US-UAE nuclear co-operation agreement. That is one reason why nuclear energy has taken so long to catch on in a rapidly growing and energy-hungry Middle East. But according to Mark Fitzpatrick, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, fear of proliferation is not the main reason for the region's relative slowness to join the nuclear energy club.

"There is just as much, if not more fear, of proliferation today as there was then. If it were a contributing factor, it would be more relevant today when the proliferation concerns are more real," he said. According to Mr Fitzpatrick, the real reasons are much more practical. Nuclear energy is expensive and some projects in the Middle East ran into financial difficulty. "In addition, nuclear energy was not a high priority given the abundance of oil and gas resources in much of the Middle East." However, with rising oil prices and diminishing oil and gas reserves, nuclear energy is becoming more attractive.

Nevertheless, proliferation is a fear the UAE wished to allay. To meet the peaceful-by-design standard, the UAE had to forgo the right to enrich uranium and reprocess spent nuclear fuel. "If you look at nuclear technology for peaceful purposes there are two cross-overs where the technology that is used in the peaceful, civil nuclear industry is also used in military nuclear weapons. Those two points are enrichment and reprocessing," said the UAE official, who declined to be named.

The UAE's decision to forgo enrichment and reprocessing has had a profound effect on other Arab countries wishing to develop nuclear energy. It has set a precedent that helps ensure the eventual success of any nuclear energy programme in the region: US co-operation. A Middle Eastern country hoping to develop nuclear energy can seek technology from a country other than the US. But to run a safe and economically feasible programme, a nuclear cooperation agreement with Washington is considered essential. Without it, the UAE official said, "you find yourself in a licensing scenario where every component and every piece of material has to be licensed separately. It is very difficult to manage a project in those circumstances."

Before it signed a deal with South Korea in December for its nuclear technology, for instance, the UAE reached an agreement with the US, "because ultimately much of the technology has a US thumbprint on it," the UAE official said. In entering a nuclear accord with the US, Abu Dhabi has set the "gold standard for American nuclear co-operation with other countries", said Mr Fitzpatrick. "When the UAE first agreed to [the nuclear pact with Washington], it had an immediate positive ripple effect. Bahrain and Saudi Arabia both agreed to similar undertakings in their preliminary nuclear co-operation agreements with the United States."

Of all the countries in the region pursuing nuclear energy, only Jordan appears reluctant to embrace the UAE precedent of "peaceful by design" as a cornerstone of its fledgling nuclear energy programme. "Jordan has said that it does not want to give up its rights under Article four of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty to enrich uranium in the future, because it has uranium resources it wants to exploit", said Mark Hibbs, a senior associate in the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Nuclear Policy Program.

The need for Jordan to sign on to the same deal as the UAE creates problems for the US, according to Mr Hibbs. "In the context of the US-UAE agreement, it was framed giving the UAE most-favoured-nation status, should the US in the future negotiate an agreement that would be more favourable to another country, whether it be Saudi, Jordan or what have you, then the UAE would feel it had the right to renegotiate its agreement with the US."

The UAE official admits this is a possible scenario, but believes it has been exaggerated. "A lot of people worry about this, I think disproportionately so." While the UAE would have the right under the terms of the agreement to petition for a new negotiation on nuclear cooperation, "as a practical matter, the UAE is not going to ask for that right. We've made the decision not because it was imposed on us. We made the decision because it was our sovereign choice."

"For somebody to suspect that just because some other country in the Middle East decided that it wanted to have this right [to enrich uranium], that we would abandon our aspiration is not logical. We adopted that policy because we thought it was the right policy for us." But for Mr Hibbs, the issue is not simply whether the UAE chooses to embrace enrichment if Jordan does. "The concern is whether or not this agreement will sustain itself as the standard for such agreements worldwide, the answer is at this point very uncertain."

However, there are other, more practical reasons why Jordan may yet decide to forgo enrichment rights. The UAE did not simply set aside those rights to set a good example for the rest of the world. "Aside from the moral high road and the nonproliferation consideration, there is a cold hard calculation underpinning all of this: enrichment facilities are extremely expensive and developing these facilities doesn't make any sense," said the UAE official. Enriching uranium "would be a financial burden on the programme and would simply lead to higher-cost electricity."

Enriching uranium produces fuel that is more than twice the price of fuel on the open market. It makes sense for only large-scale operations and for energy security. According to Mr Fitzpatrick, "the economies of scale dictate that one have something around 10 reactors before it makes economic sense to produce one's own enriched uranium fuel rather than buying it from the international marketplace, where it is readily available."

Additionally, requirements set by many nuclear supplier states would hamper a country's ability to import technology and materials should they embrace enrichment. Since enrichment is used in both civil and military purposes, many countries would find it politically difficult to work with a country that does not forgo enrichment. Again, this would lead to higher costs of electricity since it would limit the pool of potential suppliers.

This is yet another reason why the UAE decided not to pursue enrichment, the UAE official said. "The UAE's strategy has always been to have access to all of the major nuclear suppliers, both in terms of technology and also materials and fuel, so that we can ensure the long-term sustainability of the programme and stability of supply, components, know-how and fuel." All eyes will be on the UAE as it makes its foray into the world of nuclear energy. Not only has it set a new standard for the peaceful use of nuclear energy, but it will test the practicality of civilian nuclear energy development in a volatile region.

Mr Hibbs said the UAE must closely guard the technology and materials. "One of the dangers is that it is much easier to disguise illicit nuclear trade if it happens in a country where there is a budding nuclear energy development project. That permits a lot of goods to flow in and out. This can be used to camouflage illicit activity that is unrelated to the nuclear energy development project, but has to be stopped to prevent the country from being misused as an entrepôt for proliferation."

According to the official involved with the project, the UAE is well aware of the increased scrutiny. "The UAE is trying to demonstrate the advantages of a system that hopefully other countries will independently choose. Some will and some won't, but if 40 per cent of the countries that adopt nuclear power for the first time in the next decade adopt the UAE model, it will have been a massive contribution to nonproliferation. Even if it is 10 per cent or even just one, it will have had a tangible effect on nuclear security."

UK and France join forces - and the US army pays the price

noreply@blogger.com (Sean McLain) — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 16:58:00 +0000

The following first appeared in The National on November 5, 2010

The UK-France defence pact announcement on Tuesday raised a few eyebrows, but it really should not have come as a shock to anyone paying attention to the trends.

It may not be surprising, but it is still a concern. As Europe whittles away at its military capability, more and more responsibility devolves on the already dominant United States. It is a trend that should be worrying for the US, Europe and the rest of the world.

The spending cuts have been on the horizon for some time. Last month, the UK released its Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR). The document sets defence spending priorities - the first such review since 1998. It called for drastic cuts in spending and a reduction in troop levels, the worst of which are being put off until the UK withdraws from Afghanistan.

In short, Britain, faced with a burdensome level of public debt, cannot afford its army any longer. Neither, it seems, can the French. It is cutting defence spending by €3.5 billion (Dh18.5 billion) over the next three years.

Add to this both nations struggle to stay competitive in global foreign defence sales and the deal appears to make sense. As the British prime minister David Cameron put it in his address following the signing ceremony: "It is about sharing development and equipment costs, eliminating unnecessary duplication, coordinating logistics, and aligning our research programmes."

Despite all the bluster and jokes about Napoleon and Lord Nelson rolling in their graves, the two defence agreements signed by Mr Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy contain little that should immediately concern either the UK's chief ally, the United States, or the rest of the world. A pact between the third and fourth largest defence spenders will undoubtedly boost the capabilities of both, and neither country sacrifices any significant level of military sovereignty by agreeing to share aircraft carriers. In fact, modifications made to the new British carriers to support foreign planes will actually make them more useful.

Coordinated defence research makes sense for two countries swiftly falling behind the curve in terms of technology and capabilities. A joint nuclear testing facility will allow both cash-strapped nations to maintain their nuclear deterrent while saving them quite a few euros or pounds.

The pact, however, can not simply be viewed through the lens of cold, hard economic necessity. There are wider, more troubling implications for global security. What is most concerning about this agreement are the rather parochial and short-sighted motivations that drive it.

When asked whether fissions could arise in the event of another war in the Falklands, for example, Mr Cameron said that they undoubtedly would. "Obviously we would only jointly commit a task force if we jointly agreed on the mission," he said, which begs the question: what, then, is the point? If an alliance only works until problems arise, then the alliance is not worth much.

More seriously, there is a troubling trend in the composition of military forces worldwide that is mirrored in the defence agreement. It began in the US. Closures of military bases and what amounted to mass redundancies in the armed forces in the mid-1990s were driven by a new military ideology which focused on technology at the expense of troop levels. Troops are expensive, bullets are not, and increasing the effectiveness of individual soldiers through the use of better technology saved money and created a cheaper, more effective and highly mobile military force.

This has only become more attractive in light of the emerging threat from stateless militias and terrorism, which challenge the armies of the West that are better constituted for land battles on the plains of western Europe than firefights in the mountainous regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In the SDSR, the UK cited the need to restructure the army for higher mobility and flexibility while decreasing the total number of forces. Likewise, a key component of the UK-France defence pact is the creation of joint expeditionary unit capable of rapid deployment.

Unfortunately, the UK and France are behind the times. If anything, the war in Afghanistan has taught the world the limits of multilateralism and the importance of the individual soldier, not his equipment. A diverse and confusing melange of troops, capabilities and rules governing the use of force have hamstrung the coalition's capabilities to secure the country. The greatest need in that fight is not better arms, but more boots on the ground. Meanwhile, the UK's decision to cut troop levels leaves it with fewer total troops than the US marine corps, that country's rapid deployment force.

In the long-term, this should be concerning the US. It has been the only serious guarantor of global security since the fall of the Soviet Union. This pact formalises that role. Its fleets patrol the deep water shipping lanes, and its army is entrusted with stability across the globe.

This is not a situation that can persist forever. In addition to other countries' reservations about this overwhelming force, the US has its own issues with maintaining a level of defence spending that is larger than all other countries combined.

The UK and France may indeed be taking steps to make their nations more capable of countering new threats, but each new threat seems to have a funny way of resembling old ones - even a ragtag army of radical militants in Iraq and Afghanistan are fought through mass deployments of troops. For, while Europe may never see another Hundred Years War, that does not mean that the conflicts of the future will be fought in a different way.

Pakistan’s governance gap filled by overzealous courts

noreply@blogger.com (Sean McLain) — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 05:36:00 +0000

The following first appeared in The National on 23 February 2010.

In one small village in Pakistan’s tribal areas, parents became alarmed when their children came home from the only school available, a madrasa, and told them that they were not “real Muslims”.

The predominant Pashtun society of the tribal areas takes a dim view of a maulvi (religious scholar) interfering with non-religious matters. The community decided to set up their own school to provide their children a proper education. But after failing to obtain funding from the government or charities, they had little choice: they had to send their children back to the madrasa.

I heard many variations of this story while on a recent trip to Pakistan. In the absence of effective governance, the people are often left to fend for themselves – or must permit more insidious forces to fend for them.

It is not that the inhabitants of the tribal areas are diehard Taliban supporters – most are not. They have the same aspirations of any parent, that their children have a better life than they, but the avenues for advancement are limited at best.

American diplomats and pundits have been warning that the Pakistan is dangerously close to becoming a failed stated. It is not, not yet.

Certainly, Pakistan’s struggles with security, with corruption, with high inflation, unemployment and with social unrest, paint an image of a nation in turmoil, and it is.

But there is a more worrying issue facing Pakistan. If allowed to continue, it could indeed threaten the integrity of the state. If you ask any Pakistani what their federal government does for them, the answer is likely to be: nothing.

Governance is absent or barely present in much of the country; politicians are seen as almost universally corrupt, rapacious, and/or populist demagogues; electricity brownouts are common, leading both to frustration and a hamstrung manufacturing sector; gas for cooking and heating is rationed in most cities and villages; tax collection is almost as spotty as the services the government provides. All of these problems have been exacerbated by the problem of militancy.

There is an undeniable anger at the state of affairs among the people, but it is shrouded in despair at the lack of apparent solutions. Throughout the country’s history, Pakistan has struggled with corruption and incompetence in civilian administration. The solution always lies with the army, seen by most Pakistanis as competent by comparison and above the petty politicking and avaricious nature of their civilian governments. At least, this was true until Pervez Musharraf took over.

For many Pakistanis, Mr Musharraf’s time in office exploded a myth that the military was more competent at administration than civilians and that it was not corrupt. Today, the central government is more than simply ineffective in Pakistan, it is disillusioning. There is no obvious solution to any of these problems.

Any of these issues, taken separately, would not amount to an existential threat. It is their combination that may prove so deadly. Worryingly, Pakistan seems to lack either the capacity or will to treat its disease. The executive branch is seen as corrupt and is the subject of mockery by the people. The legislative branch is atrophying. No MP or political party wants to be the one to take up the task of solving any of the myriad problems knowing that they will require difficult and, at times, unpopular policies. There are no votes to be had in doing so.

The only functioning branch of the government appears to be the judiciary led by the chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and this carries its own peril. It is no secret that the president Asif Ali Zardari opposed the reinstitution of Mr Chaudhry, who was sacked during the latter days of the Musharraf presidency. A series of standoffs between the judiciary and the executive have shown exactly what Mr Zardari feared.

Mr Chaudhry declared the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) unconstitutional late last year, which withdrew corruption charges and convictions against hundreds of Pakistanis, but most notably Mr Zardari. He spent time in prison for corruption and could, in theory, be ineligible to hold office without the protections offered by the NRO. Thus far, the chief justice has declined to rule on the issue of Mr Zardari’s eligibility to hold public office. The threat of a ruling hangs like the Sword of Damocles over the executive, however, as was no doubt intended.

The president is not the only one under the watchful eye of the chief justice. He has the power to take what is called suo moto (of his own accord) notice of an issue, meaning that he takes on a case without it first being offered by a petitioner. Mr Chaudhry has exercised this special jurisdiction to tackle any number of human rights issues, including old cases of people suspected of disappearing for political reasons. The result has been greater attention by all branches of government and the bureaucracy to their duties.

The consequences have been sometimes bizarre. When bomb blasts went off during the Shiite celebration of Muharram in Karachi this month, the leadership of the dominant party in the city the Muttahida Qaumi Movement asked the chief justice to take suo moto notice of the bombing and the security lapses. It is illustrative of Pakistan’s problems that a party that is part of the ruling coalition of the Sindh province where Karachi is located should ask the judiciary to handle issues that are its responsibility.

Despite the seemingly well-intentioned nature of Mr Chaudhry’s tenure, there are worrying tendencies toward advocacy that, in the absence of a functioning legislative and executive branch, are creating a dependency on him to perform duties nominally outside of his job description.

Pakistan needs institutional reform to tackle its many issues, and one man is not an institution. Eventually, Pakistan’s leadership will have to face the fact that its problems are growing worse the longer they are ignored. Unfortunately, it seems that they are all waiting for someone else to do it first. Meanwhile Pakistanis are left to fend for themselves, as best they can.

Change we can believe in? Maybe – just not quite yet

noreply@blogger.com (Sean McLain) — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 15:26:00 +0000

The following first appeared in The National on January 20, 2010.

American presidents are almost always failures in their first year. The gap between their campaign promises and reality is too far to bridge in only 12 months. Barack Obama’s first year in the White House has been no different.

New poll data from The Washington Post and ABC News shows that barely one third of the American public thinks that their country is headed in the right direction. Mr Obama’s campaign message may have been one of hope and change, but as a president he seems to have fallen short of most American’s expectations.

On terrorism and the war in Afghanistan, his policies enjoy popular support but his domestic politics have been less favourably received. Since April he has steadily lost support for his work on the economy, the budget deficit and health care. The amount of government spending is a particular worry and most Americans now favour a smaller government that offers fewer services.

But polls are only snapshots, and public opinion is a poor measure of the correctness of one’s actions. Regardless of what one thinks of Mr Obama’s politics, he has set out to solve many of America’s most persistent problems with an energy rarely seen in any US president. The problem is that he has failed to make significant headway on any one issue, leading many to accuse him of “dithering”, or worse.

The financial crisis left Mr Obama with the weakest economy of any incoming president in decades, but Mr Obama managed to prevent the recession from turning into a depression. Cash injections into the banking system have proven controversial, but the alternative was an implosion of the financial sector. We may never know what would have happened if Mr Obama had allowed many banks or borrowers to reap the fruit of their own poor judgment, but the consequences were too dire to risk. But now, with banks making record profits, people blame Mr Obama, despite the fact that the bank rebound is probably only a good thing.

The health care debate has also inflamed partisan tensions, a situation not helped by dismissive pundits on the Left and populist ranting on the Right. In the debate over public health insurance, the right wing talk show host Rush Limbaugh has framed the battle as one of himself and the founding fathers standing against Comrade Obama. Popular debate on the subject has been reduced to its basest form.

Mr Obama has only himself to blame for this situation. His message of change had the ability to inspire both at home and abroad, and it won him an election, but it also set him up for a massive fall. Normal campaign promises are difficult enough to keep, his are almost certain to go unfulfilled. Too much of his authority derives from his personal appeal and his oratorical strength, too little on his ability to execute the demands of his office. Yes, people like Mr Obama, but he’s not what they hoped he’d be.

This is all the more tragic given that it is difficult to fault Mr Obama for what he has done in his first year. He inherited a financial disaster, two mismanaged wars, a damaged US image abroad and a nation divided ideologically after eight years of a controversial president. His policies have been shaped not by the need to reshape the way Washington does business, as he had promised, but by what he believes will work. On Iraq, this has worked to his favour. On Guantanamo Bay, this has earned him the ire of both human rights groups and the Muslim world.

This is of course what every president does, but people do not want Mr Obama to be like every other president. The people who voted for him want him to be something more, and the people who did not, gloat. But should Mr Obama continue on his current course, he may survive his critics and may even do some good in the world.

The concern is that the expectations of the people will come back to haunt him. His first test comes in Massachusetts where a long-time Democratic Senate seat is threatened by a Republican upstart. Should the Republicans win, it could be a dire portent for the November legislative elections. Mr Obama was in the state to rally support for the Democratic candidate: “If you were fired up in the last election, I need you more fired up in this election.” The problem is that the fire seems to have gone out of Mr Obama’s message. He is no longer the young visionary candidate who inspired rapturous crowds; he is now a president, and so far an unimpressive one at that. This should worry him more than most who have held the office for one year.

As ordinary as Mr Obama has been as president, he is not an ordinary president. History has conspired with his race and his message to propel him into the White House. The world was tired of the way things were, they were looking for a change and Mr Obama promised it. What he has delivered instead is competent management.

It would be a mistake to misjudge Mr Obama’s style of politics as a betrayal of his ultimate goals. The essential problem facing Mr Obama is that Washington, the US and the world not only do not want change, they do not need it. What is needed is a better health care plan and a better role for the world’s most powerful nation in global affairs. These are massive undertakings, but they hardly constitute a revolutionary new way of doing things.

But a revolution is what was imagined by his wide-eyed supporters and what his detractors are preparing to defend against. Mr Obama may very well have become the hero in a Greek tragedy of his own creation. And given the scope of the expectations placed on his presidency, Mr Obama may still be a failure in four years, regardless of what polls might say.

Endgame in Afghanistan is security, not a troop pullout

noreply@blogger.com (Sean McLain) — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 05:50:00 +0000

The following first appeared in The National on 7 December 2009.

How Barack Obama came to decide on a new Afghanistan strategy is by now well known. By late October both the fact that additional troops were required and the number of troops to send had been agreed upon. What remained was to decide whether to announce a tentative withdrawal date.

The US president was in favour of this to gain “leverage” with the Afghan and Pakistani governments as well as to reassure a war-weary public at home. He got his wish, but as a result the president was left with a war strategy that satisfied neither his allies nor his opponents.

Mr Obama wants these additional troops in and out of Afghanistan in a year and a half. Those that have raised a hue and cry over his supposed artificial deadline would do well to remember that the so-called “surge” in Iraq lasted approximately the same amount of time. Furthermore, he has stated that the situation in Afghanistan after 18 months would shape any decision to withdraw.

Those that wanted a firmer expiration date for the conflict do not warrant more than a brief rebuke. After eight years of fighting the coalition has left Afghanistan in a worse state, destabilised Pakistan, and sparked what could potentially be a regional power struggle centred in Afghanistan. At the very least, Afghanistan must be stabilised to undo whatever damage has been done thus far.

Yet, there are genuine concerns about the new strategy. Foremost among these is the limitation Mr Obama has placed on the US commitment to Afghanistan’s security. Mr Obama has made it clear that he will only do so much before Afghanistan’s security would be exclusively an Afghan problem and he wants this to happen as soon as possible. To do this he has taken more than a few pages from the strategy in Iraq. For better or worse, the war in Afghanistan is shaping up to be another war in Iraq.

The surge in Iraq worked in large part, because both the Mahdi Army and the majority of Sunni insurgents either stopped fighting or switched sides. There is reason to believe that the Taliban will react the same way: this has been a penchant of Pashtun tribal fighters going back to the time of the British Empire. Some may choose to side with the coalition either out of hatred for the Taliban or naked opportunism. The result will probably be a decrease in violence after a brief spike at the beginning of the fighting season in May next year.

But the surge was not a success in Iraq because violence went down. It was successful because it gave an opening for the government to assert itself, and allowed politics to replace violence as a means to resolve conflicts. This will be a greater challenge in Afghanistan.

The Taliban are not winning with arms, they are winning with better governance. They are better than Kabul at providing services and upholding law and order.

The situation in Iraq should serve as a warning to proponents of the surge in Afghanistan. Security gains there have slid backwards as some Sunnis have returned to violence or, at least, grown openly hostile to Baghdad because of its failure to uphold promises. In some ways, the imminent US withdrawal has escalated simmering political tensions as minority groups scramble to grasp what they can in advance of that date.

The situation could potentially be worse in Afghanistan. For all its many flaws, the Iraqi government is a democracy that is largely representative of its people. Hamid Karzai’s government has only the veneer of democracy and popular representation. He exploits ethnic ties and teams with local power brokers and warlords to project Kabul’s authority. Unless he is forced to change his ways, security gains will only allow him to entrench his interests and enshrine corruption and cronyism as the status quo in Afghan politics. For the sake of Afghanistan’s future, the centre of political power must be in Kabul, but not in this way. The Taliban feed off Pashtun national ambitions, but mostly from legitimate grievances with the central government. Any security gains are illusory so long as those grievances exist.

Even if the additional troops remain in Afghanistan for longer than 18 months, and even if security dramatically improves, the end result remains in doubt. The US singles out al Qa’eda as the reason it must finish the fight in Afghanistan, but the Taliban not al Qa’eda are the main enemy to be defeated. However, it will be al Qa’eda, not the Taliban, that will be the ultimate victors should the US fail in Afghanistan.

Terrorism is a tool used by such groups to goad the enemy into alienating a population through heavy-handed tactics and breaking its will to fight through a long, expensive and ultimately futile fight. Al Qa’eda specifically states that its goal is to bankrupt the US through expensive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The US may be far from bankrupt, but a withdrawal that does not leave Afghanistan free from the clutches of the Taliban will validate al Qa’eda’s tactics and long-term strategy. It would, in all likelihood, encourage like-minded groups to employ the same strategy to the detriment of global security. This means that setting prior limits on a commitment to a fight risks validating the strategy of al Qa’eda. This not only applies to the US, but to its allies, which includes the UAE.

The war in Afghanistan must be won to avoid this, but the long-term solution is not to fight al Qa’eda with soldiers. That is the least effective and most expensive method.

The goal should be to prevent the creation of other Afghanistans, underdeveloped corners of the world whose grievances can be exploited to build a safe haven for terror groups and a hornet’s nest for any would-be invaders.

There are many potential Afghanistans. Failure to prevent their decline, could result in some sort of military intervention to counter what is, essentially, a non-military problem. Al Qa’eda is winning because it set the terms of the conflict in Afghanistan. It is the responsibility of the international community to ensure that they do not do so again.

The Taliban ought to remind us that history is reversible

noreply@blogger.com (Sean McLain) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 07:09:00 +0000

The following was first published in The National on 22 October 2009.

At the end of every year Time magazine names its person of the year. The publication gives the award to “the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or ill, and embodied what was important about the year”.

The award, with some notable exceptions, is a fairly accurate reflection of what was the most important story of the past year. The obvious choice this year is Barack Obama, but the US president would probably prefer not to receive it – he appears to have had enough trouble dealing with a Nobel Prize. Should the editors at Time decide to spare Mr Obama the headache, there is another, more suitable alternative.

December 2009 will mark the end of the first decade of the 21st century, and it seems appropriate for the magazine to mark the occasion by naming a man of the decade. There is precedent for this. In 1999 the magazine named a man of the century, Albert Einstein. But it should have been Adolf Hitler for demonstrating the awful potential of the most important political force of the modern age: nationalism.

Time chose science rather than politics as the defining characteristic of the century. But politics, man’s relationship with other men, more accurately reflects the state of mankind, not his achievements. And nationalism has changed the face of those relationships. Its rise marked the end of the age of empires. No longer is the world controlled by a relatively small group of global behemoths: empires controlling vast swathes of territory encompassing multiple groups of people of various identities. Scientific advances such as the computer, the aeroplane and the mobile phone may have made the world appear smaller, but in many ways it is a much bigger, much more daunting place in which to live.

The postcolonial, post-Cold War world is a far more cluttered place. In many corners of the globe, countries are being divided into smaller pieces and national identity is being more narrowly defined. The process has been often bloody.

There are of course important counter-examples, the United States being the most prominent. China and India also stand out as two populous and diverse but prosperous nation-states, as does what is left of post-Soviet Russia. However, in these countries stability and security are at times strained by violent internal strife, but they are held together by the strength of their respective governments. But, in countries with weak or new governments there is a potential for disaffected groups of people to coalesce into a political force and threaten the existence of a state with violence. Nowhere is this better seen than in the conflict that has taken up the better part of this decade: the war in Afghanistan.

Much of the world is beginning to show signs of recovery after the geopolitical balance of power was upset by the fall of the Soviet Union and before that the end of the imperial age of the 19th and early 20th centuries. New countries are emerging to fill the power vacuum left by the end of the Cold War. But Afghanistan was left out of this process. Or, more appropriately, it regressed.

The insurgency in Iraq ended when people grew tired of vying for control of the nation’s future through violence. They turned to politics instead to settle their grievances. But where the Iraqis had the advantage of a recent memory of a modern state and the collective identity it provides, the majority of Afghans have no experience of modern governance. In fact, more than half of the country is estimated to be under the age of 14 and thus, they have known nothing but near constant conflict. Instead tribal and ethnic identity have supplanted all other forms of identity.

They are certainly not unique in this regard. In many parts of the globe tribal ties and ethnicity are important or, at times, the defining aspects of a state. But the situation in Afghanistan stands out since there has been no modern form of government in the country since the 1970s, and then it dallied with it only briefly.

Afghanistan today is almost a window into the distant past, a Hobbesian world of pre-modernity where life is “nasty, brutish, and short” and a man’s right to another man’s property and life are defined by his ability to take them. And no man better embodies the recent history of Afghanistan than Mullah Omar, the father of the Taliban. He arrived on the scene in the midst of the Afghan civil war, a period of violence where life was literally nasty, brutish, and short, and imposed civic order through the strength of arms. The Taliban are an undeniably abhorrent organisation whose world views are incompatible with modern notions of human rights. But they and their ideological leader Mullah Omar also serve as a warning.

Several centuries of global development have been missed or lost by Afghanistan. In the absence of effective forms of governance and a lack of social and economic development, Afghanistan went backward, quickly. And its decline has had a severe impact on regional and international security. The poisonous effect that the Taliban have had on Pashtun tribal politics has focused and inflamed their nationalist sentiments, which now threatens the stability of Pakistan. Now Pakistan – as Afghanistan became before – is a safe haven for transnational terrorist groups.

But Afghanistan is only the world’s most extreme example. Despite the progress that most of the rest of the world made in the last century and the promise of even more in this one, there remain regions of the globe where our history is their present. And unless these areas are carried into the modern age, history’s bloody heritage has ways of catching up to us.

In support of Hitler’s nomination for man of the century, Elie Wiesel wrote that because of the German leader, “man is defined by what makes him inhuman”. He showed us the horrific potential of man’s hatred.

But Mullah Omar has shown us that man does not really change, and that the relative progress mankind has made in building peaceable civil societies is not irreversible. There is always is a Dark Age lurking somewhere around the corner.

US must find courage for a knifefight in Afghanistan

noreply@blogger.com (Sean McLain) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 05:59:00 +0000

The following was first published in The National on October 13, 2009.

Much has been made of the current popularity of a certain book in the Obama White House. Lessons in Disaster blames the American defeat in Vietnam on a failure to establish clear goals for its involvement there, and it appears to be having a marked effect on thinking on Capitol Hill. In particular, the chapter entitled “Never deploy military means in pursuit of indeterminate ends” appears to have frozen a hitherto decisive strategic discussion on the war in Afghanistan.

Divining the influence of the book has captivated the US press, and at least at one press conference the White House has been asked about it. Members of both the current and previous US administrations have been at pains to distinguish the war in Afghanistan from the disaster of Vietnam, with some justification. But one comparison, at least on the US side, is apt: the whys of the war have a habit of being drowned out by the hows as the fighting drags on and victory grows ever more elusive.

But the shift from why to how is also natural, and not necessarily a bad one. In many ways, too much attention on the purpose of the war now threatens defeat. The US invaded Afghanistan to overthrow al Qa’eda in response to the September 11 attacks. The Taliban were only important insofar as they stood in the way of capturing Osama bin Laden. With the architects of the most horrific act of terrorism on US soil in hiding, America became complacent. Neglect of post-war reconstruction efforts and the failure to develop an effective Afghan government allowed the Taliban to regroup and re-insinuate itself into the country. In the eight years since, the Taliban have become the main adversary while al Qa’eda and bin Laden have faded into the background.

Enter General Stanley McChrystal, whose suggestions on a new strategy to reverse the negative trends in Afghanistan are currently under discussion by the Obama administration. The new commander of the US and coalition forces has advised focusing on protecting the population and increasing troop levels, both to accomplish the first goal and speed up the training of Afghan forces. Much like the feted “troop surge” in Iraq, the aim is to employ the principles of counterinsurgency to create a period of relative security which boosts the authority of the central government over the population.

Mr Obama is less receptive to such suggestions than he might once have been. Not only are the lessons of the US military’s last major defeat being digested, but the controversial outcome of the recent Afghan presidential elections has cast doubt on the appropriateness of Gen McChrystal’s advice.

The Afghan government has been a persistent impediment to progress. The controversy surrounding the re-election of Hamid Karzai has only posed an even greater barrier to securing the country and overcoming the Taliban. Whereas once it was only corrupt and ineffective, its basic legitimacy in the eyes of ordinary Afghans is now in question.

Even counterinsurgency’s most ardent advocates admit that military efforts in Afghanistan depend on events in Kabul. The support of the population is crucial. Unless the US, its allies and Karzai’s government become better than the Taliban at earning the trust of the Afghans, any victory will be temporary. And as coalition forces are seen, at best, as guests in the country, the Afghan government has a central role to play in any counterinsurgency plan.

Unfortunately, despite the legitimate medium and long-term concerns the White House has about Gen McChrystal’s new plan, there are few good alternatives. A group led by the vice president, Joe Biden, is advocating another course of action: reduce forces and focus efforts on killing senior al Qa’eda and Taliban leaders. With the success of unmanned drone aircraft assassinations of top targets in remote locations, it is easy to see why this might be a tempting alternative to putting additional American lives in danger. But it would also be a mistake. To do so would let the initial reasons for invading Afghanistan shape the strategy for a war that is no longer about killing members of al Qa’eda. Gen McChrystal’s advice is troubled by concerns about the long-term effectiveness of counterinsurgency, but Mr Biden’s plan promises only short-term gains. If organisations like the Taliban and al Qa’eda have demonstrated anything, it is that their existence does not depend on one man or any group of men.

The choice facing Mr Obama is not easy, but all signs point to his embracing Gen McChrystal’s suggestions – he did, after all, hire the man for his specific expertise on counterinsurgency. But the detractors have made their voices heard and the whys will have to be answered before the US renews its commitment to Afghanistan.

The worry is that every time Mr Obama has justified the war, he has framed it as if September 11 happened yesterday and al Qa’eda presented a clear and present danger to America’s national security. It doesn’t, and continuing to paint it as such has poisoned an urgent debate on the most effective manner to win in Afghanistan. After eight years, the war has only made the world less safe by destabilising both Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the US has a duty to undo what it has done.

In any war, and especially in wars fought by democracies, why you fight is exceedingly important. Mr Obama is concerned that accepting Gen McChrystal’s call for more troops would be his Gulf of Tonkin resolution. And just like Lyndon Johnson, Mr Obama would be forced to stand before the American people and lie, saying he would not commit “American boys to fighting a war that I think ought to be fought by the boys of Asia to help protect their own land”.

He would do well to recall another quote by John Paul Vann, a leading figure in the Vietnam War: “This is a political war and it calls for discrimination in killing. The best weapon for killing would be a knife, but I’m afraid we can’t do it that way. The worst is an airplane. The next worst is artillery. Barring a knife, the best is a rifle – you know who you’re killing.”

The US faces defeat if it retreats to the air against an enemy that must be fought with knives and rifles. And even if knives and rifles do not guarantee victory, America owes it to the Afghan people, and the world, to try.

Football separates men from the boys

noreply@blogger.com (Sean McLain) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 11:41:00 +0000

The following was first published in The National on 10 September 2009.

The football season begins today. If that sentence has you checking your calendar, let me rephrase: The football, not soccer, season begins today. This statement will no doubt anger fans of the “beautiful game”. Big deal.

The worst soccer fans can muster are Millwall supporters, whose slogan “everyone hates us, and we don’t care” is also shared with snivelling adolescents. They pale in comparison to fans of the Oakland Raiders to whom Hunter S Thompson referred to as “beyond doubt the sleaziest and rudest and most sinister mob of thugs and wackos ever assembled” – and this from a man who once counted among his bosom buddies members of the Hells Angels.

Or perhaps they can once again rouse Will Batchelor to defend soccer. His sports column in The National this week said football was one part professional wrestling and two parts all-you-can-eat buffet, less sport than drama involving men in tight pants. He is not alone in harbouring such delusions.

Most soccer fans regard their North American cousins with disdain. To these woefully uninformed residents of the ward for the terminally ignorant, football is a sport for soft, flabby men who need time to catch their breath between downs, frequent commercial interruptions for loo breaks and medieval levels of body armour to avoid injury.

I dare them to tell that to a 130kg defensive end, a mountain of muscle with the speed and agility of Usain Bolt. Your average quarterback needs that padding just to survive the first down, and that defensive end needs it to keep himself from breaking his neck when he hits his target with all the kinetic energy of a runaway freight train.

Granted, rugby players do not wear padding, but hop on youtube and watch a rugby tackle, then go watch a quarterback get hit on his blindside. There is no comparison. If anything, removing the pads would make football less dangerous. When boxing introduced the padded glove, permanent head injuries became more common. Before gloves were introduced, punching someone in the jaw was just as likely to break your hand as his jaw. This made one think twice about where they were aiming. Now the average pugilist can hammer away at his opponent’s skull and suffer no ill effect.

But sometimes body armour is just called for. We do not deride the Yorkshire or Lancashire cavalry for wearing all that armour during the War of the Roses. The game of football is played by sumo wrestlers who can sprint, it is prudent to take precautions.

Soccer is indeed beautiful. The countless hours professional players devote towards honing their skills is revealed in the marvels of footwork and ball control on the pitch. Their endurance is unmatched in most team sports. But soccer is to football as fencing is to war. Some people prefer the former, others the latter.

Much of the hostility between soccer and football is over a shared name. This is the result of having a common ancestor, a game that is still played in the United Kingdom as the Royal Shrovetide Football match – a sport so brutal that the rules include: no killing.

Maybe Millwall should challenge the Raiders to a match and settle the debate once and for all, instead of just whinging.

Real football is not everyone’s cup of tea. Those people who prefer the refined emotions of say a ballet as opposed to the tango will probably stick to soccer or cricket. But real sports fans, who understand that it is about a contest between men, will want to tune in from tonight. And if there are any real men left watching soccer, they are welcome to join us.

A plan lacking nothing but allies and Afghans

noreply@blogger.com (Sean McLain) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 07:57:00 +0000

The following was first published in The National on September 2, 2009.

The Obama administration certainly can’t be accused of a less than thorough review of the war efforts in Afghanistan. The latest strategic assessment submitted by General Stanley McChrystal on Monday was merely the culmination of a comprehensive review of the situation in Afghanistan that began almost as soon as Barack Obama took office. It took the better part of a year, a long time when the United States is on the losing side of the conflict. Meanwhile popular support is decreasing in the US and among many of its European allies. Time may have been a luxury Mr Obama had in short supply, but he seems to have made good use of what little he had.

First there was the broadening of the scope of the conflict to include Pakistan, a notion that has come to be termed AfPak. It neatly encapsulates the reality that the conflict in Afghanistan is inseparable from the problem of militancy in Pakistan’s hinterlands. While the US and coalition allies may be forced to respect the borders of a close Nato ally, the Pashtuns who make up the overwhelming majority of the Taliban’s fighters do not. Neither Pakistan nor Afghanistan can be secured separately, so their problems must be tackled at the same time.

Mr Obama ordered a policy review of US efforts in Afghanistan ahead of the Nato conference in April. What resulted was a new, grand strategy for the war. No longer would the US and its allies measure its success by counting bodies, both American and Taliban. Instead, the focus would be on protecting the Afghans from the Taliban, speeding up a stagnant reconstruction effort and, most importantly, building the Afghan capacity for security and governance – a comprehensive approach dubbed counterinsurgency.

Gen McChrystal’s job was to figure out how to make Mr Obama’s vision actually work. Arguably, the greatest problem preventing success against the Taliban in Afghanistan is a lack of commitment. The overwhelming majority of fighting is being conducted by the US and a handful of other countries. While the US now has over 60,000 troops in the country, they are not enough. US commanders are already clamouring for reinforcements, but they will not be authorised by the US Congress without some assurance of progress. Nor are its allies likely to shoulder any greater portion of the combat burden.

But the war effort needs more than just a greater number of “trigger pullers”. Coalition countries such as France, Italy and Germany have never played much of a combat role in Afghanistan, yet together they have nearly 10,000 personnel in the country. They could be put to better use, particularly in the training of the Afghan security forces. The 42 nations that comprise the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan (Isaf) must become more than a veneer of international co-operation in efforts to secure the country.

Presumably, this is what Gen McChrystal was referring to when he said that the war in Afghanistan needed “a revised implementation strategy, commitment and resolve, and increased unity of effort”. As it is, both the combat and reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan are becoming increasingly “Americanised”. This is not a sustainable trend. Nato countries in particular can’t shirk the burden. To do so would further undermine the already tenuous credibility of the organisation.

But despite the obvious necessity for coalition countries to shoulder a greater share of the responsibilities in Afghanistan, this is the real world. France and Germany may be major Nato partners, but their leaders answer first and foremost to their voters, not to the Nato secretary-general. Even the UK, the second largest contributor to Isaf, may not be in Afghanistan for much longer as popular support for the war has all but dissipated. Thus the need for a better economy of resources is all the more pressing. While a better use of the manpower on hand is needed, there is still a pressing need for more bodies to keep Afghanistan secure and to rebuild a country broken by three decades of conflict. The solution lies in the Afghans themselves.

The Afghan army is projected to grow from 93,000 to 134,000 in two years. By all possible measures this is a massive undertaking. There are also long term concerns about creating such a large military, which the coalition cannot sustain forever and the Afghan economy cannot support on its own. And as troubled as the army is, the police are in an even worse state. Often poorly equipped and underpaid, if they are paid at all, the Afghan police are often more hated than the Taliban. Without support from Kabul or its provincial representatives, many police have turned to banditry or bribes to support themselves.

The government in Kabul is increasingly becoming a hindrance to victory. While the US and its allies could feasibly win the fight against the Taliban, any success will be temporary so long as the central government remains rife with corruption, nepotism or even in complicity with the Taliban. David Kilcullen, a senior adviser to Nato generals, put it best, calling counterinsurgency “a competition for governance”. By almost every possible measure the US, its allies and Kabul are losing that competition. Many Afghans have turned to Taliban courts and police in areas that they control since they are considered more effective than what Kabul could produce.

After nearly a decade of combat and eight months of strategic review, the US has managed to assemble an effective strategy to secure and rebuild Afghanistan. It has the will and the leadership in place to execute that strategy. But ultimate success hangs on a corrupt and ineffective Afghan government that is, at best, uninterested in reforming its actions. Until this changes, success in Afghanistan is academic.

War, death, destruction? It must be America’s fault …

noreply@blogger.com (Sean McLain) — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 05:47:00 +0000

The following was first published in The National on 18 August 2009.

As a US citizen travelling and living abroad, one grows accustomed to being treated with dislike, distaste, disdain or some combination of the three. To many, we are uncouth, arrogant warmongers who trample through the world oblivious to the pain and suffering we leave in our wake. Partly, these feelings are born of disappointment: America, many feel, has failed to live up to its promise. The great democratic experiment, the beacon of human rights and free speech to the world, is a big, fat hypocrite.

Even if we examine only recent events, the litany of grievances is long. The US condemns human rights violations throughout the world, but we apparently ignore 60 years of Palestinian suffering. We tout the virtues of democracy, but prop up dictators and autocrats. We condemn the actions of groups such as Hizbollah, Hamas, the Taliban and other so-called non-state actors, but forget that their existence is due in part to our own military primacy. And although religious freedom is enshrined in our constitution, we harbour prejudices towards Muslims, labelling them terrorists. And, worst of all, we are too ignorant even to realise the wrongs our nation is inflicting on the world.

True, Americans, by and large, know little of the world beyond our own borders. It is a function of our national wealth and our geography. We fail to grasp the implications of detaining an international movie star such as Shahrukh Khan because no one in introverted America knew who he was. And this drives the rest of the world mad.

Like Marie Antoinette, the average American stays locked in a palace solving the world’s problems with cake. But it’s hard to hate a Marie Antoinette who doesn’t know any better, which is why Americans hear the oft-repeated line from new acquaintances abroad: “I love Americans, but hate America.”

I heard this over and over when I went to a friend’s wedding in Pakistan, a country that nurtures an especially deep-seated dislike for the United States. It’s not hard to see why.

The war in Afghanistan has spilled over violently into Pakistan. Until his recent death, the Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud waged a bitter war to unseat the Pakistani government with an army of religious zealots and thousands of kilos of high explosives. Faced with this threat, the only help Islamabad got was a scolding from Washington that it needed to do more to stop him.

Naturally, most Americans would feel that criticisms of their country are unjustified, even ungrateful. The United States Agency for International Development alone has a budget of $20 billion and a mandate to solve the world’s problems.

Even in this age of globalisation, most Americans are isolationist by nature. We would prefer to leave the world to its own devices. At the same time, we look upon the Old World with condescending pity, and feel the weight of our national good fortune. Thus we are easily aroused when called to right the world’s injustices. If the US were a person, it would be a teenager with a trust fund: opinionated but woefully ignorant, well-meaning but gratingly condescending, generous but with a sense of entitlement that ruins the sentiment.

While some of the criticisms of the US are valid, at worst it is only partly to blame. Yes, the absence of an effective post-invasion strategy in Afghanistan allowed a resurgence of the Taliban. Yes, a lack of understanding in Washington of the intricacies of tribal politics means they often fail to navigate through complex inter-relationships with the necessary nuance and subtlety.

But while Pakistan did not create the Taliban, and arguably neither did the US, it certainly did little to solve the problem. Its misguided military policies foster groups such as the Taliban for use as potential irregular forces against its enemies.

The Pakistani government’s neglect of the country’s largely ungoverned hinterlands has created a no-man’s land where extremist organisations can hide and recruit from a disenfranchised population. Yet the country is so blindly nationalistic in its policy-making, it even went so far as to quietly support the Taliban under Pervez Musharraf because it viewed Indian involvement in Afghanistan’s reconstruction efforts as an assault on Pakistan’s western borders.

Of course, it’s hard to argue this when you’re in Islamabad, especially when the person you’re arguing with is feeding you: that’s not cowardice, just good manners.

Much of the blame the US received, deserved and otherwise, is a result of being the only superpower left after the dust settled on the Cold War. As the US president Harry Truman famously said: “The buck stops here.”

Other countries may decry US attempts to police the world, but who else is going to do it? No one else can, and the alternative is to revert to a time when countries settled their issues on the battlefield. The wars of today are not existential clashes between global behemoths. Rather they are small wars, with small casualties.

Undoubtedly America has committed many wrongs in its brief history, but it has also changed the course of history. If you are going to blame America for foisting democratic values on others and trampling over cultural sensibilities, you must also give it credit for putting human rights and free speech on the global agenda.

This is all a matter of perception and image as much as reality. America invented the modern public relations industry. Maybe now is a good time to put it to use.

Hillary's message to India: welcome to the world stage

noreply@blogger.com (Sean McLain) — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 08:00:00 +0000

The following was first published in The National on July 21, 2009.

A cynic might say that Hillary Clinton’s visit to India this week is about money, and in part it is. India is a potential market worth billions of dollars in trade, especially in nuclear technology and arms sales: the secretary of state’s whirlwind tour paves the way for American companies to bid for their share.

And with the Russians and the French already having signed agreements to build nuclear power plants in India, the White House desperately needed one of its own or faced a backlash in Congress.

But Mrs Clinton’s trip was about much more than that. It is the latest stage in efforts begun under the Bush administration to ensure that India plays a more responsible role in the international community.

The civilian nuclear co-operation deal signed by India and the US at the end of last year was aimed at bringing India into the nuclear fold without requiring it to sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT). It forced the separation of the civilian and military aspects of India’s programme, formalised the previously voluntary ban on nuclear weapons tests, provided assurances that nuclear fuel imports would not be used in weapons construction and allowed for UN inspections of civilian nuclear facilities.

These are all good things. But if the US had lost out on lucrative construction contracts and the jobs that come with them, then the nuclear energy deal would have been a liability rather than a benefit for the Obama administration, especially in the current economic downturn.

The potential benefit for US companies is considerable: India plans to increase the amount of energy it generates from nuclear power from 4,020MW to 52,000MW by 2020. The US will build at least two of the new reactors required.

In addition, the two countries have signed an end-use monitoring agreement designed to ensure that no country can misuse, transfer or sell US armaments or technology. This will help the American aerospace giants Lockheed Martin and Boeing, who in the absence of such an agreement have been prevented from selling advanced fighter aircraft to India.

Critics of this Indo-American rapprochement argue that India should not be rewarded for its refusal to sign the NPT; that the nuclear co-operation deal provides insufficient safeguards to prevent growth in India’s nuclear weapons stockpile because it can still use domestic sources of uranium to make weapons; that it sets a dangerous precedent for other non-signatories such as Israel and Pakistan; and that because inspectors have no access to India’s military nuclear facilities there is too little assurance that it will not misuse American technology.

With India’s rights to reprocess spent nuclear fuel rods yet to be negotiated, this last issue in particular remains thorny. But while some of the criticisms are valid, the nuclear co-operation deal was probably the best the world could obtain from India, and its record of voluntary participation in non-proliferation efforts should allay most of the concerns.

Inside India, meanwhile, domestic critics have cautioned that the country is making dangerous concessions on its national sovereignty. Barriers to imports of nuclear fuel and technology imposed after the nuclear weapons test in 1974 forced India to develop its own expertise in enrichment and reactor construction. The critics argue that bringing in foreign expertise provides only a short-term benefit, while placing potential limitations on India’s capability to maintain a nuclear deterrent against Pakistan and, more important, China.

There are also concerns that renewed nuclear imports and arms sales could be used as leverage to mould India’s foreign policy from Washington, especially in the dispute over Kashmir.

But these domestic critics are both wrong and short-sighted. India has more than enough uranium reserves to maintain a nuclear weapons programme, but not to build an effective civilian energy one. International sanctions on uranium imports mean that the cost of running nuclear reactors is significantly higher than if India had signed the NPT, so nuclear energy would be neither affordable nor widespread without this co-operation agreement. Nor is the US seeking to force India’s hand on the issue of India-Pakistan relations. If anything, Mrs Clinton took great pains to state that these deals were entirely separate from US concerns on that issue.

India’s implicit accession into the nuclear weapons club is yet another sign that its global clout is increasing in pace with its impressive economic growth. Yet too often it has failed to take its rightful place in the international community. Indeed, on issues as diverse as climate change and regional security, India has been a hindrance to progress almost as often as it has been a help.

The country continues to oppose carbon emissions caps; it exports a significant portion of the 136,000 barrels of gasoline Iran needs to keep its economy moving, drastically reducing the effectiveness of international sanctions; the simmering conflict with Pakistan divides Islamabad’s attention between its eastern and western borders when it should be wholly devoted to tackling the growing insurgency problem along the Durand Line; and India’s refusal to sign the NPT hampers efforts to stem the proliferation of nuclear weapons, despite its record of relatively responsible use of nuclear technology.

But efforts to punish India for its assertions of national sovereignty have been fruitless. Despite sanctions, India has harnessed the power of the atom, and no high-minded ideals will turn back the clock on its nuclear capabilities. Furthermore, it is an economic dynamo that has overcome many adversities to emerge as one of the most promising developing nations.

In the end, India will be persuaded to participate more responsibly in world affairs with the carrot of encouragement, not the stick of punishment.

Soldier, soldier: has the new world of war passed you by?

noreply@blogger.com (Sean McLain) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 08:02:00 +0000

The following was first published in The National on 26 June 2009.

To meet required budget cuts, the British ministry of defence is considering slashing the size of its standing army to its lowest level since the Crimean war in the 1850s. The ministry argues that this is the only way that it can preserve funding to maintain the country’s presence in Afghanistan. While the cuts are more a reflection of the global economic crisis than any nod to history, they are significant in a historical context.

The Crimean war is considered the first modern war. It marked the beginning of a new era in combat, drastically changing the way wars were fought. Major conflicts have a way of doing that: at some point technology surpasses the prevailing body of military scholarship and generals are often forced to learn and adapt to these changes on the battlefield, with bloody consequences.

The famous Charge of the Light Brigade demonstrated just how far strategic thinking lagged behind the realities of combat at the time. The British commander Lord Cardigan’s ill-advised charge on Russian gun emplacements at the Battle of Balaclava heralded the end of the horse cavalry. As the French Marshal Pierre Bosquet observed: “C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre. C’est de la folie.” The humiliating aftermath of Balaclava led the British to outlaw the sale of military commissions to salvage the nation’s military reputation. Likewise, the incoming army chief, General Sir David Richards, is determined to apply a “ruthless focus” on Britain’s involvement in Afghanistan, at the expense of its military capacity, to recover the nation’s tarnished military reputation.

But as with the so-called “riddle of the trenches” in the First World War, a stalemate where neither force can overcome the defences of the other, armies must constantly examine their tools and strategies or risk facing a situation for which they have no answer.

Ever since George Bush’s ill-fated declaration of an end to major combat operations in Iraq and the poorly conceived drawdown of forces in Afghanistan, the US and its allies have struggled to unravel their own riddle of the trenches: a Gordian knot of sectarian tensions and historic rivalries exacerbated by the presence of foreign troops and non-state actors such as al Qa’eda. To attempt to quell the violence, troops trained to kill more efficiently than their enemies were suddenly asked to perform duties more akin to police work and public diplomacy.

The lack of preparedness for the insurgencies in both countries, and the touting of such strategies as “shock and awe”, showed a fundamental misunderstanding of the threat environment. In a way, it is shock and awe itself that was the cause of the oversight. Military technology in the West has developed to a point at which waging conventional war on the West is suicide. The overwhelming military might of the US armed forces alone could wipe out nearly every combination of the world’s armies. But, in essence, trillions of US dollars and American ingenuity have resulted in solving the riddles of the last war, not the current one.

Nothing demonstrates this more than the US Army’s Future Combat Systems (FCS). Launched in 2003, the programme aimed to create a hi-tech army in which a sophisticated digital communications network tied individual soldiers to a battery of sensors, unmanned aerial and ground vehicles and mobile artillery pieces, with the effect of greatly increasing that soldier’s lethal capacity. But the system was designed with large land battles in mind, which is not a threat the US currently faces. Both the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have awoken the US in particular to the inadequacies of its tools. The foremost military power suddenly found itself on horseback facing an enemy it was not meant to fight.

Since 2006, the budget for FCS has been slashed and its goals scaled back; most importantly, funding for new self-propelled artillery has been ended altogether. Artillery is a tool used to wage war against other armies and ill-suited to fight insurgents who blend in with civilians. The US secretary of defence, Robert Gates, is also planning drastic cuts in the US Marine Corps’ troubled Osprey programme, the US Air Force’s next-generation fighter jet, the F-22, and portions of the US Navy’s fleet modernisation plan. Instead the focus has turned to low-cost, low-tech improvements to the ability of US forces.

The most famous example has been the current popularity of counterinsurgency. Insurgencies are nothing new, nor is the notion of counterinsurgency; or as it has come to be referred to in modern military parlance, Coin. But the application of its principles has done more to stabilise Iraq in the past two years than any previous effort by the US to kill or capture its way to victory. So, has the US discovered its blitzkrieg to the Taliban’s trenches? It is too early to tell.

It took four years in Iraq to discover a means to end a deadly cycle of sectarian violence. While in Afghanistan, the coalition has yet to discover a successful strategy after almost eight years. The US hopes that applying Coin principles that focus, among other things, on minimising civilian casualties and maximising population security will in time win the war against the Taliban. And since protecting the population means vast amounts of “boots on the ground” the US is signficantly increasing the size of its military forces. While it is demonstrably true that the Afghanistan and Iraq wars have highlighted how poorly prepared the US and its allies were to fight what are sometimes termed small wars, the jury is still out on whether we have truly reached another Battle of Balaclava. What is clear is that US and western military might has changed the face of the battlefield and forced its foes to adapt to exploit weaknesses.

Yet, in the current environment, it seems unwise for the UK to reduce its forces. If it truly wishes to regain its damaged military prestige, and certainly the British have a long estabilished history of quelling insurgencies, then slashing the size of its army is the least best way of accomplishing this. Britain will find that its new wars look rather like its old wars.

The Taliban: if you’re not beating them, you’re losing

noreply@blogger.com (Sean McLain) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 00:31:00 +0000

In late March, Barack Obama made his long-awaited speech on Afghanistan in which he framed what could be termed as the point of the war: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qa’eda in Pakistan and Afghanistan and to prevent their return to either country in the future.

He announced an increase of 17,000 combat troops to reinforce the roughly 60,000 Nato soldiers in Afghanistan, and an additional 4,000 to train the Afghan security forces. He called for a greater commitment from donor nations and Nato member states, for Pakistan to eliminate safe havens for Taliban militants along the country’s porous border with Afghanistan, and for an end to corruption in the Afghan government and greater oversight on reconstruction projects. In doing so, he hit all the right notes, but failed to address fully how the United States planned to accomplish this monumental task. One of the possible answers has just been provided by the Center for New American Security (CNAS), a new Washington-based think tank staffed by some of the foremost authorities on counterinsurgency.

That the Obama administration will pay close attention to the recommendations of CNAS is without doubt. Two of the report’s authors, David Kilcullen and Nathaniel Fick, helped General David Petraeus to write the US army’s new counterinsurgency field manual, as did the group’s president, John Nagl.

The report, entitled Triage: The next twelve months in Afghanistan and Pakistan, paints a dire picture of the state of the war. Civilian casualties are rising (up 41 per cent from 2007), as are the number of attacks (550 a day in 2007 compared with 50 per day in 2002). The Taliban now operate in three quarters of Afghanistan’s 400 districts, up from half last year. Meanwhile approval ratings for the Afghan government have plummeted from 80 per cent in 2005, after the last elections, to 49 per cent (little wonder when the country is 176th on Transparency International’s list of the world’s 180 most corrupt countries). The report’s authors observe: “In counterinsurgency campaigns, if you are not winning, then you are losing.” By all possible measures, the US and its allies are most certainly not winning.

The purported intent of the report is not to reverse these trends but to stabilise the losses. As the title suggests, the authors advise that the US prioritise its goals over the next year to avoid losing any more ground to the Taliban and provide a stable platform for the upcoming Afghan elections. In Afghanistan this means focusing on securing as much of the population as possible, with the implication that there will be portions of the country conceded to the Taliban: the report goes so far as to suggest one particular area, the Korengal valley, dubbed the Valley of Death by American troops, sparsely populated but the site of near constant fighting.

The report argues that the potential Taliban propaganda victory of a troop withdrawal is outweighed by the disproportionate cost of securing the area. This recommendation is undeniably harsh, since it means abandoning Afghans, even temporarily, to the Taliban. But, ultimately, an end to the fighting will probably result in an immediate improved quality of life for those people, albeit under the eyes of an oppressive Taliban leadership.

The second recommendation is to take advantage of the so-called civilian surge announced by Mr Obama to impose greater transparency on the Afghan government by embedding experts within the various ministries. With the majority of Afghans feeling little confidence in the central government, efforts must be made to improve its image – not through propaganda but with demonstrable improvements in governance.

As the report argues, the US should not tie these efforts to any particular Afghan administration and should carry on the efforts until and after the presidential elections in August. Accomplishing this will require co-ordination with the US’s often unwilling allies. In particular, talking the Europeans into signing up to this plan will require much persuasion from the Obama administration. Past efforts by European partners, namely the police training programme, have either been sidelined or duplicated by the Americans out of an insufficient commitment from Europe or disagreements over the manner in which the programme is conducted. Nevertheless, the US would be hard pressed to carry out both the military and political aspects of the war on its own, so its allies must step up.

The options for the deteriorating situation in Pakistan are much less clear. The military cannot simply cross the Durand line into the territory of a US ally to eliminate Taliban safe havens in Pakistan’s tribal areas. But there are things the US can stop doing to make the situation “less worse”. For instance, the US air campaign by unmanned drones kills more civilians than militants, even if, as the US contends, the Taliban inflates the number of innocent deaths. Additionally, these strikes are deeply unpopular in Pakistan and decrease popular support for the nation’s involvement in the US’s campaign against the Taliban.

That may be changing. The spread of the Taliban into the Northwest Frontier Province alarmed many Pakistanis, and the nation’s campaign against the militants enjoys widespread support. If for no other reason, the US should halt its air strikes to capitalise on the current anti-Taliban sentiment.

The report’s authors differ slightly on this issue. They see the Pakistani military’s tactics as counterproductive. While they would undoubtedly agree that the Taliban must be ousted from Pakistan, they do not think that the country’s military is up to the task – so much so that they call for an end to US military support for Pakistan, arguing: “Regardless of whether Pakistan’s military is incompetent or in collusion with the Taliban, it makes little sense to continue to devote such a high percentage of US aid to an ineffective force when other options exist.” The other option is the police, and the report argues for greater funding for them.

None of these recommendations is a recipe for defeating the Taliban. Instead they are the first steps on the road to not losing. But the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan has deteriorated to the point where that is the best the US can hope for in the immediate future.

Beware the troop surge … Afghanistan is not Iraq

noreply@blogger.com (Sean McLain) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:26:00 +0000

The following was first published by The National on January 6, 2009

The number of US troops in Afghanistan will almost double in the coming months as part of a new military strategy to win the war. US military commanders hope to apply the “surge” strategy that proved so effective in turning the tide of the war in Iraq.

A massive increase in the number of soldiers there allowed the coalition forces not only to attack the insurgents, but also to prevent them from returning once they were driven out. Since the US faces the same issues in Afghanistan as in Iraq because of insufficient troop numbers, the reasoning is that a similar surge will have the same effect. Additionally, the US hopes to replicate the highly successful tribal militia system that was the key to driving al Qa’eda out of Iraq. But it will face its stiffest opposition to this new strategy from the Afghan government itself.
In a recent interview President Hamid Karzai spoke out strongly against both a surge and the creation of tribal militias. He has been voicing his disapproval for the past few years at the increasing civilian casualties caused by coalition airstrikes, and has condemned any potential intensification in the fighting inside Afghanistan itself. With more than 6,000 Afghan civilians killed since the beginning of the war, most of them by coalition forces, Mr Karzai’s reluctance to see a resurgence in violence is understandable.
But few people are listening to him any more, least of all the Americans. He has been derisively referred to as “the mayor of Kabul” since he assumed the presidency in 2002. The central government has never been able to extend its influence far beyond the capital and in the past two years it has lost what little authority and credibility it had in the face of continued civilian deaths, ineffective civil institutions and a resurrected Taliban. In his defence, Mr Karzai warned the US for years that the Taliban was not defeated, that stagnant reconstruction efforts risked alienating the Afghan people against their government, and that warlords hired by the US to help to fight the Taliban used brutal tactics that only increased support for the insurgency. He has instead called for reconciliation talks with the Taliban and for any new fighting to be directed at militant safe havens in the southern Helmand province and in Pakistan.

The US will probably pay no more heed to the concerns of Mr Karzai than it did in the first seven years of the occupation. However, that does not mean that his warnings should be ignored. Such a drastic increase in foreign troops will spell a new period of heightened violence, and civilian casualties would spike as a result. It should be remembered that it was the desire for peace that first led the Afghan people to embrace the Taliban during the civil war that erupted in the wake of the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. With the Taliban in effective control of much of Afghanistan’s south, some semblance of normal life has begun to emerge for those people — albeit under the watchful eyes of an intolerant regime. A resumption of hostilities may merely push Afghans further into the arms of the insurgency.
On the other hand, the Taliban are not a homogenous force of religious fundamentalist fighters. Rather, they are a loosely affiliated conglomerate of religious ideologues, tribal fighters, criminal gangs and nationalists. In its harshest form the Taliban cannot be allowed to control any segment of Afghanistan: nor should the horrors that the previous Taliban government inflicted on its people be forgotten, despite the current anarchy in the country. More moderate elements, however, can and should be approached by the US.
Reconciliation with more moderate segments of the Taliban should be the goal of US commanders rather than attempting to arm the tribes. Unlike in Iraq, the tribes of Afghanistan are fractured by decades of internecine fighting and power struggles. The Taliban exploit these tribal divisions and use them to recruit the disenfranchised. In other words, there is no internal coherence to the tribes that make their organisation into a militia significantly easier than grabbing a group of civilians off the streets of Kabul. And the end result would be to pit pro- and anti-Taliban elements of a tribe against one another rather than to co-opt former insurgents. This defeats the entire purpose of the tribal militia.
However, those elements of the Taliban that prove resistant to attempts to co-option and incorporation into the political structure will have to be fought and defeated. And this will undoubtedly require more troops. The Afghan national army would be the preferred tool, but it is currently too ill-equipped and poorly trained for the task. But any new offensive by foreign forces must be extremely mindful of civilian casualties, as every dead Afghan further alienates the population against the occupation.
In the end, the US and its allies must become better than the Taliban at providing what Afghans want: security. The coalition has thus far concentrated too much on the assassination of Taliban leadership and other military means of winning the war. But in doing so it is making the same mistakes made by countless occupiers of Afghanistan before it. The country has been under the dominion of nearly every great power in history. As a gateway between the East and West it has been a battlefield on which civilisations have fought for global and regional influence from far into antiquity.
No wonder, then, that Afghanistan is one of the most under-developed countries in the world, its potentially lucrative natural resources remain untapped, and so much of its population remains mired in poverty. George Bush probably knew little if anything of Afghanistan’s history when he overthrew the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and its Taliban rulers in 2001. Nor has the neglect of reconstruction efforts in the seven years since the occupation began shown that members of his administration are any better students of history. All the Afghans want is peace and a chance for a better life. The US has yet to give that to them, and until it does, America will be on the losing side of this war.