INTRODUCTION

The discourse on non -western cultural expression, its ontology and its fundaments are consistently hijacked by proponents of what I call Eurocommunists; leftist forces in and outside Western academia in fact challenged proponents of capitalism and Western culture nothing more, nothing less. The silence of non-western scholarship in this discourse became cloaked by writers such as V.S. Naipaul, Gabriel Garcia Marques and Wole Soyinka, all writers of the non-fictional, fictional, criticizing and challenging colonialism, imperialism, modernity and “Eurocentricism”.

The absence of credible and good quality scholarship to identify and describe characteristics and patterns of the decolonial and the transitional, the tryst of reform and re-institutionalization gave rise to intellectual fallacy and bias. Indeed, the accusatory tone that works when writing from the premise of artistic freedom, leads to academic abominality.

One of the biggest problems is that today eurocommunism still determines scholarship, specifically in the discourse on cultural dominance, capitalism and imperialism. But do these propositions hold true in the contemporary, determined by other social cultural and technological realities? How can we place these conceptions of the previous century in today’s reality in a world that is reshaped by miscegenation and crossing over of idea and culture?

PRABAL GURUNG, JASON WU, RETU BERI AND THE NEW GLOBAL AESTHETIC

The fashion industry is a clear exemplification of our changing world, of a changing aesthetics and new elites. No longer is fashion determined in Paris, Milan or London. Today’s fashion is determined by the street and global trending and than picked up by the fashion industry.

A new generation of fashion designers emerging from every corner of this globe, setting new trend of what is hip and contemporary, are indeed a sign of the times, ZEITGEIST, but also the symbol of a new weltanshauung, a transforming world no longer revolving around Europe and the North, a new Avant Garde supported by new cultural, political and social elites in various parts of the world.

Fashion is the most prolific sign of the zeitgeist; the crossing over of music and cuisine is a trend that has been developing for a longer period of time, kindled by migratory waves and the demand of Diasporic communities in Europe and the USA.

Indeed these developments symbolize transformation, the acceptance of a new aesthetic that is typically ignored by eurocommunists and proponents of cultural dominance.

Their consistent criticism, denouncing modernity and modernization in fact diametrically opposes the idea of a newly emerging Avant Garde, grounded by a new global and social reality.

MIDDLE CLASSES, POLITICAL PROTEST AND SELF-EFFICACY

The pessimistic stance of the Eurocommunists, who consistently argue the existence of a dominant culture, paraphrase the ideas of scholars such as Frank and Gramsci. This problematic and rather controversial position is oftentimes embraced by laypeople and self-proclaimed academics, whose ideas and perceptions are grounded in what I call experiments of the imagination. To establish a working link between unmet wants and needs and the available resources, one cannot rely on the fictional for credible answers. The nature of conflict that arises if needs and wants are unmet is in fact socio-psychological exercise, objectified by measurements instead of perception.The aptness to organize and aggregate demand can only manifest itself under the strictest of conditions: without the colloquially put “full belly”, a roof over ones head and a steady job, one cannot become neither a political nor a renaissance men. The hierarchy of needs explains why transitional societies oftentimes lack good quality political parties, technical expertise and affable leadership. The universality of the hierarchy of needs also explains uneven global economic and political trending, because poverty is no longer an intricate part longer part of the South. Today the world is a mosaic of fast-growing centers and peripheries scattered over the different continents. The economic crisis taught the world that more than ever, opportunity and self-efficacy are no longer beholden to the western world, but to those strong enough to escape existing spatial interpersonal and gender inequalities (Perrons 2009).

These new economic and social realities call for a different outlook on the relevance of the middle classes and political organization. Eurocommunists have always defied the notion of a strong middle class, apt to challenge the political leadership to demand change and transformation. The relevance of mass parties, eloquently described by seminal scholars such as Giovanni Sartori, their aggregative powers, that helped organize the masses at the beginning of the 20th century, is never recognized by the Eurocommunists, who consistently propose a radical solution to end economic and social disparities. The irony is that a more moderate solution tends to have positive effect on democratization, governance and trust. The skips and bouts of democratization in many developing societies are in fact responsible for ever increasing economic and social disparities, since societies continue to linger on the threshold of either democratic consolidation or breakdown. In such an uncertain environment, economic progress remains at large, and economic disparities become even more challenging to overcome as time passes by.

CONCLUSION

The fight that occurred within western academia between the proponents of capitalism and modernization and the eurocommunists has nothing to do with the people in the developing world. The loud nein so often uttered by anti modernists had no bearing in the reality then and has certainly no bearing with today’s fast advancing world, determined by internet technology and consumerism. People want their needs and wants met, whether they live in North America or in Cameron. The new centers of the world have ushered in new economic and political realities that defy ideas of South-South solidarity and Western style imperialism. China today rivals the former colonial powers in its hunger for raw materials and natural resources, trampling upon the rights of the local people as it scavenges the globe to quench its thirst. But it seems that China’s role as the new predator hegemon is overlooked, overshadowed by antiquated ideas on North-South dichotomies and non-alignment. Lack of analyses on the controversial role of China strengthens my hypothesis that the debate was not about the fate of the people in the Third World, it was about dialetic, about thetical-antithetical, the ideological divide that determined the western world between 1945-1989.

The new Avant Garde brought on by Prabal Gurung and others has not reached the doors of the Academia, because people have yet to accept that times are changing, that dominant cultures today are no longer, and that the theory of the dominant culture is debunked by the empirical, taken over by crossing over and miscegenation , Diasporic preferences and street style. Dominant cultures, have become the classics, the Picasso’s and the Mozart’s, the blueprints and the Canvases on which new Epistemics will build.

AUTHOR: Natascha Adama
URL: http://natascha23.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: nataliapestova23 [@] yahoo.com

Planet Boundaries of Rockstrom et all

Kate Raworth is a Senior Researcher of Oxfam Great Britain. In a recent discussion paper she has proposed a metaphorical doughnut as a safe and just space for humanity to thrive (Full discussion paper can be downloaded here). ‘Can we live within the doughnut?’ Kate asks, presenting a visual framework – shaped like a doughnut – which brings the concept of planetary boundaries together with the complementary concept of social boundaries, creating a safe and just space between the two, in which humanity can thrive.

​Kate argues primarily from the perspective of social equity and the foreword of her discussion paper says, ‘Humanity’s challenge in the 21st century is to eradicate poverty and achieve a prosperity for all within the means of the planet’s limited natural resources. In the run-up to Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, this Discussion Paper is an exploration of what such a model of prosperity might look like.’ It also says, ‘Moving into this safe and just space demands far greater equity – within and between countries – in the use of natural resources, and far greater efficiency in transforming those resources to meet human needs.’

​In her hypothesis Kate was inspired by the Planetary Boundary framework by Rockstrom et all consisting of nine metrices, which she has adopted as an environmental ceiling and superimposed within it Social Boundaries consisting of eleven metrices leading to a visual framework in the form of a doughnut within which humanity, according to her, can and should live. Her blog post in Oxfam website is quite popular now and many are commenting to which Kate is answering generously.

​Kate’s hypothesis is elegant but risky in as much as it can lead to an over-simplification of a very complex problem. We are wary of politicians taking advantage of sensationalism in issues that should carry more scientific content than popular acceptance.

​It is seen in her blog that few commenters object to the topology of the metaphoric doughnut – despite dimensional inconsistencies, however, it’s a metaphor so need to be seen as one. What appears to be of more concern is that there are many cultures unfamiliar with a doughnut so may be a more culturally universal metaphor would have been better.

Rockstrom’s Planetary Boundaries are anthropocentric since these boundaries seek to impose thresholds beyond which environment may degrade beneath Holocene standard, Holocene being a minuscule geological span of earth in which environment favored human civilisation.  The whole emphasis is on well being and growth of humans here, but homo sapiens are just one node in a huge network of billions of species and a blink of an evolutionary process. This can be seen as a general weakness of the hypothesis. In biological evolutionary progression planetary resources matter in a fundamentally different way – there is no scope of economic growth in that reality, except a few directed evolutionary trends under human civilization with uncertain consequences. So logically we have to accept that for humans to exist and grow in post modern sense of meaning some amount of transgressing into carrying capacity of earth is inevitable. Nobody can practically expect the anthropogenic appreciation of total terrestrial photosynthetic produce (now standing over more than 40%) to be reduced.   Moreover, the physical significance and interconnectedness of Rockstrom’s nine metrices are yet not fully understood; at best these are under examination and study. So building these into UN framework seems a bit hasty. At least this leaves suspicion that “…planetary boundaries question can be divisive as it can be perceived as a tool of the “North” to tell the “South” not to follow the resource intensive and environmentally destructive development pathway that rich countries took themselves… This language is unacceptable to most of the developing countries as they fear that an emphasis on boundaries would place unacceptable brakes on poor countries,” to quote High Level Panel on Global Sustainability.

​The doughnut hypothesis may add an extra layer of complexity on this. For example the ceiling here is an environmental standard of past 10,000 years and the floor is a social standard of the new millennium. There is acknowledgement of deep inequality of resource consumption between the rich and poor in the hypothesis but many argue that the issue is more about standardizing personal, ​​institutional and governmental consumptions. May be, setting a standard of consumption and then ensuring economic redistribution like ‘cap and trade’ can bring down social floor much lower creating extra space for the doughnut.​

Both Planetary and Social boundaries in Kate’s doughnut are normative but on different planes of reality; the former is physical while the later is social. There is scant little evidence in the human civilization of a compromise between the two.

​Kate foresees three perspectives that her doughnut hypothesis can open up, namely:

​a)      An integrated vision – rights based approach towards establishing a social foundation while remaining below environmental ceiling and she hopes that economies must be structured and managed to do that.

b)      A refocusing of economic priorities – inclusion of social and environmental stresses within economy instead of considering them as ‘externalities’.

c)       Metrices beyond GDP – devising yardsticks of measuring human well being beyond economic product and she proposes to consider measures such as natural metrics (tonnes of carbon emitted) and social metrics (the number of people facing hunger).

​​​With or without the doughnut all these three perspectives are in existence. Why will we need a doughnut, other than, possibly for a popular understanding? Moreover, if humanity decides to look for the resource questions, which are certainly limited now, why the historical realities be suppressed by a datum imposed on today’s conditions?

​In Rio+20, where the doughnut hopes to offer a framework of discussion and debate, Sustainable Development will be a central focus. Kate’s doughnut attempts to link two of the pillars of SD, namely Environmental and Social. It is not clear what role Economic, the third pillar, may play in this visual framework – because it is demanded now that Economy or Green Economy will play a vital role in Development. Green Economy and Low Carbon Technology are proposed as saviors, with expectation that these may redefine the social boundaries. These make the social boundaries or the floor ever-shifting, quite unlike Rockstrom’s boundaries or the ceiling.

​There is a marked silence in the world where the ethical and perhaps sustainable limits of​ personal and institutional consumptions are rarely questioned. The sustainability approach, through Green Economy is fraught with questions like whether it is merely greenwash of business as usual – unless the very driver of such economy, that is, the necessity-greed dichotomy is examined transparently. Such examination may change Kate’s doughnut’s topology altogether.

​In the end Kate puts forward six questions that a debate on her hypothesis may distill down into. Here is a standard set of answers.

​1. Who should determine the dimensions and boundaries of an internationally agreed social foundation and an environmental ceiling, and how?

As far as the environmental ceiling is concerned, hard and credible science. Though there is much work to do, there is also enough evidence and a consensus that there is such a ceiling for a Holocene stability of earth conditions – so scientific communities will hopefully determine it, if they are not bugged by political and corporate lobbies. As far as social foundation is concerned, in the present system of political anarchy, unfortunately none can determine it. In the summits and conventions societies are not represented; what are represented are Political Nation States and their obligations to aspirations of the burgeoning middle class who aspire to graduate into the 10% of the Global Rich. This is truer for developing countries than the developed and they are more numerous.

​2. What are the implications of this framework for drawing up new global development goals beyond 2015, as part of the MDG and Rio+20 processes?

As answer a question will be more fitting. What about the MDGs till 2013? Are we trashing them? How far these were achieved and with what uniformity these achievements have been measured? The assessment leaves more questions than answers. A set of new development goals in this institutional set up will be putting a proverbial cart before the horse.

​​​3. How could the framework be adapted regionally or nationally to reflect the importance of regional thresholds for many planetary boundaries?

For those who will even admit such a framework, one guess is, it will be modified with so much local reality that it may be hard, if not impossible, to recognize it as one original.

​4. How could inequalities in global resource use be represented graphically within the framework?

It is hard to imagine the inequalities be incorporated in a 2-D metaphor like the doughnut.  The geo-local inequalities can be roughly incorporated into it by introducing two 3-D envelopes like geoids, one for the social boundary and another for the planetary boundary (imagine atmospheric layer around earth) but popular visualization of such models seems difficult.

​5. How could this framework be extended to explore the fair shares of effort needed, between and within countries, to bring humanity into the safe and just space?

Considering the complex inter and intra country mass and energy flows in terms of earth resources, country or region specific doughnuts look improbable. There is no consensus between countries about the safety and justness as well.

​6. What are the major policy shifts required to achieve economic development that brings humanity within social and planetary boundaries?

There is a strong belief at some quarters that Economic Development needs to be redefined first and pending that redefinition, attempt to plan for well being of humanity within any framework of social boundaries may be futile. Planetary Boundaries, however will dangle precariously over humanity’s head – that is a numbing reality of Anthropocene.

Feature Image courtesy: The Contemporary Caveman

AUTHOR: Pabitra Mukhopadhyay
URL: http://pabitraspeaks.com
E-MAIL: mukhopadhyay.pabitra [at] gmail.com

Marisela Escobedo, with a wanted sign for her daughter's murderer

A Background Paper by Andrea Medina Rosas and Laura Carlsen

I. INTRODUCTION

Mexico is facing a major human rights and humanitarian crisis. Fifty thousand people have been murdered in the war on drugs just since 2007. Thousands more have been displaced, orphaned and forcibly disappeared. Mexican society is divided by fear between those who welcome a military approach to the growing chaos and those who believe that the military approach is the cause of it. The Calderon government, with encouragement and financial support from the U.S. government, refuses to consider alternatives to its drug war, even as the situation grows worse and the ruling conservative party risks paying a high political price in the 2012 presidential elections.

This crisis has revealed a deeper and more ingrained institutional crisis. While thousands of crimes are committed in the context of the current violence, the justice system fails to prosecute even a tiny fraction of them. Rampant corruption, accepted as a way of life in normal times, now erodes any attempt to bring the situation under control.

Although a peace movement has arisen that seeks to support justice for the victims and advocates policy changes in dialogue with government officials, the number of new cases emerging far surpasses its capacity to address them. The gendered aspects of the crisis remain invisible. Women are a minority of the victims, but it is usually women who lead efforts to bring about justice in the cases of their loved ones and their communities. These bold human rights defenders have become targets, with little means of protection or support. Gender-based violence has risen precipitously under cover of a society engulfed in violence and lacking basic institutional capacity—or political will– to deal with it.

II. CONTEXT

1) Weak institutions, corruption and lack of justice. Although Mexico did not experience the armed conflicts and military dictatorships of other countries in the region, its democratic and judicial institutions are weak and do not comply fully with their obligations. This is the result of 71 years of authoritarian, one-party rule (1929-2000) and the persistence of systematic corruption and use of the State apparatus in the interests of those holding political and economic power.

The justice system successfully prosecutes only an estimated 2% of crimes committed, excluding those that are not reported due to lack of faith in the system, those that are never investigated by authorities, and those that are thrown out of court. This situation encourages the continued commission of political crimes, crimes by cartels, gender crimes and common delinquency—without punishment, social or legal consequences, or transparency.

The system also routinely discriminates on the basis of sex, class, ethnicity and age (see below). Moreover, there is a severe shortage of resources to respond to violations of human rights, exacerbated by the extreme rise in complaints since the onset of the war on drugs.

2) Femicides, human rights violations and simulation. An important precedent to the current crisis is the case of the femicides in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua. First denounced in 1993, this case exemplifies gender-based violence since the murders of the young women share traits of extreme sexual violence and torture, and also reveals the lack of political will to investigate and resolve crimes against women in Mexico. In this case and others, the Mexican government has developed a response of carrying out formal and much-publicized actions to address the human rights problem without making any real changes or progress. Defenders call this tactic “simulation.” Thus, despite recent constitutional reforms on human rights and the fact that Mexico has ratified most international conventions, the enforcement of the law is totally inadequate due to the lack of real commitment by federal, state and local governments.

3) General violence and gender violence as part of the “war on drugs”. The war on drugs launched in December of 2006 by President Felipe Calderon and supported by the U.S. government led to the deployment of some 45,000 troops throughout Mexico and a dramatic increase in violence. More than 50,000 people have been killed and thousands more disappeared, displaced and orphaned. Complaints of human rights violations involving security forces have risen at least sixfold. Militarization has brought new threats and additional risks to women human rights defenders, especially in indigenous regions, along the northern border and in other zones of intense conflict. Cases of rape, abuse and murder attributed to the armed forces have risen, along with similar crimes attributed to the drug cartels.

II. The Current Crisis for Women Human Rights Defenders in Mexico

Mexican women human rights defenders confront threats and graves risks in carrying out their work while trying to assure their own personal safety. Government officials and security forces are often those responsible for the threats, along with conservative groups, hostile media, and criminal groups. The challenges for the protection of defenders are to guarantee their immediate security through their own social and civil networks, since it is not possible to trust the government to do it. At the same time, to bolster the democratic state and rule of law they continue to demands that the government fulfill its obligations to assure the safety of human rights workers.

There are three main aspects that characterize the current human rights crisis:

1. Lack of justice. Human rights violations and threats to human rights defenders are often not even investigated properly. There are seldom sanctions, reparations for damages, or programs of prevention. This makes it possible for organized crime or individuals to become more violent against women and women defenders, in collusion with the authorities. To carry out the defense of human rights safely, it is urgent to en impunity, since that is what causes the chain of violence against defenders for demanding justice, which often extends even to the families of victims or their own families.

In alarming contrast to the lack of effective legal proceedings in cases of human rights violations and attacks on human rights defenders, there has been an increase in the use of the justice system to criminalize social protest and the work of many defenders, in an effort to repress their activity.

2. Culture of discrimination against women

The Interamerican Human Rights Court has pronounced sentences against Mexico affirming that the Mexican government and its officials maintains a culture of discrimination against women that propitiates violence against women. This discrimination is more intense against indigenous, young, migrant, poor and lesbian women and women who demand justice. There are also more attacks on defenders who defend women’s reproductive and sexual rights. Conservative groups are attacking those who promote the right to choose and defend women in jail for aborting, and those who defend sexual diversity. Discrimination exists not only in the laws and rules, but especially in practices of government officials that result in unequal access to justice and the preservation of a misogynist culture.

This aspect is important since the majority of those who seek justice, are searching for loved ones, or denounce violations of human rights are women. They are the mothers, wives, daughters that are emerging as the new group of defenders.

3. Lack of real and effective public policy and defense from the Mexican state.

Military presence in many parts of the country, and the absence of the state in others, reveals that the actions being carried out in defense of human rights are isolated, and not coordinated between the three levels of government or between different offices, agencies and branches of government. Citizens do not know their rights or how the institutions set up to guarantee them work. Worse, there is a campaign to link the work of human rights defenders with criminals. The few guarantees offered by the government to defend rights, such as precautionary measures, are near useless since there is no budget to implement them and they are not coordinated among the institutions charged with applying them.

III. Cases

1. Josefina Reyes: Grassroots leader from Valle de Juárez, Chihuahua who worked for peace and denounced violations of human rights by the armed forces sent into the region as part of the drug war. Reyes was assassinated Jan. 3, 2010. Following her murder, her family has suffered threats, harassment and attacks, including the assassinations of her brother Rubén Reyes (murdered prior to Josefina’s death); and brother, sister and sister-in-law María Magdalena Reyes, Elías Reyes and Luisa Ornelas (murdered in Feb 2011).

2. Marisela Escobedo: In August 2008, Rubi Frayre, daughter of Marisela Escobedo, disappeared. Her remains were found as a result  of a search by the family that led to the culprit, Rubi’s former boyfriend, Sergio Barraza, who confessed to the crime. Incredibly, three state judges let Barraza go free. As a result of Marisela’s protests and public outcry, Barraza was later sentenced for the crime but had already fled. Marisela continued to demand justice and on Dec. 16, 2010 she was shot and killed as she protested outside the State Capitol. The crime has not been solved.

3. Blanca Velásquez: Defender and organizer for the labor rights in Puebla, Velásquez founded and directed the Center for Worker Support (CAT). Since 2008 she has been attacked repeatedly for denouncing violations of labor rights by transnational corporations. She ahs received death threats, beatings, and threats against her and other members of CAT. The organization has had its offices raided, robbing the archives, equipment and resources; it has had its phone lines tapped. Publicly its business leaders have named Blanca as a social danger and affirmed that government officials back them up. This has endangered the organization and its members.

IV. FACT SHEET

1. Since 2010, six women human rights defenders have been registered as murdered in Mexico: Chihuahua-Marisela Escobedo, Susana Chávez, Malena Reyes, Luisa Ornelas, Josefina Reyes; Oaxaca-Beatriz Cariño.

2. An estimated 98% of crimes committed in Mexico are never solved or sanctioned.

3. The war on drugs has left 50,000 dead, thousands of displaced and disappeared. Women represent the majority of those who file complaints in the search for justice for victims and their families.

4. The number of femicides in Chihuahua since sending the army in has risen to 837 for the period 2008-2011 June—nearly double total femicides in1993-2007.

5. The last report by the Special Rapporteur on Defenders recognized that threats and especially “explicit death threats, against women human rights defenders are one of the main forms of violence in the region, with more than half coming from Latin America, most of those (27) from Mexico.

IV. Petitions to the Mexican Government and International Organizations

1. Include a gender perspective in the diagnosis and risk analysis.

This implies studying the gender-specific nature of threats to men and women, and of the impact of measures designed to protect them.

2. Effective local protective measures.

Applying only individual measures has been shown to be counter-productive since instead of protection and modifying the situation of risk, they increase risks by giving the government more control over the defenders and their work. Protective measures should include: a) an assurance that full investigations will be carried out and sanctions applied to officials involved in attacks on or discrimination against women defenders, b) guarantee psycho-social support, even in case of displacement, c) include processes with the media and with communities affected by the attacks on defenders.

3. International monitoring to implement protective measures. The international community should monitor the situation to distinguish the rhetoric from the reality and measure real results. Follow up by international human rights organizations requires real indicators of evaluation, benchmarks and mechanisms for monitoring by civil society.

4. Focus support on the organizations and women human rights defenders themselves. Although guarantees of rights is the responsibility of the government, it is fundamental to strengthen the organizations and create networks of women human rights defenders to assure their immediate and effective protection.

V. Links and resources for more information:

Centro de Derechos Humanos Tlachinollan  www.tlachinollan.org (Español). For information on the case of Ines and Valentina http://www.tlachinollan.org/Ines-y-Valentina/ines-y-vale.html

Caso Campo Algodonero http://www.campoalgodonero.org.mx/   English: “Cotton Field” case

Articles and Report:

Report on the Situation of Women Human Rights Defenders (on line 2011 report )

Amnesty International on Josefina Reyes http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/news/mexico-urged-protect-activists-after-campaigner-shot-dead-20100106

The Murdered Women of Juarez http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/3895

AUTHOR: Laura Carlsen
URL: www.cipamericas.org and http://americasmexico.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: lecarlsen [at] gmail.com

System thinking in quadrants

In order to measure aid organisations (bilateral, multilateral, donors, NGOs) I would like to present my personal quadrants.

Quadrant

The quadrants are divided by two axes. On one side I have put qualitative reports and on the other side quantitative reports. In my opinion; qualitative is the same as to inform and quantitative is the same as to determine. This is also known as a statistical research. Samples are collected and statistics are calculated from the samples so that one can make inferences or extrapolations from the sample to the population. Statisticians ussually work with SPSS.

On the other axis I have placed closed and open with each other. Closed means that aid organisations do not inform citizens about the progress of cooperation/assistance. Open means that aid organisations use media as a transport ship to inform citizens. This leads to four quadrants: qualitative-open, open-quantitative, quantitative-closed and closed-qualitative.

To get more differentiation in each quadrant, I halved each quadrant by sub-axes. The first is evidence vs no evidence. Evidence lies close to quantitative and open.

The second is focussed on public vs focussed on output. Some aid organisations want to look good on the public mass, others prefer to focus on the actual output. Thus, the pizza slices occur.

Pizza slices (see image at the top):

1. Information: Aid organisation that informs the public.
2. Support: Aid organisation who finds it important to create support.
3. Example: Aid organisation who finds it important to set an example for other aid organisations.
4. Opinion:: Aid organisation that wants to play the public opinion by providing performance data.
5. Focus: Aid organisation with high priority for proven output.
6. Effective: Aid organisation that only wants to prove to himself and to his stakeholders. There is no responsibility outwards.
7. Hide: Aid organisation that shows nothing and is closed to the public. Data is not publicly available. Evidence is difficult to obtain
8. Appearance: Aid organisation that occurs differently than reality.

Aid organisations like Doctors Without Borders, UNICEF and WWF regularly put articles on their site. Their object can be placed in the quadrants information and support. I can not find any evidence to confirm the content of these articles. Some aid organisations open a tangle of bureaucracy that need to be solved before receiving poor information. It is a discouragement and a sign of ignorance. Examples are the EU, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Development Cooperation.

In my view, Top right is the place for most Dutch aid organisation and Top left for most NGOs in the South. Unfortunately, too few aid organisations can be classified into the bottom left and right areas. In my view, aid organisations and NGOs need to make a shift to the bottom end of the circle.

Devil’s Triangle

One of the basic principles about Project Management is the concept of the Devil’s Triangle (read more on Wikipedia). There are three stakeholders on a triangle: time, cost, quality.

The basic question you need to ask is: which stakeholder is the most important target in your aid project?

Example 1: if one would choose quality for a certain project, you will loose stakeholder cost and time. In other words: it will take more time and financial investment.

Example 2: if one would choose quick results (time), the costs will go up and the quality will go down.

Example 3: projects with low cost will have lower quality and need more time to process.

Depending on the strategy, one can choose a spot in any place in the triangle areas: centered, left-aligned, midway between two corners, et cetera. Choose a far corner, and the other stakeholders will drop rapidly. Right in the middle of the triangle seems like a nice balance, but every stakeholder will partially lose.

There are variations on the Devil’s Triangle imaginable, like a devil-square or diamond. The fourth stakeholder could be focus, logistics or risk.

If within a project the support strategy is chosen (see quadrants), the importance of PR and creating support within a community becomes very important. The overhead increases. I mentioned Doctors Without Borders, UNICEF and WWF. They write all kinds of news articles, press releases and reports. They share nothing about proven output. I always doubt about their quality. Many aid organisations are master in politics. Of course, this is not wrong. At the political level processes may be fought, but some can not fail to exaggerate. The fourth stakeholder could also be replaced by politics.

Inductive logic

The German logician Carl Gustav Hempel illustrated inductive logic. Hempel describes the paradox in terms of the hypothesis:

• All ravens are black.

and

• If we find a white raven: not all ravens are black.

This is the basic principle of all science. We have to proof the white raven in a scientific way to invalidate the hypothesis (and make a new one). The culture of aid is a strange culture, rather obstinate. Assumtions are taken for granted in a qualitative way. They make black ravens out of it. This is where it goes wrong. You can say that a hypothesis, which should scientifically be proven, is simply dropped from the air. The main question is: who ever determined that all ravens are black? In other words: who ever determined a certain track record or output? How is this scientifically established? A good example is Hitler’s suicide.

‘His’ burned corpse appears to be of a woman leaving only vague testimony from eyewitnesses who stayed with Hitler until the very last end. These were the most fanatical Nazis, not the most reliable source. So, the determination of the black ravens in this story is not scientific but it will always be part of our history books.

Especially in aid culture, this logic is lost. I argue that the inductive logic should be expanded. One should always prove that all ravens are black and not just invent a hypothesis. In that case, Hitler committed no suicide and the authenticity of many development projects becomes visible.

What can we learn from this?

In the Netherlands the Freedom of Information Act (Wet Openbaarheid van Bestuur) only applies to governmental organizations, not for non-governmental bodies like donors (read: foundations). Also if a single foundation spend hundred of millions of tax money (like Oxfam Novib, between € 150-200 million annual). In my opinion, all foundations who receive one penny of our tax should open their files to everyone, because tax money is public ownership. Even if they also receive funding by entrepreneurs or individual. The Freedom of Information Act should apply to all governmental bodies, NGOs and donors/foundations to force them to the bottom of the quadrant.

It’s to easy for governments to hide behind the structure in which their Extension do not have to be open. This results in narrow reflection. It is susceptible to fraud and it only creates a good news show (slice appearance, information, support).

The Dutch government only has a booking relation with foundations. These foundations (donors) only have a booking relation with NGOs in the South. That’s about it. But false receipts and double funding are common…a pitfall. To avoid this, accounting should only be seen as an administrative process, not a means to statistics. An administrative approach is yet another showcase for bureaucracy. Administrative results are hidden from public, while statistics can easily be published. This would mean a total different slice in the above quandrant. I believe, that aid organisations lack a scientific approach and often are unable to explain the origins of their black ravens. One should ask themselves to which pizza slice of the quadrant and to which stakeholder of the Devil’s Triangle he/she belong to. We should ask questions, not only about the white raven but also about the black raven. If we choose wisely, we can change the culture of aid.

AUTHOR: Hans Sluijter
URL: www.NL-Aid.org
E-MAIL: info [at] www.NL-Aid.org

Introduction

Why are studies on colonialism, decolonization, imperialism and development imbibed by Marxism?

Is it because Marxism is viewed as a ubiquitous and benign theory apt to explain all kinds of social injustice, ranging from slavery and poverty to the malfunctioning of colonial institutions and political systems.

Is it possible that Classical Marxism as theory indeed possesses the necessary qualities to underpin theoretical conceptions on social and political developments in developing societies?

The answer is simply, no, because scholarship can never lean on a single paradigm to explain a wide array of issues and problems, unless it aims to base theories on a very narrow conception. Despite this iron-clad rule, scholarship pertaining to explain poverty and social injustice, typically premises theories and explanation on classical Marxism. It is unclear whether said scholarship pertains to express certain social phenomena in dialectical antimonies; between underdevelopment and stagnation and between industrial advancement and social development in Europe (Klak et al). But unwanted Weberian type antimonies, antimonies that criticize and accuse; antimonies grounded on Eurocentrism, keep creeping up in the discourse,cloaking the relevant issues.

Puzzling is the fact that schools of thought, using Classical Marxism seem to overlook that Marx was firmly rooted in Europe, in European intellectualism of the Nineteenth Century. As Jorge Larrain (1989, p. 57) puts it, Marx (and Engels) referred rather contemptuously to certain nationalities and countries (of the Third World). [ Mexicans are lazy, Montenegrins are cattle robbers and they referred to the hereditary stupidity of the Chinese].

Analysis of Marx work reveals that Latin America and the Caribbean, were treated as footnotes, exemplifications of societies lacking rationality and progress (ibid). In fact Friedrich Engels lauded and applauded the annexation of Beautiful California, because the lazy Mexicans would not have known what to do with it. These racist remarks make it hard to phantom why Marxism determined scholarship on Latin America and the Caribbean. Is because of its overt utopian-dystopian quality that seem to complement ideas on colonialism and imperialism that disproportionally affected Latin America and the Caribbean?

The relevance and the actual value of Marxist theory diminishes even further when dealing with issues that fall outside the realm of imperialism and colonialism, issues that directly delve in the innerworkings of the system, of the domestic, the mechanisms that help consolidate democracy.

Classical Marxism is based on three key -antimonies: labor- capital, the worker- employer, proletariat – bourgeoisie, antimonies are closely connected to a specific historical period determined by rapid economic and social transformation that begged for a new epistemology.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels provided what I qualify the core conception; Luxembourg, Hilferding, Hobson, Bukharin and Lenin continued to theorize, seizing trends and features as they enfolded at the dawning of the new century. Apart from Russia, China, and Cuba, the revolution of the proletariat did not proliferate to the rest of the world. A watered down version of socialism, called social democracy and expressed and aggregated through mass Labor Parties, came to life as credible alternative for liberalism, correlating mass politicization and broadening of the support market at the beginning of the previous century . Socialism as political ideology gave impetus to politicization and civilization (organization of the masses in for example, England, Germany, The Netherlands, France, Italy, Spain) and formed the basis for programs to eradicate poverty, to tackle gender disparities, albeit to empower.

The class-less collective Nirvana-state came crashing down in the early 1990s, fostering a new democratic wave, bringing on new insights on the improbability of classlessness and the fallacies of a state-led economy. The events of 1989, the brutalities of the Sandinistas in Nicaraguara, FMLN in El Salvador, and mass exodus of Cubans during that same historical period , underscored Machiavelli’s stern warning that a Revolution typically does not bring on the expected redistribution of wealth, it merely brings about the redistribution of power, a shift between politicians with a different message and outlook. This cynical but realistic observation debunks existing ideas and notions of for example, critical schools of taught that radical action and grass-root social movement have the proclivity to bring about change and transformation in developing societies.

Laissez-Faire, Imperialism and Disposition of Capital

One of the valuable lessons f history overlooked by theorists on imperialism is that the Twentieth Century gave rise to a new economic reality, a new reality that defied the laissez-faire principles of the Pax Britannica hegemony. The waning of British Rule came as Germany, Swiss and the USA became leading nations in research and development, technological advancements that emerged as direct result of ground-breaking research on the synthesizing of coca leaves. Paul Gootenberg (2008) paints an interesting picture of the coca-cocaine commodities chain, that starts as the coca-leave became shuttled from Peru to Paris, back to avant garde scenes in Hollywood, New York, than to main street USA (who adored the leave and used it massively to self-medicate) and back to Peru. In Peru politicians dreamed of coca as a viable source for economic development and prosperity. Instead Peru became relegated to the tending and the planting of the coca plants, while Europeans reap the fruits of further advancement and knowledge.

Gootenberg (ibid) demonstrated that the disposition of capital, and the ability to tap into networks in the end determined the profitability of the small green leave for the European and American pharmaceutical industry. The same networks and environment turned the coca leave into an illicit matter, after Dutch chemists developed novocaine, or artificial cocaine. Today nobody mentions the fact that the pharmaceutical companies in Europe became corporations by synthesizing coca-cocaine into pasta basica de cocaina. Today all eyes are focused on smuggling, on the war on drugs, and on the pasta basica de cocaina, now being synthesized in make-shift coke-labs throughout the South American continent, to be shipped to Europe and North America. Only a few focus on the fact that coca is an intricate part of Indio culture, that its prohibition of the leave has turned an ancient Indio tradition into an illicit and contrite act on which the USA has waged a massive war (war on drugs). Indeed, one can argue that imperialism in its crudest form is racist and hypocritical, that it marginalizes and seriously impeded economic and political developments in Latin America.

Gootenberg (ibid) belongs to a new generation of scholars who focus on agency, on the system, delving into archives to underpin research instead of focusing on outside factors to explain certain phenomena of the developing world.

Old school scholars still harbor ideas and conceptions grounded on classical Imperialism and Weberian antimonies. A striking example is the Dutch Historian Piet Emmer, who argued during a Colloqium (27 September 2011) that proposals on the expansiveness of imperialism do not rhyme with the empirical reality. According to Emmer, Africa during the early 20th century was not an attractive continent for investors, neither were Latin America and the Caribbean. Fact of the matter is that the networks of capital floated from Northern Europe to Northern America. The rest of the world was either colonized or underdeveloped providing either raw materials or tools for economic and intellectual advancement of the North.

Emmer however forgoes that during that same period, the Belgium King Leopold committed serious crimes against the peoples of the Congo, by ordering the killings of countless workers, in his quest to extract their minerals and other riches.

Emmer also forgoes that the smuggling balata seeds from Manaus by Europeans at the beginning of the 20th century to Malaysia, occurred in an attempt to gain control over the rubber production. Other examples are the thriving diamond industries in Amsterdam and Antwerp, driven by the extraction of diamonds from Africa.

South-South Trade, instead of Non- Alignment?

The works of some Dependencia schools, exemplifying Pinto, Sunkel, Furtado do not focus on external factors to explain economic dependency, instead this school focusses on the domestic. Their stance on stagnant development in Latin America corresponds Linz& Stepan (1996), Diamond (1991) whose focus on democratization as a process to strengthen the system, the bureaucracy, the economic and political arenas, the civil arena and the judicial as intertwining elements that help push transitional societies out of a rut of economic and social stagnation. Unlike Dependistas, the last mentioned established a empirical base to argue the importance of stable government and complementary arena’s as precursor for economic development. The strengthening of the complementary arenas diametrically opposes, electoralism, a conception attenuating to the devotion of governments to the organizing of elections instead of on the strengthening of corresponding institutions. The work of Pinto et al. underscores my earlier assertion that overt focus on classical Marxist theory fosters the flawed idea that developing nations are unique, that universal scholarly theories do not apply. The rethinking of the idea of uniqueness also involves the debunking of normative theoretical conceptions that call for a revolution. The revaluation of scholars such as Pinto, to build new theories on economic development, citizenship, government and trust.

conclusion

Is it possible to assume that a focus on the strengthening of institutions, ditto government would have strengthened South-South trade, giving rise to networks, realization of surplus value, elements that underpinned North-North economic order? The fallacy of the international community to remedy the current economic and monetary crisis teaches us the importance of strong domestic institutions in the tackling of the crisis. The analogy also applies to earlier attempts to establish South-South economic co-operation, without the grounding of effective domestic governments. Said analogy also nullifies the conception of non-alignment, a conception also grounded on classical theories of Imperialism, thus Marxism. Harkening back to the beginning of this essay, to argue that the imbibing of Marxism did not help advance knowledge to integrate the analyses of colonialism, imperialism and economic stagnation into mainstream scholarship.

AUTHOR: Natascha Adama
URL: http://natascha23.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: nataliapestova23 [@] yahoo.com

Virginia Woolf

Seminal Bloomsbury-member Virginia Woolf expressed the hope at the beginning of the Twentieth century that ‘[a] political and social movement that give hope (……)’ would emerge. Indeed said epistemic community materialized, fostering and nurturing great thinkers such as John Maynard Keynes, Vanessa Bell, Bertrand Russel and Lytton Strachey. Their ideas on how society should work were ground braking and trendsetting and expansive, stretching well into the late 1970s. The Bloomsburry’s were part of a larger trend in Europe and North America, and to a lesser extent, Latin- America. The Modernista’s in the center of Barcelona boasted similar aspirations, striving to modernize Catalan culture to match that of mainstream Europe. The early twentieth century is determined by movements, epistemic communities that strove for progress, modernization, and the uplifting of the society, to indeed give hope.

Post-Colonial Studies try to establish a possible ontology between the aesthetics and social and political phenomena, using critical discourse theory to analyze transitional societies. This essay argues that societies are a process in the making, that social developments gives rise to art, culture, the aesthetics and not the other way around. The examples of Bloomsburry and the Modernistas teach that these movements gave rise to new art-forms, new intellectual ideas and scholarly theories, novelties that indeed were hopeful.

By the same token, destructive events such as two world wars, the Civil war in Spain, Cold War and ensuing proxy wars in Indochina and Vietnam, neo-liberalism, modernization, and Diaspora impacted and transformed society to an even greater extent. And as the twentieth century came to an end, new movements with an equally powerful mission and strife failed to emerge, to inspire new intellectual communities, despite the emergence of social and political issues that beg to be addressed.

This essay focuses on the premises of the post-colonial studies, by analyzing why modernization and modernity in transitional societies is seen from the perspective of the aesthetics. This essay also questions why the conception of modernity, as used by scholars writing on the post-colonial is juxtaposed against Eurocentrism and regarded as negative, based on the argumentation that social and political developments are cyclical trends, influenced by global, regional and domestic occurrences, technological developments and the crossing-over of culture, art and knowledge and through the exchange of ideas.

Manifestations of Modernity the New Era and Transitional Societies
As the twentieth century kicked in, thoughts on Kantian enlightenment adorned European art, intellectual and culture scenes. These movements inspired not only great painters such as Picasso, Miro and Matisse, but also intellectuals such as John Maynard Keynes, Hannah Arendt and Sigmund Freud. Movements such as Bloomsbury exemplify epistemic communities that after the Victorian era gave impetus to new thought on society, justice, human rights and politics.
One can argue that the full bloom of Kantian enlightenment came after 1945 as classical principle on sovereignty and autonomy gave impetus to decolonization (see for example: Huntington 1990, p. 6). Decolonization brought on a new cultural and social movements that derived their raison d’étre from challenging the legacies of colonialism. In reality many of these movements blended European and North American with African, Asian or Indío traditions and religions into what is perceived as the process of Creolization (Heuman 2006, p. 173).

Creolization processes helped to reawaken the Caribbean Black identity [in Suriname (Wi Egi Sani), Jamaica (Rastafarianism); foster cross-over music genres such as meringue, son, plena, calypso and kaseko; stimulated and inspired writers such as Derrick Walcott, R. Dobru, Yerba Seku, Cola Debrot and George Lemming] but it’s power did not overarch national boundaries.

Even in Africa the reawakening and revaluation of Black identity in the 1920s or negritude (the reawakening of black spirit[1]), did not involve the birth of an epistemic community, negritude merely to an ‘aesthetic’ involving the blending of African with French and North American Black culture[2]. Seminal artists such as Huge Masekela, Femi Kuti, Miriam Makeba and authors such as Chinua Achebe exemplify black reawakening and social protest in Africa.

Political and Social Realities
The hope that became exuded by reawakening and revaluation movements such as the Bloomsburry’s sharply contrasted the political and institutional realities of war, mayhem and social inequalities. As the century took its course it became clear that imaginaries of modernization, the Renaissance Man, economic equilibration and nation-building could not be extended beyond ‘formal and procedural conception (….)’ [Diamond 1990, 10; Linz&Stepan 1996, et al]. The aftermath of World War II, set new standards for a world order determined by capitalism, consumerism and calls for economic modernization. The empirics demonstrate that decolonized- so called transitional- societies typically failed to establish the expected new institutions and policies oftentimes falling prey to authoritarian and disloyal regimes, lackey regimes, that in turn were supported by the international community. The grass movements that emerged in reaction to said developments were latched on a very narrow scope: as Mclellan (2007, p. 270) puts it [these movements can be qualified] ‘particular interest groups within the system’.

A closer look at said movements teaches us that said groups derived their raison d’etre from other international movements such as Marxism streams and schools of thought that proliferated the message that a revolution Cuban style would end the ailments brought on by colonialism and imperialism.
The thetical – antithetical antimonies that determined schools of thought in the world after the Second World War were in turn based on utopian-dystopian antimonies; in other words, societies positioned themselves within the international bi-polar order, by organizing themselves either as a capitalistic economic system, based on free market principles, or as mercantilist state (economic nationalism) based on the ideas of the state-led economy. Indeed, the bipolar world order of the late 1900s did not leave wiggle room for newly emerging democracies to learn-by –doing, to experiment, to develop institutions to befit the demands of their citizen.

In such an environment where systems and institutions came pre-fabricated, developed on conceptions and principles which were both foreign and insidious, intellectual communities remained at bay.

Indeed, these new societies became breeding-grounds of culture, of a new aesthetic, the full bloom of Kantian enlightenment as classical principle on sovereignty and autonomy that also gave impetus to decolonization (see for example: Huntington 1990, p. 6). But these new cultural and social movements derived their existence from challenging the legacies of colonialism, from criticizing Eurocentrism, capitalism and imperialism.

Within this milieu of criticism and protest, the inclination to look beyond the banal, the anecdotal was minimal. Works of fiction filled the void of actual academic exercise, adorning western thought instead. Indeed, Western scholars were not trained to recognize, albeit study atavistic phenomena such as intra-ethnic and inter-ethnic violence, civil war in the newly emerging societies, organized their trains of thought on non western societies based on works of fiction.
It was convenient to study non-western societies through the lens of a fictional writing, to analyze complex social phenomena and systemic flaws inherent to transitional societies. Research of non-western phenomena occurred strictly confined, attenuating to its particularistic and affective most likely confounded on the idea that ‘primitive societies’ were more oriented toward the collective. Western societies on the other hand were more oriented toward private interests.
There is little evidence to corroborate this rather stark position that derives its rationale from social interaction and ideas of a class-less society (Larrain 1989, p.89). Instead this stark division cloaked, as Utopian ideas and Weberian antimonies, gave rise to what today is qualified as post-colonial aesthetic.
Is it possible to establish an ontology between two diverging scholarly conceptions, an ontology which is encased in existing socio- political realities, that gave impetus to a new aesthetic that Puri (2004, p19) calls ‘hybrid, (…) border crossing, [and overtly] metropolitan?

Is it possible to argue that political and social occurrences gave rise to mechanisms that took the decolonized societies past their initial transitional phase into the postcolonial, by creating new socio-political realities that are expressed as aesthetics? What if any constitutes the ontology between this perceived new aesthetic and political and social realities? If such a correlation exists then how are both phenomena intertwined? Is it possible to tie different scholarly disciplines together to analyze and conceptualize phenomena in non-western societies?

The Intellectual Confusion of the Post-colonial
Post-colonial studies pertain to tie different scholarly disciplines together, looking at society from the angle of the aesthetics, its avant-garde propensities to discern certain social and political phenomena. The first urgent question that pops up is what they perceive to be avant-garde[3]. Can one qualify grass-roots protest movements in Latin America, Africa and the Arab world as aesthetic? What is the role of art, artist in social movement? Harking back to the Bloomsburry’s and the Modernista’s in Catalan, to argue that their works of art, their ideas and intellectualism did not bring on social transformation, it merely adorned , enriched. The exception of course being the practical applications of John Maynard Keynes economic theory, that indeed had a transformative effect on society and politics, part of a new epistemology.

The influential nature of the works of Keynes and others was the avant-garde quality, vanguard ideas and conceptions that gave rise to new ideas and intellectual schools of thought.

One can by no means argue that the works by VS Naipaul and Gabriel Garcia Marques gave rise to new ideas on social and political issues in the South-America, despite its critical rendition of society and politics.

Conway (1992, 29)[4] but also Larrain (1989) write that the agendas of many Caribbean and Latin American economies (and many developing societies for that matter) are driven by colonial/metropolitan conceptions. These conceptions seem to be fueled by an urgency to do away with the remnants of the plantation, to eradicate poverty, factors that determined many of these societies from the early 1900s until today. This so called urgency reflects the desperation of transitional societies to find solutions against poverty and under-development, thereby overemphasizing the center, the city, the urban, the cosmopolitan (Larrain ibid; Bhabba 1996).

The problem with these conceptions on accelerated economic development is lack of heuristic quality that allows modification and adaptation to the domestic.
But the critique on said conceptions of accelerated economic development did not come from experience, observation and evidence. Critics valued economic policy in terms of modernity, imperialism and culture, arguing against what they perceived as ‘crude modernization’ (Sharman 2011, p.499). The problem is that critique attenuates to that what they perceive as critical, the normative, how society should function.

Wallerstein (1991, 141) writes: ‘The peoples of the modern world have not always been there. They have been created [and] it was a long time before ‘peoples’ emerged as a focus for political sentiment’.

Wallerstein’s (ibid) assertion defies commonly held notions and conception on western cultural hegemony, on Eurocentrism and on social backwardness of transitional societies. The wordings of Wallerstein (ibid) also help objectify the debate, specifically if one reasons from the premise that all peoples and states are created, that the ontology between culture, art and politics is that ‘peoples’ use their experiences in society and with society and its aberrations to create art.
The intellectual relevance of Wallerstein’s (ibid) wordings is that it places existing notions on western cultural dominance in perspective, that social and political developments in the transitional societies are processes in the making, that economic and political developments take time. Huntingtons’ seminal work on cyclical motion of democratization, reversal and re-democratization, underwritten by Diamond (1991), Linz&Stepan (1996) corroborate Wallerstein (ibid). The intellectual purity of the aforementioned social scientists, that hinges on their methodology, their analysis of the system, the empirical, does not leave extra wiggle room for the ambiguous among us. The sheer universalistic character of said theories does not view less developed nations as primitive, or as collective, particularistic entities. But there are too many grey areas and ambiguities specifically created by certain post-colonial schools of thought, who embrace the conception of the uniqueness of the Third World.

Scholarship views certain expressions of contemporary social forces in Central American that oppose westernized aesthetics, as political ideologies[5]. These social forces, that use certain art-forms to express social discontent, are by the same token regarded as ‘the image of the third world’, an image that challenges conceptions of western cultural dominance, at the same time creating its own global imprint through the revaluation of Indio heritage and culture. The ambiguity and confusion that arises from these theories that look at society from the angle of literature and the humanities, using conceptions of the social sciences, is massive and all-encompassing and does not help to broaden understanding of developing societies. In fact this methodology makes analysis more complex, less tangible, despite the fact that its expression is visual and immediately accessible.

The analysis becomes even more complex the case of the Caribbean, where the recalibration of identity and race as the primary heritage of the plantation, are regarded as a possible epistemology (see for example: Puri 2004). Confusing is for example the fact, that the revaluation of the black identity is viewed as the driving force behind the new aesthetics, while its role in political and social transformation remains assumed[6]. The fact that the importance of Black identity for social and political transformation is not established by existing scholarship is cause for concern. Could it be that Caribbean aesthetics showcase art and culture with a clear hybrid character paradoxically resounding colonialism in all its glory, but oftentimes reflecting what Babha (….) qualifies as a sense of ‘unhomeliness’ (see for example the works of Walcott and Naipaul). Unhomeliness inherently harks back to loss of cultural identity, subsequently loss of rooting, while at the same time reflecting the hybridity, the juxtapositioning between the colonial and between spheres of Black, Asian and European identity and cultures. This development, this hybridity, is the direct result of the recalibration of social communities in the Caribbean after slavery and immigration of indentured groups from Asia, corresponds with the conception of Hoetinks (1967,p 2) perceptions of ‘segmented microcosms’. This conception is by no means benign: Van Lier (1950) warns us that segmented societies are tied together by minimal bonds and inherently lack solidarity to foster nation-states.

Conclusion
The stark division in existing scholarship, as well as the pessimistic outlook on modernity and modernization is a cause for concern, because it does not help advance knowledge on social and political phenomena in transitional societies. It’s dogmatic and persistence to keeping the intellectual divide between developed and developing societies erect is moreover out-dated, specifically when looking at emerging world powers such as Brazil, China, Mexico and India and the role of technological advancements such as internet and social media that beg for different methods of analysis.

(No reference list was provided, because this essay is a concept, based on a wider research; references list is present in the original document).
(No citation without explicit consent from the author, © natascha adama, 2009-2011, durham, nc,- Leiden, Neth. )

[1] Source: http://www.postcolonialweb.org/poldiscourse/negritude.html, accessed, October 13, 2009

[2] Soyinka saw Negritude as belonging to colonial ideology and “otherizing,” or giving the African group an identity that so radically differs from that of Europeans that it comes to represent savagery and irrationality. Similarly, Conrad describes the African natives as savages who “howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity– like yours– the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Source: http://www.postcolonialweb.org/soyinka/soyinka2.html accessed, October 13, 2009

[3] I use the term Avant-garde to imply vanguard or in Spanish Vanguardia, being in the forefront, pushing borders, not to modernize, but to create, evolve and innovate and experiment with art, culture and politics: source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avant-garde, accessed 10/29/2009.

[4] Dennis Conway (1992) Misguided Directions, Mismanaged Models or Missed Paths? in: Globalization and Neoliberalism: The Caribbean Context, Thomas Klak (ed). Lanham MD: Rowman &Littlefield Publishers Inc.,

[5] Workshop: De-colonial Aesthetics, October 15^th 2009. The Center for Global Studies and the Humanities, Duke University. Paper presented by Kency Cornejo, Art History

[6] Unpublished paper, Natascha Adama, 2009

AUTHOR: Natascha Adama
URL: http://natascha23.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: nataliapestova23 [@] yahoo.com

I do not subscribe to the idea of adopting policies that overlook right and just aspirations of people, simply because such policies are not enforceable. Some workable remedy to Climate Change essentially should involve a popular understanding of the damage and its impact and thankfully MDGs are fundamentally directed towards that. Investments are a priority for eradication of poverty, hunger and illiteracy and not for casinos, resorts, 125 storey shopping malls – certainly not in India.

A case in point is Mandarmani Beach in West Bengal, in eastern India.

West Bengal is one of those lucky places on earth which can boast both the lofty heights of Himalayas and blue waters of Bay of Bengal. Well, only till recently. The state has a meager 650 Km of coastline of which nearly 500 Km is an estuarine delta, way too dynamic morphologically with one of the world’s largest upland sediment discharge. A stretch of about 50 or so Km from Digha (border of neighboring state of Orissa) to Junput (or arguably a place named Dadanpatrabar) is a tropical sandy beach with its appropriate ecology. See the portion marked with red in the picture below:

If we look closely, this stretch is situated between two estuarine systems, one that of the great Hugli river up north-east and the other smaller estuarine system of Subarnarekha river in Orissa down south-west. Even this small stetch of beach is punctuated by small tributaries like Somaibasan (which falls in Bay of Bengal just N-E of Digha) and Mandarmani which is further N-E. The whole beach is mesotidal having siliciclastic, quartzo-feldspathic material with well sorted medium to fine sand (Friedman and Sanders, 1978). The beach is geologically nascent (2760 to 3080 years old only). If you consider that a baby, we are looking at an infantile death because the whole Digha Junput beach is on the verge of destruction. And though experts believe that it is partly due to nature and partly human activity, I contend that human ignorance is guilty though not charged.

Digha had been a tourist revenue earner for 6 decades for the state of West Bengal. But beach business with its usual activities like wave surfing, beach sports and guided sea bathing or boating/diving as seen in the west were never developed for two reasons (a) cultural difference and (b) lack of proper planning. As far back as 1995, I attended a seminar where the consensus was that Digha beach was dying an inevitable death within 20 years. I would have been very happy to have proved wrong, but like all bad news it was proved true. Digha is now a polluted, over-populated, dirty and dead beach city bearing macabre signs of ignorance and lack of sincere intent to save it.

As Digha was dying, for two decades there had been occasional voices to save it. The engineering plans to save the backshore (mostly the hotels, pubs and flea markets) had been nothing short of disastrous (boulder pitching and concrete block pitching) which only resulted in adversely affecting the wave energy dissipation mechanics and attracted more erosion. There was a marked tendency by media to blame this disaster on progressively stronger tides and cyclones in last two decades with little consideration that the beach grew and existed for 3000 years with all natural forces and nothing was so much wrong until Digha’s emergence as a holiday destination by people from cities who would want air-conditioned suites to enjoy sea view from behind tinted glass windows. Hotels and Holiday Inns mushroomed with all pleasurable amenities but funnily no sewage treatment plants. The steadily narrowing beach would have tens of thousands of footfalls any given day so one could kiss goodbye to beach fauna like rare hermit crabs and red crabs. For construction of hotels, backshore sand dunes, which are an essential part of any beach system, were flattened along with screw pines that held the dunes against tidal surges for thousands of years. The old, traditional fish-drying activities of the local fishermen perished and gave way to touting for hotels and transport. And nobody really cared about the effect of sea level rise in the coastal area, which being low-lying (the average reduced levels of the beach is only about 2.5 m higher than MSL) was being threatened by an SLR at a rate of 2.4 mm/year (Baksi et al. 2001).

Digha gone, tourist attraction shifted to Mandarmani, which was a small fishing hamlet until a decade ago. The hoteliers moved in, this time cautiously but with no lesser aggressively than we saw in Digha. The infamous term ‘hotel’ was replaced with a friendlier ‘resort’ – suitable thatched umbrellas with split bamboo benches were thrown in to show of concern to nature but soon enough large scale construction started, again flattening the sand dunes and felling screw pines and some of the resorts these days boast swimming pools and conch shell shaped villas to attract the wealthier section of tourists.

Two things happened in Mandarmani that out-class Digha’s beach-urbanization.

(a) Complete flouting of the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) stipulations under the Environmental Protection Act by Government of India by real estate interests. The Local Government’s blindness in this matter is almost criminal.

(b) Large Scale use of nearly 8 Km stretch of Mandarmani Beach by cars (Mandarmani is one rare motorable beach on account of high silt content possibly transported by longshore currents from the Hugli Estuary.

According to CRZ, no construction is permitted from Low Tide Line to 500 meters landward side from High Tide Line. In a recent trip to Mandarmani I personally checked that almost all resorts have flagrantly violated this regulation and carrying on merrily. Here is an interesting read where you can get more details.

Mandarmoni Report

In 1995, I trekked on foot from Digha to Mandarmani (approximately 12 Kms along the beach) to spend a night in a camp and sleep on a canvas folding cot to wake up and find myself to be the only biped surrounded by a live carpet of red crabs. 15 years later Madarmani greeted me with diesel smoke, shanty shops and sprawling resorts. The once desolate beach was now filled with 4 wheel drive cars, vendors, crowd and noise. It looked as though the sea is losing to cars.

Unlike the crabs that have fled, the village people have quickly adopted to the changing economy of Mandarmani. They now ferry tourists into the seas in what used to be their fishing boats. Some of them sell candies and ice-cream cones.

The beach shows obvious signs of littering and fast getting polluted.

New resorts are coming up each day and new shanty shops too.

The beach traffic mainly consist of 4-wheel drives that are used as pick up and drop down service by many resorts as these resorts are only accessible by driving approximately 6 Km over the beach.

The livelihood of local villagers, which traditionally remained either fishing or agriculture, have suitably adapted to the changes. I met Jaydeb Sasmal (pronounced sasmawl), a man of thirty from the locality named Dadanpatrabar, is from a family of farmers. Jaydeb now drives a vehicle, locally called van rickshaw, which is basically a motorized version of a tri-cycle. The vehicle is out-fitted with a Kirloskar Cummins 200 cc single stroke diesel engine which is a multipurpose machine in rural Bengal. This engine can be used as prime mover for irrigation pump, husking machine and even running small generators for electricity. With a little ingenious modification it can run on kerosene or a mixture of kerosene and diesel. Jaydeb’s vehicle cruises at a steady speed of 15 Kms per hour with generous emission of smoke and sound.

I was curious to know how much Jaydeb earns per day and whether he is aware about the environmental problems associated with it. Check the video below for an impromptu interview of Jaydeb.

When we are facing sacrifice of our wasteful life-style to put a check on CO2 emission, fancy lectures will not sell to the likes of Jaydeb, since he is seeing this growth as life changing opportunity. In India and China, creating Climate Change awareness and effective control will certainly not work with a top-down approach. It will need to come from grass-root level, with active participation and with innovative eco-friendly indigenous enterprise.

I missed the red crabs very much. Informed that they are still seen near the Mandarmani Estuary (locally called ‘Mohana’), I took the service of Javdeb’s wonder vehicle. To my relief, the red crabs were still there taking their last guard before a final retreat. I was confronted by 10 year old Khaibar from the adjacent village holding a live crab in his hand and asking me to buy it.

I persuaded him to let the crab go paying 10 bucks – double the price he was offering to sell it to me.

Mandarmani will not last long. That’s sad news. But Jaydeb and Khaibar will continue to grab the next chance of earning a livelihood and since it is a betterment of their lives from abject poverty, India, the would be super power, will have to do the double duty of pulling down the upper limit of affluence-and-waste and pulling up the lower limit of poverty-and-ignorance.

AUTHOR: Pabitra Mukhopadhyay
URL: http://pabitraspeaks.com
E-MAIL: mukhopadhyay.pabitra [at] gmail.com

Coca-Plant

Introduction
In the late 1970s Paramaribo buzzed and bristled with innuendo and gossip after members of the elite became arrested on charges of narco-trafficking. Sordid detail was the fact that the center of business was a butcher shop in the center of the city. This story baffled but also intrigued society, because right under their very noses an epic tale of sex-drugs- rock and roll involving the elite had taken place, in total secrecy, no less! And of course, society bemoaned the fact that said crimes were committed by the happy few, those who thought that the world was their play-ground, their oyster. But this refitting story quickly became yesterday’s news as the main protagonists were jailed, serving their sentences. It seemed that society after that incident, forgot about this thing called drugs or the dealing of illicit substances. But the fact that society averted their attention did not make drugs trade and all its byproducts go away. Drugs-trade in hindsight became a very part of Surinamese society; it rippled and kicked, moving from the under-world to the upper-world and back, becoming incorporated in government after the new regime of junior officers took over power.

• This essay argues: 1); that Mr. Bouterse and his cronies took over the drug smuggling activities after they came into power in 1980. Newspaper reports, and a myriad of other undisclosed sources paint a coherent and consistent picture of the proliferation of drugs and smuggling activities in Suriname, involving politicians, businessmen, people from the airlines and an undisclosed number of citizens stemming from all social classes and all ethnicities; 2) that Mr. Bouterse’s presidency is build on the fundaments of narco-traffico and that his primary objective is to use the state, and its resources to accommodate and possibly extent his illicit activities.
• This essay is divided into three chapters; The Past (1980-1997); More Recent Times (1997-2010) and Today and the Future (2011 and beyond)

The Past: 1980- 1997: The Nationale Militaire Raad and its Ties with Latin American Narco-Mafia
The issue of Surinamese involvement in the drug trading came back in the vicinity of society after Etienne Boerenveen became arrested and convicted in Miami. Prior to his arrest, Surinamese society witnessed and speculated on the fact that many members from the Military Council typically from very humble milieus became rich overnight. Their sudden wealth was oftentimes attributed to large scale corruption and fleecing, the aspect of cocaine trade was an added aspect, unfamiliar to the Surinamese society. The suggestion that there is a connection between the earlier arrests and the later activities of the military, however plausible can however not (yet) be corroborated by the empirical.

The Washington Post of February 2, 1987 writes:

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration officials posing as drug traffickers secretly taped Boerenveen offering to sell — at $ 1 million per load — landing rights in Suriname for drug-ferrying aircraft. He is now serving a 12-year jail sentence. (Title Article: Paramaribo’s Military Accused Of Abetting Rife Corruption, Bradley Graham 1987).

The attempts to sell the landing rights to the highest bidder are indeed symbols of fleeting corruption, but they also attenuated to the fact that 1) cocaine trading had entered the confines of government, and 2) that the NMR had forged a connection between upper and under-world because they controlled government. The case of Etienne Boerenveen also forefronted the massiveness of corruption and how the state in fact sustained criminal activities conducted by its leaders.

The case of Etienne Boerenveen, despite the 12 year conviction was rather weak, build on the word of police informants and messy footage (see Buro Jansen en Janssen: Verscholen achter de bamboestruiken, by: Eveline Lubbers, accessed 6/17/2011).

But the case of Etienne Boerenveen is not isolated, and his ties with Mr Bouterse position him as one of the key figures in Surinamese drugs cartel, called the Suri Cartel. Indeed the information obtained consistently points in the direction of individuals such as Desi Bouterse, Etienne Boerenveen, Dino Bouterse, Melvin Linscheer who occupy a prominent position in the organization. Sources at first did not consistently peg these individuals to the drugs-trade, but convictions by various courts in the world, and more recent, documentation disclosed by Wiki leaks, give rise to the notion that indeed members of the ruling party Nationale Democratische Partij (NDP) were up to their elbows involved in narco-trafficking. The assumption here is that they have tried to turn Suriname into a mafia state during the 1980s, thus turning government into a mafia organization, with the ruling elite as head honchos of illicit and criminal activities (#themakingofamafiastate);

In 1997 the Dallas Morning News again wrote:

Mr. Boerenveen’s job gives him direct control of the seaports, airport and customs-inspection facilities, which are described in a March U.S. State Department report as being at the center of Suriname’s drug-trafficking industry

The Dutch Prosecution Office (Het Openbaar Ministerie) did a lengthy and in-dept investigation on trans-Atlantic money-laundering and drug-trafficking , tying many members of the Wijdenbos government to illicit activities in the Netherlands:

Mr. Boerenveen and other top officials figure prominently in the 40 volumes of evidence amassed by Dutch prosecutor-general Arthur Docters van Leeuwen in a lengthy investigation of drug-trafficking and money-laundering activities in Suriname.

Intersting is that both Mr. Bouterse and Mr. Boerenveen have consistently declined to comment on these issues in the press, a senior Surinamese government spokesperson of the Wijdenbos administration however did comment, blaming the Netherlands, in an attempt to avert the attention away from the issue at hand.
The Dallas Daily Monitor also asserted in the aforementioned article that

Suriname government spokesman Andy Rusland dismissed the allegations made by the Dutch prosecutor as being based on hearsay and anonymous, confidential informants who have failed to provide any direct proof. He said the Netherlands has been attempting to defame Mr. Bouterse ever since he led a 1980 military coup that overthrew a democratically elected government and installed an anti-Dutch junta. Suriname, whose population hovers around 440,000, won independence from the Netherlands in 1975. “Recolonization is one of the issues in this,” Mr. Rusland said of the Dutch investigation.

Also interesting is that the official opinion corresponded with opinions of for example, Frank Playfair, MP, and an avid supporter of Mr. Bouterse, who told a Dutch newspaper: “History has shown that the Netherlands always has a political score to settle with political leaders who want to make something of Suriname.”

Also noteworthy are the assertions by Buro Jansen en Janssen (www.burojansen.nl) who on their website in 1992 also pegged efforts to investigate drugs charges and allegations against Mr. Bouterse and c.s, as neo-colonialist and meddlesome.

But the tenacity of the allegations, as well as the credibility of sources, that keep on alleging that Mr. Bouterse and his immediate circle are involved in narco-traficking, cannot be labeled “sordid gossip”, “meddlesome” or neo-colonialist. Tantamount is the fact that many aspects of drug-trade continue to remain obscured and cannot be researched and investigated as a regular phenomenon because of the dangers researchers and journalists face when treading these dangerous pathways.

But although very prominent, Mr. Bouterse and his immediate circle are not the only peoples involved in narco-trafficking. Many businesses in Suriname such as casino’s and used car dealerships have been brought in connection with drug trading and money laundering activities.

Other tendencies and phenomena that however demonstrate the proliferation of narco-activities in broader society and the blurring of the fringes between the under and the upper world, are for example ‘bolletjes- slikkers’, cocaine smuggling by so called ordinary, law abiding citizens who take great risk by carrying large quantities of cocaine in their body on flights from Suriname (later Venezuela, Curacao) to Amsterdam, and the fact that many citizens view narco-trafficking as a normal economic venture.

Foreign officials attribute Suriname’s geographic isolation, dense jungle cover and close commercial ties to the Netherlands to its notorious status as popular venue for South American traffickers to transship and export their illicit goods.

In March 1997 the Dallas Morning News also cited an important comment by the American State-Department

“Suriname is an increasingly important transshipment point for narcotics shipped from Brazil, Venezuela and Colombia to the Netherlands and the U.S.,” “International narcotics traffickers from Colombia and Bolivia ship cocaine primarily by air through Venezuela to clandestine airstrips outside the capital city of Paramaribo. . . . Traffickers reportedly transport cocaine shipments weighing up to 1,000 kilograms (2,200 pounds) from Brazil by river.”

More Recent Times (1997-2010)
Both the U.S. and Dutch governments have been pressing the Suriname government to investigate Mr. Bouterse’s alleged role in the 1982 executions of 15 prominent opposition activists, including journalists, lawyers and politicians who had criticized his military rule. Investigation of the executions and a trial in the early 1990s would indeed have helped to restore trust and confidence in the state and its institutions, simply by elevating the massive sense of impunity that gave rise to massive societal decay. It is assumed that in a situation of social decay, drugs-trade thrives and proliferates. The case of Suriname is not isolated, other societies with proven weak (weakening) leadership have also fallen prey to criminals. Italy, Venezuela, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Argentina and Mexico are societies in which gangsters and mafioso elements have hijacked the state and its institutions for their own activities.

The inaction of consecutive Surinamese governments to take action against mafiosi, to curb the proliferates of cocaine trading, to re-organize and strengthen the police-force, to stop violence and other narco-related crimes is very odd, but typified the weakness of said administrations. At this point it is unclear if government could simply not take action because of unawareness or because of rampant ignorance. Fact of the matter is, that after the 2005 elections, the leeway of government became even smaller, specifically when it came to making an effort to curb corruption and punish crime and criminals. In order to maintain parliamentary majority, the Venetiaan Administration was forced to ask Ronnie Brunswijk, former jungle commando leader and convict to join the coalition. By doing so government in fact became de facto party in the drugs-trade, or at best, the government officially condoned that its highest ranking government officials were inundated in narco-trafficking.

Information channels became more abundant but also more reliable as internet communication channels became more advanced during the late 1990s.

Mr. Brunswijk just like Mr. Bouterse boasts an extensive (called the Brunswijk cocaine Diaspora) network in the Maroon community in the Netherlands; Somebody writes: Kastiel en Adjuba kun je ook zien als deel vd Ronnie Brunswijk cocaine diaspora in nederland. Adjuba schijnt trouwens meer rippartijen te hebben gedaan en ook roofovervallen misschien komt er wel meer naar buiten

Said technological advancement helped to unveil the extent and the massiveness of the cocaine- smuggling network that held Suriname captive in the late 1990s. Society has experienced the inundation of coca-cocaine and its dissemination throughout the broader Surinamese society. There is a connection between criminal activity, albeit drugs-trade and the economic downturn that started in the 1980s and climaxed in the 1990s, making victims among the already weak and poor. But the proliferation of narco-trafficking cannot solely be attributed to weak government and stagnant economy, factors such as urbanization, the media, the technological advancement of mobile phones, all part of globalization should also be factored into this equation.

During the 1990s, the Surinamese economy took a turn for the worst, as the government implemented a much needed structural adjustment program to tackle macro-economic instability.At the same time, citizens could on TV watch the increasing wealth of western societies. Surinamese living in Diaspora came to visit, hauling in the latest fashions, Mobile Phones, Game Boys, sneakers and of course disposable income.

It was during that period when many citizens, strapped for cash, but with a strong incentive to be part of global consumerism opted to be lured into cocaine-smuggling. The middle men of the organization were/ are pivotal in the recruiting of the so called drug-mules (Mulas), in this case people who chose to carry large quantities of cocaine in their stomach (bolletjes) during an eight hour long Trans-Atlantic journey from Paramaribo to Amsterdam.

The use of drug-mules was very successful venture during the 1990s, but the massive influx of cocaine into Europe, prompted Dutch legislators to take vigilant and invasive action to halt the clandestine import of cocaine through their ports. From 2004 onward, all flights coming from Paramaribo, Willemstad and later Caracas became subjected to what became colloquially known as ‘100% control’. But the harrowing tales of the mules depicted by Surinamese and Dutch newspapers, of the risk takers, who sometimes die mid-air, of the mothers taking risks sometimes accompanied by their small children, senior citizens and pensioners who seem to have no clue, tell the story of a human tragedy, of social decay.

These stories by the same token demonstrate the level of ingraining of cocaine and narco-trafficking in Surinamese (Curacao) society as well as in Diaspora.

Why is the connection between Paramaribo and Amsterdam so very lucrative, and why does it involve so many people? The explanation is that drugs transports have a better chance of reaching their destination when transported from Paramaribo to Amsterdam. There is typically less risk involved, in such an operation that not only involves humans (mules), but also involves the smuggling of drugs hidden in foodstuff, in aircrafts, in cargo-shipments, hauled overland from Paris, Brussels, coming from as far as Accra.
http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/4427, accessed, 19 June 2011 provides important and detailed information on the extent of the coca-cocaine trade of Suriname.

The information provided by the website of the Militant Islam Monitor teaches that the Surinamese drug cartel is a well- oiled and well organized machinery that operates between the upper and under world, with contacts in South America, The Caribbean and Europe.

One of the most important Surinamese drug traffickers was Melvin Linscheer, former intelligence chief under Bouterse. He is described in Brazilian police documents as “Bouterse’s right hand man” (“mao dereita”), and “a leading member of the Surinamese mafia,” “owner of the Golden Dragon Restaurant.” Another Surinamese drug criminal was Bert Mangal, who is described “a radicalized Indian in Suriname.” Bouterse, Linscheer and Mangal were the leaders of the Suri Cartel. They were involved in a guns-for-drugs trade: trading arms for cocaine with the notorious Colombian FARC rebels. Brazilian planes landed in FARC territory in Colombia where cocaine was loaded on board and these planes then flied nonstop to Suriname to drop the cocaine. Leonardo Mendonça, described in police reports as “Dino Bouterse’s friend” coordinated the effort. He received weapons from Suriname and passed them on to the FARC. The FARC in turn supplied cocaine. One of the most important Surinamese drug traffickers was Melvin Linscheer, former intelligence chief under Bouterse. He is described in Brazilian police documents as “Bouterse’s right hand man” (“mao dereita”), and “a leading member of the Surinamese mafia,” “owner of the Golden Dragon Restaurant.” Another Surinamese drug criminal was Bert Mangal, who is described “a radicalized Indian in Suriname.” Bouterse, Linscheer and Mangal were the leaders of the Suri Cartel. They were involved in a guns-for-drugs trade: trading arms for cocaine with the notorious Colombian FARC rebels. Brazilian planes landed in FARC territory in Colombia where cocaine was loaded on board and these planes then flied nonstop to Suriname to drop the cocaine. Leonardo Mendonça, described in police reports as “Dino Bouterse’s friend” coordinated the effort. He received weapons from Suriname and passed them on to the FARC. The FARC in turn supplied cocaine.

I already mentioned that evidence on the involvement of then MP Desi Bouterse who together with family and friends is organized in the Suri-Cartel, evidence not based on incidental reporting but based on long term trending. In 2006 the notorious criminal Roger Khan was captured by the Surinamese police and extradited to the USA. There are ample and credible sources on the World Wide Web that established a link between Roger Khan, a family member of the President of Guyana Bharat Jagdeo, and Mr. Bouterse. According to said sources Mr. Bouterse set up an alliance with Mr. Khan to co-ordinate activities and to arrange protection for a myriad of illegal activities. Noteworthy in this instance is the mentioning of links between Mr. Kahn with FARC and plans made to commit murder and assassination in Suriname. Other sources by the same token, have mentioned the alliance between Mr. Bouterse and president Hugo Chaves of Venezuela, rather the financial contributions to the election campaign of Mr. Bouterse in 2010. Other sources (natascha23.blogspot.com, dd. 12 June 2011) make mention of the involvement of Mr. Chaves in FARC, the fact that he accommodated FARC in Venezuela, and his role in the destabilization of Colombia and Ecuador.

The intricacies of the connections, the blurring between the formal, the political and bureaucratic institutions and the criminal, suggest the gradual decline of the state and democratic institutions, because the new government this time used the electoral acquiescence to transform existing institutions. In other words, through elections, criminals acquire legitimacy to commit crimes, to turn government into a criminal organization.

Recent Past, Today and the Future (2010 and beyond)
Mafia, State Terrorism and the Office of the President of Suriname
Similar instances of official privileges for favored middlemen abound in this former Dutch colony, with accompanying allegations that hundreds of thousands of dollars pass to government authorities in return. Stories circulate of large houses and expensive cars purchased for members of the military (……) For years, charges of corruption have been made against Surinamese administrations. When Desi Bouterse took power in a coup seven years ago, he promised to clean up the dirty dealings. But residents encountered here now voice astonishment and resentment at the levels corruption has reached.

This 1987 citing by the Washington Post has retained its value in the contemporary. Indeed in the 1980s then Commander-in-Chief Desi Bouterse consistently accused the toppled Arron Administration of corruption and nepotism and ineffective government.

It appeared that said accusations and attempts were part of a strategy to create a cloud of disrepute and incompetency, to gain absolute control of state institutions, the ports of entry, the police force and the military all necessary for contraband activity. It is ironic and macabre to at this point, draw the hypothetical conclusion that if the Suri cartel was losing and oozing money because of tightened controls at the ports of departure in Suriname than drastic measures to take over power and take over control of the state apparatus were indeed required. But, indeed it makes sense, to incorporate the state in clandestine and illicit activities, using de facto public consent as decoy to establish a ring of trafficking and criminal activities.

The piecing of the empirics on the electoral campaign, the occurrences leading up to the presidential election, conjured up the idea that the campaign was fueled by a sense of urgency, a sense that political power had to be secured at all cost’. Indeed Mr. Bouterse bribed voters and wooed floating voters with gifts, goodies and promises of a better future, but he has other masters, to whom he has to account his actions to. The fact that Mr. Bouterse does not operate independently puts matters in a different light.

It is at this point unclear how this situation will develop. What will happen with the political partners, two so called sworn enemies that helped Mr Bouterse secure parliamentary majority? In order to win the elections Mr. Bouterse promised them a large chunk of power, but he is currently recanting on his promise because their role has been played out…. The fact of the matter is that the presidency has fallen in the hands of criminals with a predatory disposition, with connections in international criminal and terrorist organizations and anybody who crosses them is at risk.

Today after more than 100 days in office, Mr. Bouterse seemed to have resorted to the same tactics used before to gain control over pivotal institutions to ensure the smooth running of his under-world operation. Dino Bouterse his son is head of some secret unit within the Central Detective Unit (CIVD; website: http://www.civd.gov.sr/miscpages/over_civd.html) [1]. Scattered incidents that seem to have a different grounding, such as the stepping down of the police chief Delano Braam a capable professional, are all geared to weaken the police-force and to strengthen the role of the so called secret service agency, headed by Dino Bouterse.

Mutations in the highest ranks of the national carrier and other pivotal sectors, replacing capable officials with yes-men and allies, indicate that Mr. Bouterse and his clique are slowly but surely taking- over the state and its institutions. The manner in which office of the president, controls, overseas and monitors all decision-making has strong correlation with the 1980s style of governing by the NMR. Just like the 1980s, Mr. Bouterse gradually takes over control of the sectors needed to stay to in business, the currency exchange market and the Central Bank of Suriname, while at the same time demolishing institutions of democracy that can impede his business.

Mr. Bouterse and his allies also expressed keen interest in the natural resources of Suriname, gold and bauxite, he officially stressed the importance for economic progress, but his actions indicate that these operations too will be controlled by his closed confidants.

Conclusion
The evidence on the involvement of Mr. Bouterse and his immediate circle that consists of the same individuals as in the 1980s, in cocaine trafficking is extensive and based on credible sources. The empirical evidence gathered here paints a daunting picture of a society on the verge of being controlled by Drugs-mafia. Interesting is the combination of geographic position and its rather shaky and rickety state of a democracy in decay that made the country suitable to be incorporated and invaded by elements of the under-world.

History over and over again teaches that as democracy becomes jeopardized, weakened by ineffective and corrupt politicians the state, it becomes more prone for a take-over by roguish and disloyal political forces. The shift between undemocratic/authoritarian and between democratic resembles a cosine movement bound by the axis of its specific domain. If democracy falls outside the boundaries of its domain, than chances to recuperation diminish drastically. One of the most prominent aspects of the aforementioned situation is that the government can use the resources of the state against the its citizens, for example using the police force and secret services to terrorize and coerce citizens.

The sheer pervasiveness of corruption, cronyism and nepotism, aspects that in the past determined the success of the ethnic parties, today fosters crime and criminal activities.

The evidence on the involvement of Mr. Bouterse and his immediate circle that consists of the same individuals as in the 1980s, in cocaine trafficking is extensive and based on credible sources.

Nota Bene
In closing I want to stress the fact that Suriname early on, became capable off fabricating what is called the pasta basica de cocaina, thus processing coca-leaves into crude cocaine. The processing of the coca leaves is a relatively easy and costless process, that can occur in the city as well as in the tropical rainforest. Suriname is therefore not only a hub or a transit port, Suriname can be considered a producer of coca-cocaine in its very own right.

[1] Veiligheids Diensten
Het beveiligen van hoge autoriteiten van staat en daarvoor in aanmerking komende buitenlandse vertegenwoordigers, als ook de bewaking en de beveiliging van de door de direkteur van de C.I.V.D. aan te wijzen personen en objecten. Bureau Nationale Veiligheid (B.N.V.)Dit bureau is belast met het leveren van een bijdrage in het waarborgen van de nationale veiligheid van de staat door middel van het zo correct mogelijk analyseren van ingewonnen informatie, inlichtingen veiligheidsaspecten en deze door geven aan het hoofd van de Centrale Inlichtingen en Veiligheidsdienst (C.I.V.D.)
* source: http://www.civd.gov.sr/miscpages/over_civd.html accessed 22 June 2011).

AUTHOR: Natascha Adama
URL: http://natascha23.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: nataliapestova23 [@] yahoo.com

Introduction

To understand the discrimination faced by indigenous women in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), it is very important to understand the geopolitical background of the CHT in the larger context of the Bangali Muslim majority of Bangladesh. Pahari women are among the most marginalized and vulnerable groups of people in Bangladeshi society. They live as quadruple minorities under present social and political institutions. In a patriarchal and male-dominated society, they are a gender minority. In a Muslim-dominated country they are a religious minority. In a nationalist, Bangali-dominated society they are an ethnic minority. Within their own patriarchal community they face marginalization, exploitation, and increasingly, violence. A strong political movement exists to resist these multiple marginalization, but it has not been able to create enough resonance within the wider political structure.

This paper looks at the various sources of discrimination and violence faced by the indigenous women living in the CHT and looks at how and why the indifference from the state and the majority civil society further detaches them from the mainstream women’s movement in Bangladesh. Society and the infusion of religion into societal norms already play a huge role in the discrimination and marginalization of the majority Bangali women. In a Muslim majority Bangali society, indigenous women have a further factor of violence against them. Discriminatory family laws, along with discriminatory national laws, add a new dimension and further marginalize women within their own communities. Militarization and the presence of Bangali settlers have been terrorizing Pahari women since the beginning of the insurgency. The insurgency is over but CHT still remains fully militarized and the politically motivated violence against women still continues.

The information for the paper was collected through secondary documents and a series of interviews with grass-roots level women activists in the CHT, activists involved with NGOs and Pahari political groups and Pahari men and women lawyers.

A primer on the CHT

The Chittagong Hill Tracts [CHT], covering 13,189 square kilometers of land, is in the south-eastern corner of Bangladesh. It shares borders with the Indian states of Tripura, Mizoram and with Chin of Myanmar to the south and south-east. To the west is the Bangladeshi district of Chittagong. The region comprises of three districts: Rangamati, Khagrachari and Bandarban. The Hill Tracts are covered with hills, forests, valleys and lush vegetation.

There are more than 50 different indigenous communities living all over Bangladesh today and the CHT is home to Pahari indigenous people from at least 11 different communities – Chakma, Marma, Tripura, Bawm, Mro, Tanchangya, Khumi, Lushai, Chak, Khyang and Pankho. In 1872, 98 percent of the population of the CHT was indigenous. By 1951 indigenous people were still the majority, with only nine percent [1951 census - 26,150] Bangali people living all over the CHT. By 1991 Bangalis became the majority representing 49 percent of the population of the CHT and the rest represented by the 11 different ethnic communities.[1]

Although in terms of land mass CHT is said to cover about 10 percent of Bangladesh, most of it is uncultivable hill and forests. As such Pahari people were, and still many are, mostly involved in jhum [swidden] cultivation. The Pahari people’s political struggle began with the building of the Kaptai Dam in 1960 which submerged 40 percent of, mostly cultivable, land in the CHT and displaced approximately 100,000 Paharis. Some took refuge in India and many remain internally displaced till today.

After Bangladesh gained independence from Pakistan in 1971, the Pahari people’s struggle took a new turn. On 15 February 1972, a delegation of indigenous people led by M.N. Larma MP [a Pahari member of parliament], called upon Prime Minister Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and demanded that indigenous people of Bangladesh be given recognition in the Constitution. Sheikh Mujib categorically rejected this demand and instead called for indigenous people to be assimilated into the majority ‘Bangali’ nationalist construct. Larma walked out of parliament and in March 1972, formed the Parbatya Chattagram [CHT] Jana Samhati Samiti [PCJSS]. The armed struggle for regional autonomy began for the Paharis when the Shanti Bahini, the insurgent wing of the PCJSS was formed.

The nationalist movement of Bangladesh also took another different turn after the assassination of the then President and founder of the Bangali independence movement Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1975.

From secular nationalism the country took a turn towards Islamic nationalism; and the military assumed the central role in the decision-making process of the state. The military bore an animosity towards India. The change had its impact on the politics of CHT as well.[2]

In the late 1970s President Ziaur Rahman began a migration program of Bangladeshi settlers into the CHT, providing land grants, cash and rations. This program was not made public at the time, and its existence was denied by government representatives. Around 400,000 Bangali landless people were settled in the CHT. This caused the single biggest shift in the character of the CHT in its history. Bangalis have since become the majority population of the CHT. It was seen as a counter-insurgency measure that not only caused a restructuring of the population ratio but also used poor, landless Bangalis as shields in the army’s war strategy. As the Paharis’ facial structures are quite distinct from the Bangalis’, they became easy targets for the army who carried out many rapes during the insurgency period. The lack of documentation at that time and the impunity that is still enjoyed by the army makes it an almost impossible task to prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes. The army and settler presence in the CHT has changed the lives of Paharis, particularly the women, almost irreversibly.

The PCJSS, the political platform of the Paharis signed a treaty with the government of Bangladesh on 2 December 1997 to end insurgency in the CHT. The CHT Accord recognizes the CHT as a ‘tribal inhabited area’. Under the Accord a ‘Peace Accord Implementation Committee’ is to have taken responsibilities of overseeing the strengthening of the district administration and regional authority was to have been handled by a majority Pahari-represented administration. Land disputes were to have been settled by a Land Commission and internally displaced people and refugees rehabilitated. Unfortunately, there has not been satisfactory progress in the implementation of the Accord and the army presence along with the continuing in-migration of Bangalis is alienating the Pahari indigenous people of the CHT from their land of generations.

Militarization currently takes place in the CHT through ‘Operation Uttoron’ (Upliftment), details of which are not available for public scrutiny. The military in CHT has been known to involve itself in the civil administration activities. The CHT Accord calls for gradual dismantling of all military, para-military and other security camps except for six specified cantonments but currently there are still more than 300 temporary army camps in the CHT. Out of the total of 64 districts in the CHT, it is only in the three hill districts of CHT that vehicles moving in and out of the district have to be registered at an Army check-post. Also, to have an access to these three hill districts, non-Bangladeshi citizens have to give advance notice to the local authorities before entering the district. The presence of army in the CHT is only seen in a positive light by the Bangali settlers who view them as their ‘protectors’ who allow them to remain on the illegally occupied land of the Paharis. One of the biggest challenges of human rights advocates in CHT is the lack of access to justice in cases of murder, torture, rape, unlawful arrest and detention, oppressive persecution, inhuman and degrading treatment. Almost all of these cases have never been properly investigated, or prosecuted.  Nor has any kind of punishment ever been meted out.

The Pahari women of CHT are the most marginalized sections of Bangladeshi society. In terms of numbers they are very small and account for only a fraction of the population of the country. They are both religious and ethnic minorities, which means they are discriminated by the extremely patriarchal, Muslim Bangali majority society. In the past, this discrimination was only faced by women who lived in Bangali-majority communities outside of the CHT. This piece by Muktasree Sathi Chakma, a law student from Chittagong University captures the feeling faced by Pahari women:

‘Do you have bathrooms?’ ‘Do you use salt and oil in cooking?’ ‘Hey! I have heard that you eat cockroaches alive?’ ‘Don’t you face any problem socially if you choose to live with your partner?’ were among the many questions I have faced in the past five years. The experience is the same for all indigenous boys and girls on campus. .Just go through the above questions again. Do you think any of these questions are made with any respect for them? How would you feel if you were asked, ‘Do all males in your community have four wives?[3]

[Referring to the generalization that Muslim men are allowed to have four wives]

However, the overwhelming number of Bangali settlers in the CHT has resulted in harassment and violence against Pahari women within the once secure neighborhood of their homes. With no control over land dispossession and the non-functioning of the Land Commission to blame for this, and no sign of the army’s loosening its grip over the CHT, it is indeed a worrying trend. There is no documentation of the exact number of women physically assaulted or sexually harassed or raped by the army and Bangali settlers in the CHT. Before the CHT ‘Peace’ Accord was signed there were reports of mass rapes by the army, some of which were documented in CHT Commission’s report ‘Life is not ours’ and Amnesty International’s reports ‘Unlawful Killings and Torture in the CHT’. But there have been no investigations and no subsequent legal redress. And this impunity still continues even after insurgency ended 13 years ago.

The biggest concern in rape and other violence against women in the CHT now is the lack of access to justice and absolute impunity that perpetrators enjoy.

On 8 March 2009, while the world celebrated International Women’s Day, a four-year-old child was raped by a Bangali settler in Dighinala in Khagrachhari district of CHT. The settler was arrested but till the writing of this paper a chargesheet has not been submitted and women’s rights activists from the CHT have informed that the perpetrator who has been in jail for the last 20 months is now seeking bail.[4]

In rape cases, the victim ends up going through further harassment from the side of the administration and law enforcers – there have been instances where doctors at hospitals have refused to give Pahari women physical check ups or delayed the physical check ups so that the evidence disappears; the victim’s family is asked to produce a ‘witness’ by the police; there is intimidation from the security forces, in one case at least the raped girl was further molested by the physical examiner himself, one victim who did not know any Bangla and had to ‘act out’ the crime in front of the court; there have been complaints about police delaying/refusing to take the case and many have been too afraid to file a case in fear. These and many other administration-led intimidation and harassment ultimately results in the perpetrator getting away with his crime. The bias by the administration is revealed in this rape case of a young disabled girl in Khagrachhari.

On 31 July, 2009 a physically challenged 16-year-old Chakma girl was raped by a Bangali man who worked at a micro-credit bank in Dighinala, Khagrachhari. He took away her stick and grabbed her from behind and forcibly took her to her bedroom. Without her stick she did not have any strength in her body to fight back. A case was filed against the man. However, he managed to flee from the CHT and till today there have been no reports of his whereabouts. When a group of lawyers from two NGOs went to investigate the case, the bias from the administration was obvious. There was a new Investigating Officer on the case and without even speaking to the victim he claimed that the bank official was not guilty and it was a false case by the Chakma girl and it was politically motivated by a local Pahari women activists’ group.[5]

Lawyers in CHT lament about how difficult it is to ‘prove’ rape in a court of law. An essential requirement to adjudicate a case as rape is a medical test of the victim to find semen from the rapists’ body. From the moment a rape takes place a girl is placed under immense social pressure from the stigma surrounding it. Although this stigma may be the same or more in the Bangali culture, in the hills another kind of pressure is put on the victim and her family – pressure from the administration. Women’s rights activists have reported that the attackers are usually Bangali settlers and the administration, both civil and military, support in establishing impunity. Lawyers from BLAST (Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust) have reported that many girls avoid making complaints or do so too late, by which time the evidence of rape from her body will have disappeared. Many times people from the administration threaten the girl and her family even if they do complain or try to mediate the matter by offering the poor victim’s family financial benefits.

Medical tests, which provide the essential evidence for rape cases are not so straightforward to collect either. This is true for rape all over the country, but especially so in the CHT. Many women, unaware of the consequences wash themselves off before going to a police station. When going to a medical examiner, there is always some form of red tape involved in all rape cases but because of the militarized situation and the Paharis lack of bargaining power this is worse in the CHT according to lawyers who work in the CHT.

The bias in rape cases is also clear when an eye-witness account is asked to be produced in a rape case. In the hill tracts, homes in remote villages are not located very far from each other and it is impossible to hear what is happening in one home from the next. This bizarre problem was recently faced by the mother of a 10-year-old raped girl.

After the mother made the complaint the police station kept pressuring the mother of the child to produce a ‘witness’ to the crime. The mother was unable to produce anyone as a witness as no one had actually seen the crime taking place. Some locals who had seen the girl lying on the ground in a pool of blood said that they had not seen how this had happened and refused to give evidence. In the latest update to this case, the government lawyers have filed a case against the girl’s mother for filing a ‘false case’.[6] The mother is being accused of filing a false case because she could not produce an eye-witness.

Perpetrators of violence against women often manage to evade being identified, located, arrested and tried, let alone be punished. Many crimes against women take place over land disputes in the CHT. In the absence of prosecution and punishment there is less deterrence against any future offences.

On the night between 3-4 September 2009, a 50-year-old indigenous woman, Ponemala Tripura was killed in Sindukchari of Khagrachari district. Her dead body was recovered from their Jhum field by the villagers in the morning on 4 September. She was staying alone as in a small jhum cottage to protect her crop from wild animals as she usually did in turn with her husband. She inherited the land from her father but in the 1980s four Bangali men had been given settlement on that land by the government-sponsored trans-migration program of counter-insurgency. The dispute was never settled and the locals suspected that this was an act carried out by these four men to revenge her non-cooperation to hand over her land to them.[7]

In the 1950s, 98 percent of the population of the CHT was Pahari. With the building of the Kaptai hydroelectric dam, 100,000 families were displaced. Some went to India as refugees and others remain internally displaced. With the arrival of the settlers in 1970s/80s during insurgency the population ratio changed and the Paharis became minorities in their own land. These Bangalis brought with them their culture and social norms. With the backing of the military they grabbed land of the Pahari people and with the nature of customary ownership, this was easily achieved. Rape, sexual harassment, intimidation by Bangali men still continue today along with land grabbing. The extensive building of madrasahs (Muslim religious schools) and mosques, and to a lesser extent Christian missionaries, has changed the unique socio-cultural face of the CHT. Clothing of Pahari women had to become more conservative to ward off unwanted attention from fundamentalist Army and settlers. It is also quite common for Army/settlers to use derogatory names to call Pahari women which intimidates and restricts the freedom of movement of women. A pahari women’s rights activist narrates here the everyday harassment that women in remote parts of CHT have to face on an everyday basis. This report is from Jurachari, but relevant to all remote areas of CHT.

The freedom of movement that existed before is not there anymore. Earlier, a lot of women used to be involved with selling vegetables and other necessities in the bazaar, the number of women doing that kind of work has come down. In our culture we don’t wear blouses and when we go out not fully covered up the army and the settlers look at us in an odd way and make us feel uncomfortable. Not only that the army and settlers regularly harass us by deliberately pushing and touching the women’s bodies in the bazaar. The women can no longer independently roam about in these places. Also when the army travel through the roads and come across women going to pick up firewood or taking their domestic animals to be fed they harass them by calling them names or winking at them. Sometimes they even touch their breasts, but the girls are too scared to report these incidents.

The Bangladesh Army before the Accord was signed carried out numerous massacres in the CHT [please refer to the table on page 5]. Many of the massacres included mass rapes. Along with rape, proselytism of Pahari men and through marriage, many women has added a new dimension of assimilation. Based in Rangamti, a Saudi and Kuwait funded NGO has carried out many conversion of Paharis. Another NGO, the Tribal Muslim Welfare Association also works to convert Pahari people by giving them food and land incentives. A Tripura man talks about his experience of becoming Muslim.

We have become Muslims, because this is a Muslim majority country.  My parents were not Muslims.  Nor were my wife’s family. But I left my community and became a Muslim.  Many tribal women marry Bengalis and become Muslim.  But a year or two after marriage, they are often divorced.  Many of them commit suicide. Every year 12 or so such divorce cases occur.  But under Muslim law, they should be getting compensation when divorced.  I advise these women not to get married unless they agree to terms of the Muslim marriage contract.[8]

Lack of government policies and legislations

The Awami League-led government has expressed its desire to go back to the secular spirit of the Constitution; there is a renewed movement from the indigenous and progressive Bangali civil society to get recognition for people from different ethnic origins. Currently article 28(4) of the Constitution says: “Nothing in this article shall prevent the State from making special provision in favor of women or children or for the advancement of any backward section of citizens.” Section 10 [participation of women in national life] of the Constitution says: “Steps shall be taken to ensure participation of women in all spheres of national life”. Articles 27-43 allows citizens to enjoy equal opportunities with regard to public employment or education, to life, liberty, personal security, and freedom of movement, assembly and association, expression, religion, profession and occupation and property, and to the protection of home and correspondence.

Out of the 345 seats in the national parliament, 45 are reserved for women to increase representation of women in the political process. None are reserved for any special women’s group in Bangladesh. After the signing of the CHT Accord in 1997, no Pahari woman has been nominated as a Member of Parliament (MP) in the reserved seats for women. Prior to the Accord, there had been two Pahari women MPs.

Both the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the 1995 Beijing Declaration recognize women’s equal participation in political activities. Bangladesh also ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in 1984. It still has reservations on Article 2 and 16.1(C). The withdrawal of reservation on Article 2[9] would be particularly favorable to frame special laws and policies to end discrimination against indigenous women by the state. Article 16.1(c)[10] would also help give Pahari women equal rights in their customary laws.

The Government of Bangladesh has also endorsed many more international treaties like the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). They all talk about ensuring equal rights to men and women to enjoy civil and political rights and prevent discrimination.

United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) has provisions for security and protection of indigenous women, to free themselves from discrimination and to empower them to assert their rights and preserve their culture. However, the Government of Bangladesh has refused to recognize indigenous people in the Constitution and the Foreign Minister in April 2010 was quoted as saying that Bangladesh did not have any indigenous people.[11] The government asserts that the Bangali ethnic communities have been living in the country for longer than the other ethnic communities and as such are the original inhabitants (i.e. the ‘adibashis’, the Bengali equivalent of ‘indigenous’) of the country.

This year the country passed the ‘Small Ethnic Communities Cultural Institute Bill 2010’ for indigenous people as a further assertion to non-recognition of indigenous people. Although the Paharis assert themselves as ‘indigenous’ (with exception from one political group UPDF – United People’s Democratic Front which uses the term ‘ethnic minorities’), the government now uses the term ‘small ethnic minorities’ for them.

Furthermore, the Government of Bangladesh’s National Policy for the Advancement of Women, 1997 does not address the unique position of the indigenous women or those indigenous women living under military-led administration in the CHT.

Bangladesh has ratified the ILO Convention on Indigenous and Tribal Populations (Convention No. 107) in 1972 which gives protection to indigenous women but there has not been implementation of this convention. The progressive Convention No. 169 is yet to be ratified by the government. This Convention recognizes the aspirations of indigenous peoples to exercise control over their own institutions noting that in many parts of the world they are unable to enjoy their fundamental human rights given that indigenous people have their own social, cultural and economic conditions. Article 3.1 of the Convention (on Fundamental Rights) says, “Indigenous and tribal peoples shall enjoy the full measure of human rights and fundamental freedoms without hindrance or discrimination. The provisions of the Convention shall be applied without discrimination to male and female members of these peoples”. Article 20 also talks about equal remuneration, equal opportunities, and equal treatment for men and women and protection from sexual harassment. Part five of the Convention discusses social security and health of indigenous men and women.

Bangladesh has an obligation to respect international laws and standards according to Article 25 of the Constitution which states “The State shall base its international relations on the principles of respect for national sovereignty and equality, non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries, peaceful settlement of international disputes, and respect for international law and the principles enunciated in the United Nations Charter…”.

Physical violence and marginalization within Pahari communities

The CHT ‘Peace’ Accord failed to safeguard the women of CHT. Although women took part in the armed struggle during the insurgency in various ways, they were not allowed to participate in the peace talks that resulted in the CHT ‘Peace’ Accord in 1997. As such the Accord has kept no provisions for giving compensation in the form of rehabilitation or counseling to the raped and physically abused and tortured women [or men].

Although Pahari societies are much more liberal than the majority Muslim-Bangali society, their customary laws and family roles are just as patriarchal and discriminatory. Women are still expected to take all responsibilities of household work and child rearing. Domestic violence against Pahari women, according to women’s rights activists, is increasing.

In terms of customary law, the most discriminatory is that most Pahari women are not entitled to inherit land from their parents. Women from the Marma community are an exception and are entitled as women to inherit land, but only from their mothers. If parents want they can choose to leave land for their daughters. Many Pahari men resist change to this law by saying that Bangali men would then marry Pahari women to dispossess them of their land. Others say that the overall marginalization of Pahari people must be dealt with first by implementation of the CHT Accord, before the case for women can be taken up. Pahari women strongly protest these justifications by the men. The Pahari women activists who gave their analysis for this paper, have said that both these reasons are a way to further marginalize women.

The traditional structure of the Pahari community is also very male-dominated and patriarchal. Men are by default the circle chiefs (or king) of the three circles (Chakma, Mong and Bomong). Only in the absence of any men, can a woman become a circle chief or queen. The headman or mouza chief [a mouza is a group of villages] is next in line in the traditional hierarchy and karbari [a village chief] thereafter. Currently there are less than 10 women headmen an karbaris out a total of 300 headmen and more than a thousand karbaris in the CHT. Recently, a woman who had been made a ‘karbari’ because her brothers were not adult yet is set to lose her post because her brothers have come of age and are claiming this post.

The number of men and women as Headmen and Karbaris in the CHT:

Circle: Chakma
No. of Headmen: 178
Women: 6
Men: 172
No of Karbaris: 1200
Women: 3
Men: 1197

Circle: Mong
No. of Headmen: 88
Women: 6
Men: 172
No of Karbaris: 687
Women: 0
Men: 687

Circle: Bomang
No. of Headmen: 109
Women: 3
Men: 85
No of Karbaris: 893
Women: 1
Men: 892

Table Source: Women’s Resource Network

Resistance politics and the women’s movement in the CHT

The women of the CHT have been actively involved with the movement for emancipation from since the 1970s insurgency. The CHT Mohila Samity, the first political organization of the hill women, was formed on 21 January 1975 by PCJSS. Talking about what gave rise to this group, a researcher writes, “the society of the hill communities is based mainly on the feudal and patriarchal ideology and system. So the struggle of the hill women of the CHT is a double struggle – on the one hand, against the feudal, imperial and extremely communal rule, exploitation and oppression; and against the patriarchal exploitation in their own society on the other”.[12] They started training in armed conflict during the insurgency. Women, during that time played their dual role of being involved in the insurgency and taking care of their homes in absence of the male members of the family.

Apart from the Mohila Samity, there are now the Hill Women’s Federation of both the UPDF [the breakaway group from JSS that opposed the signing of the CHT Accord] and JSS. They are very actively involved in field level protests and with the arrival of the Internet and other technology acts of violence against women are quickly disseminated to a network of human rights activists. Not very many mainstream women’s rights organizations are involved directly with indigenous women’s rights. There are some like the Bangladesh Nari Pragati Sangha (BNPS), Nari Paksho, Durbar Nari Network and Nijera Kori which are worth-mentioning[13]. Ain O Salish Kendra and BLAST offer legal aid. Even with those that have received a lot of media attention, there has been little result. A case in point is the Kalpana Chakma case.

The case of the kidnapping of Kalpana Chakma, the organizing secretary of the Hill Women’s Federation (the resistance movement by Pahari women), still remains unsolved. Just before the 1996 General Elections, Kalpana was picked up, allegedly by the army, in presence of her family members. No case was ever filed against the alleged perpetrator although there are witnesses to this crime according to several news reports.[14]

In cases where the Pahari women’s rights activists have carried out demonstrations and other activities, they have only been faced with retaliation from the army and administration.

In November 2009 it was reported that an army officer attempted to rape a woman in Ghilachari in Khagrachhari district. Women’s rights activists staged a rally to protest the alleged attack and demand punishment of the army officer and also made a demand that the army camp in the area be withdrawn. About a thousand women in the area participated in the protest. Army and police personnel including policewomen tried to intimidate the participants of the rally, but the women chased them away with sticks.

The women under the banner of “Ghilachari Committee for Guiding Movement against Women Repression” also blocked the road between Khagrachhari and Rangamati. At one point during the chase and counter-chase between the army and the Pahari women the army baton-charged the women and injured about seven women protestors.[15]

Protest by women’s rights groups regarding rape and other human rights violations have been countered with further violence by members of the joint forces. Resistance against army and settlers in Sajek in the form of Sajek Nari Samaj (Sajek Women’s Society), which was formed last year, was met with fierce attempts to repress through physical assaults on the women (who are not part of any political group) by army.

Internally displaced Pahari families have been living along the Kassalong reserve since they were evicted from their original lands during the counter-insurgency period.[16] Many Bangalis have been brought in here on the excuse of building roads there. The settlement first started with a few khupri homes of Bangali settlers being strategically located near the houses of the Paharis. This has been leading to increasing tension between Paharis and Bangalis in the area and culminated in an arson attack by settlers which gutted down 70 houses of Pahari people in the area in April 2008.

By 2009 the tension between the Bangali settlers/army and Paharis started gathering momentum. A lot of false cases were filed against the Pahari men in the area.  Relatives of Paharis outside the Bagaihat area stopped coming because of the harassment they would face from the Army. The Sajek Nari Samaj (SNS) was formed on 26 December 2009 to protest against the harassment and torture by the Army and settlers. These women consisted mainly of family members of those men who were harassed in some way by the army or settlers. On 5 January 2010, the SNS submitted a memorandum to the then Baghaicahri Upazila Nirbahi Officer Humayan Kabir with a six-point demand which included stopping army repression in Sajek.

In late January in a further raid the army picked up two Pahari men and took them away to the army camp instead of giving them rice. The mothers, wives and sisters of the two men (who were also members of the SNS) along with other women of SNS went and rescued the two men from the camps.

The army retaliated by beating up the women of Sajek indiscriminately in the market place. But the ultimate retaliation towards the Sajek women’s movement took place on 19 and 20 February 2010, when around 434 Pahari and 29 Bangali homes in 12 villages in Baghaichhari upazila of Sajek Union in Rangamati district were burnt down in what turned out to be the worst violence since signing of the Accord.

The women of Sajek say that there is no security of their lives there and the army continues to intimidate the Pahari men and women of the area.

Conclusion

Vijay Nagaraj, Research Director at the International Council on Human Rights Policy, in an interview with Cassandra Balchin said[17], “…although bigotry and prejudice is often at the core of religious intolerance; religious fundamentalisms encapsulate very conscious political projects. While religion itself might be invoked in support of a whole host of claims that are being made, it is important to understand that fundamentalisms are about power, and not just about prejudice.”

The roots of discrimination of indigenous women of the CHT start with British colonialism when India and Pakistan were divided along religious lines. When East Pakistan realized their alienation along language and ethnic lines, their secessionist struggle began. Unfortunately the struggle for independence of Bangladesh was fought along the Bangali nationalist ideology with a ‘state-sponsored political project aiming at the cultural homogeneity of its entire population with the Bengalis.[18]’ The Bangladesh Army then used a similar roadmap to maintain ‘national sovereignty’ as was used by the Pakistan Army before Bangladesh’s independence. And the CHT is still suffering the gendered impacts of fundamentalist-nationalist militarization and conflict.

The political struggle, the state discrimination and army/settler harassment meant that women had to become strong for their own survival. However, survival is still an uphill battle for Pahari women in more ways than one. They are the least educated and farthest away from access to justice. The first Mro woman is said to have just enrolled into university. Militarization has also opened doors to national and international fundamentalist forces to achieve its target of nationalist, cultural and religious assimilation of the Pahari indigenous people. There has been little or no discourse within the media to resist these fundamentalist forces.

The Bangladeshi state first needs to get over its nationalist insecurities and communal outlook and accept indigenous people as inhabitants of this land and then take special measures for indigenous women if it truly believes in human rights, democracy and rule of law as manifested in the UN and other international ideologies. Unless the state recognizes and welcomes indigenous people, its people will still look at people of other ethnic origins as ‘other’. The Awami League led government needs to fulfill its 2008 election pledge to completely implement the CHT ‘Peace’ Accord, and through dismantling of all temporary army camps and land dispute settlement assure the rest of the world that it is committed to giving the highest priority to human rights.

Kabita Chakma, an ex-member of the HWF wrote this poem about women’s struggle in the CHT…

Why shall I not resist!

Can they do as they please -

Turn settlements into barren land

Dense forests to deserts

Mornings into evening

Fruition to barrenness.

Why shall I not resist

Can they do as they please -

Estrange us from the land of our birth

Enslave our women

Blind our vision

Put an end to creation.

Neglect and humiliation causes anger

the blood surges through my veins

breaking barriers at every stroke,

the fury of youth pierces the sea of consciousness.

___ I become my own whole self

Why shall I not resist!

(Chakma, 1992.7)

[Translated by Meghna Guhathakurta]

AUTHOR: Hana Shams Ahmed
URL: http://hanashams.wordpress.com
E-MAIL: hana.s.ahmed [at] gmail.com

Abstract
This essay focuses on the role of political barometers that measure political attitudes on the Arab, Latin, African and Asian continent, rather its predictive value for the course of democracy under the umbrella of Islam. This essay theorizes that support for democracy in the Arab countries does not preclude Islam, because Islam in and out of itself, has the proclivity to set up networks necessary to tackle the controversies that determine Arab societies. This theory diametrically opposes western viewpoint on democratization in the Arab world. The paradox is that said viewpoints also impede viewpoints on how Islam shaped the thought of western intellectuals and gave rise to a wave of European populism fueled by fear and apprehension over a possible new Crusade that precedes that of the Mores.

Introduction: The Barometers and other Measuring Tools of Democracy
Seminal research done by Samuel Huntington (1990) teaches that democratization occurs in cycles, or waves, tied to certain historical pinnacles. The first democratization wave emerged in the early 1900s, the first downturn came in the 1920-1930 with the economic crises that gave rise to Nazism and fascism, after Second World War a massive democratization wave emerged until the early 1960s in Latin America, Africa and Asia, with the big reversal between 1960- 1980,when authoritarianism flooded the decolonized world; The last democratization wave occurred between 1989-1995 brought on the last big democratization wave.

The waves and consecutive reversals unequivocally demonstrate that democracy is a reversible process, a fragile, but nonetheless highly dynamic process, that requires care and attention of both governments and existing complementary arenas. Weak political parties, inchoate leadership, weak civility, economic stagnation, lack of freedoms and rights are identified by scholarship as the factors with ample proclivity to reverse democratization.

Freedom House and other existing Democratic Barometers -Latino, Arab, African and Asian- quantify democracy (democratization), measuring citizens’ opinions on the state of democracy, freedoms and rights and civility . These so called data warehouses demonstrate significant progression of democratic consolidation in many Latin America democracies, progression that unequivocally demonstrates that democracy is endogenous tiered process. Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, all societies where the embedding of democracy happens simply because a majority of citizens view democracy ‘as the only game in town’. Even Venezuelan respondents of the Latino Barometro view democracy as the only game in town, while other Freedom House in that same year calculated a 5-9 point decline in the countries’ score on freedoms and rights, based on the shutting down of media, and the ongoing quest of president Chaves to consolidate power (www. freedomhouse.org/2008).

One of the drawbacks of the Latino Barometro, is its primary focuses on Spanish speaking South America. The argument that lack of funding impedes the broadening of the scope of research is an aspect that can be overcome.The project that started in 2006 encasing Arab, African and Latino countries made it easier for conduct comparative research. A broadening of the scope of the project, will indeed give impetus to research and increase knowledge on so called ‘newly emerging democracies’.

The Arab Barometer and the Yasmin Revolution
Surprising however are the results of the Arab Barometer, interviews done in 2006 that showed a more linear trending toward democracy, a trending that in fact forebode the protests that became known as the Jasmine Revolution, but a trending that also negates viewpoints of western intellectuals and opinion-makers who persisted in their argumentation that the Islam impedes democratization, freedoms and rights. Indeed democracy suffered, and indeed many societies were fiercely repressed by dictators such as Mubarak and Ben Alie. The issue is that these dictators were oftentimes supported by western governments.

The protests of what later became known as the Yasmin Revolution started in Tunis, when a young man, Mohammed Bouazizi committed suicide by setting himself on fire in front of the municipal building of Sidi Bouzid, an act that ignited massive protests throughout Tunis. The international surprise and admiration for the protesters increased when the extent of their organization and tenacity became showcased by various media. The creed ‘ if government shuts down social media, we shut down government’ became more than a creed, it symbolized the crucial role of social media, the internet for organization, discourse, but more so, it demonstrated that a younger generation took to the streets in protest for work, for better and more just society.

The results of the Arab Barometer of 2006 indeed demonstrated that a majority of Arab citizens favored democracy over other forms of government. But some of the results of the interviews were more interesting and noteworthy. For example 83% of the peoples polled in 2006, felt that ‘political reform should be introduced gradually’ a response that requires more research, to find out why people had a change of heart; Other results however do support recent occurrences: 54% of the people polled felt they had the power to influence government decisions, while only 33 and 31% of the people polled felt that government did a good job of fighting unemployment and poverty (Jamal & Tessler 2008, p.100).

The Arab barometer also demonstrates that organization and emancipation are closely connected to religiosity[i], a find that correlates with the theory of this essay that democracy and democratization in the Islamic world does not preclude Islam. In fact, Islam is the only aspect of the Arab world cross-cutting class, geography and gender, apt to integrate and amalgamate a society.

Issues, Ideas and Viewpoints
The issue with the Arab world is according to Jamal &Tessler (ibid) the viewpoint that in said societies government and Islam are intertwined, a viewpoint that diametrically opposes that of western scholarship and popular opinion alike, who persist in arguing the incompatibility between church and state, between Islam and State.

The antithesis here hinges on the austere and dogmatic character of both positions,and on the fact that people are guided by preconceived notions, perceptions and images of the Iranian revolution that gave rise to a theocracy. It is false perception that in the western world the ‘church’ and state are completely separated, it is by the same token a false perception that religion can determine politics and government. Indeed religion does played a role in western democracy, in the politicization of seminal western democracy. In England, church and state are intertwined with the reign of the King. The epic fight by the Catholic church over state control in the 1300 and 1400s is not over, the papal stance on abortion and family teaches that until recent, said stance impeded the legalization of abortion in Poland and Ireland, and is rooted in the struggle on Malta to lift the ban on divorce.

The principles of Christian Democracy stem directly from involvement of the church in political organization, corollary mobilization of the followers to compete in the political arena with secular parties. Both the Catholic Church and the Protestant church gave rise to political organization. In The Netherlands, Germany, Austria , Italy, Chile, christian democracy occupies a middle position in the political spectrum, because of their ubiquitous political ideology that allows co-operation with both the Left and the Right.

Exemplary, in this respect, is the Turkish, AK party, a party, that resembles western style christian democracy, becsause The AK observes the Legacy of Ata Turk, upholding the strict separation of church and state, this despite its strong rooting in Islam. The AK shows strong correlates with the conservative Dutch Christian parties, the Christen Unie and the more orthodox Staatskundig Gereformeerde Partij (SGP), right wing parties that use religion and the bible to create a conservative political platform, that does not recognize the separation of church and state.

Religiosity, Democratization: The Church and the State, The East and the West

My theory is that a moderate form of Islam, just like other moderate forms of Protestantism and Catholicism before can give impetus to broad based political organization in the Arab world, and in Diaspora in western Europe. Eastern scholarship has identified the importance of grass-roots organization stemming from the Mosques, apt to channel the demand for change,economic advancement and politicization in the Arab countries. The fear that these organizations are a heaven for radical elements of Islam is based on information on radicalization of youth in Diaspora. There is ample evidence that radicalization of Arab youth in Diaspora in Western Europe stems from feelings of displacement and social marginalization. Arab youth in the Arab world also felt the brunt of theocracy, being marginalized and ignored by the state, by the government.

The issue is that discrimination and feelings of marginalization by Arabs have increased dramatically since 9/11, fueled by Western unease and freight over a possible repetition. Today the Islam is consistently portrayed as backward and hateful religion, that seeks to obliterate Christian values and Western society. However, the kindling of animosities and the establishing of we-against antimonies does not stem from the tangible, but from unscrupulous elements in both the West and the East that sought to benefit from mayhem and apprehension that emerged after the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York.

The problem is that western discourse forgoes that all individuals seek self-actualization and embetterment of living. People, want to be liberalized, free from sorrow and poverty, and go at great length to become liberalized. In the Arab world, the Islam and the Koran promise Paradise, Pentecostal and Latter Day Saints in Ghana, Suriname, Honduras and Rio de Janeiro use the same message, promising their followers salvation from sorrow, mayhem and poverty. Western thinkers refute such reality, using the normative conceptions of how a democracy should work as opposed to how a democracy does work, to analyze developments in the Arab world (and other transitional societies for that matter).

Democracy it seems, is seen as an invention and extension of western civilization, and not as an ongoing, dynamic and reversible and omnipresent process as Dahl and Huntington teach.

The reality is that international world order in the past supported various feuding factions in the Arab world to fight proxy wars, to establish strategic alliances, to ward off a possible Islam Crusade to the west. In other words, the western world contributed to social and economic crises in the Arab World: The US supported the Mujahidin in Afghanistan, roguish Pakistani governments, Sadam Hussain in his dirty war against Iran, support in turn for control of oil-fields, lucrative contracts, benefiting the West, while bringing mayhem and despair to the Arab World. The rise of Islamic fundamentalism is linearly connected with the Afghan war, a war rooted in the Cold War, its outcome in the 1990s, ,marked by the invasion of Iraq by the allied forces, its climax in September 2001, the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers.

Indeed the conflict in the Arab world brewed and simmered for a almost two decades, its final outcome dramatic and devastating.

9/11 and the USA
The Jasmine Revolution, rather gulf of protest encasing the Arab world came as a surprise, capturing the attention and imagination of the Western world, giving rise to the hope that western style democracies will emerge after the dust settles. The USA and the EU went as far as promising to financially support democratization, but make no mistake, again to serve the interest of the western world. The EU and the USA however forgo that the protest did not start at elite level, it started at the bottom tier of society, it started at grass-roots level, by a generation that used modern technology to mobilize, a generation moreover wary of American (western) preponderance and dominance.

The fact that a young dynamic generation was able to organize protests with such savvy, using social media and advanced technology (smart-phones), without the help of the west has somewhat mesmerized and stunned western observers, fueling ideas and deja vu’s over the proliferation of Islamic fundamentalism and Iran style revolution that resulted in a theocracy.

I think that the primary objective of the international community at this stage concerns the containing of possible loss of political control in the region. One down and so many more to go: Hosni Mubarak, such a faithful ally had to be let go by the the USA, because the USA government could not, in good conscience, continue to support such an atavistic, brutal and abject regime without losing face.

I don’t think that the events in the Arab world changed the negative stance of western intellectuals and politicians. The focus has merely shifted to the role of radical elements of Islam, such as the Islam Brotherhood and their role in the protests. Indeed any notion that this revolution would lead to the proliferation of the Taliban to other countries in the Arab world is harrowing and inconceivable, but the only option is to wait and see.

What engendered this consistent and pervasive apprehension over the proliferation of Islamic fundamentalism, to the Western World? I think that 9/11 opened up the political arena in western societies such as the Netherlands for radical political elements with an opportunistic and self-serving agenda.
Individuals such as Ayaan Hirshi Ali and later Geert Wilders, positioned themselves as the new pundits of the right as they started to address the fears of western society over what was viewed as the aberrations of Islamic fundamentalism that was spreading its venom through low income neighborhoods in the West. It was hard to glean from the crusade of Hirsi Ali that her primary focus concerned oppression of Somali women, and not that of Arab women. The fact that western intellectuals failed to scrutinize her key-ideas and viewpoints brought on an intellectual lacuna that cannot be overcome. The dilemma here is how does one turns away from the craze and the frenzy that captivated society, focusing instead on the engendering of apprehension and fear instead?

The problem is that the half-baked ideas and writings of these pundits prevented the discourse dealing with pivotal issues such as integration and marginalization of Moroccan youth in the banlieues of Rotterdam, Paris and the Schilderswijk in Den Haag. In the USA, political correctness has since made way for the ‘right to offend people of Arab descent’, to openly discriminate against people of Arab descent, simply because as the French saying goes, ‘their dirty (ethnic looking) faces make then culpable’ (le delicte de la salle gueulle). Why have intellectuals in said societies remained silent for so long? Is their silence based on fears for radical Islam or apprehension over new attacks surpassing that of 9/11?

Why does research not ponder why Diasporic Communities in low income neighborhoods in The Netherlands, Germany and France became the victims of hostilities and repulsion?

I posit that the same neo-conservative powers that supported the invasion of Iraq, in the name of war on terror, are the same powers that are responsible for instilling wide-spread fear and hatred. These neo-conservative powers however have the same objective to divide and alienate certain social categories as Islamic Fundamentalist organizations. In fact one can establish a linear correlation between radical Islam and Western right wing parties, based on compatibilities in their message, a message that is reproachable and dogmatic, seeking to blame some external force. The analogy does not stop there, neo-conservative elements in the USA use the bible in their fight against Islam, while their more profane counterparts tend to peg all post 9/11 social and economic problems on Islam.

But the post 9/11 world became even uglier when former President George Bush gave carte blanche to his inner circle to start a war in Iraq. It is hard to imagine and understand that the decision to invade Iraq, stemmed from a deep seated notion that ‘a buck could be made’ under the banner of the war on terror ( Halli Burton, Black Water). The end result of this unbridled greed of said politicians with a neo-conservative, hawkish agenda, was a completely destabilized and destructed Iraq where obscure elements of Islam fundamentalism thrived. Ample documentation of the Bush era, the foibles of Dick Cheney, Abu Graib prison and other crimes against humanity, did not change the tone of western discourse, it just enshrouded, evaded.

The Crusade of Geert Wilders
The question is why Europeans decided to become protagonists in this global fight, started by the Bush Administration. What compelled European politicians such as Geert Wilders to seek support based on an obscure agenda, confounded in corporate greed? What compelled politicians such as Wilders to use a message of hate to hijack the discourse on immigration, ethnicity, social inequality, keeping the political establishment for ransom? It is very interesting to observe the reactions of the political and intellectual establishment in the Netherlands in the media, on blogs, in the public debate. Puzzling is the move of The Dutch establishment to the right, gradually buying into preconceptions, notions and ideas on Islam, hardening their standpoints instead of formulating a credible answer.

The deafening silence is not confined to the Netherlands, most Western intellectuals seem overcome by fear and apprehension to be branded a liberal, a leftist or elitist by the radical right, by the champions and pundits of the hard-working masses.The problem is that said silence cannot be completely attributed to social confusion and polarization, and voter volatility. There are underlying issues that still need to be identified: A known fact is that people continuously feel let down by politics, they feel that the establishment has failed to formulate a credible and sustainable solution, to deal with the radical and dysfunctional elements of Islam, and with banlieus filled with unemployed and unruly youth from the Riff Mountains. People feel let down because in their perception there is no voice of reason that calms and soothes, that offers liberation.

Intellectual Dichotomies
The irony is that Western intellectuals and political leaders have a hard time accepting that the emergence, henceforth, the increasing strength of the ultra right, political conservatism and Islamic fundamentalism originate from the same source. Arab intellectuals, by the same token grapple with conceptions on democracy, oftentimes refuting Western conceptions and ideas on democracy and nation-building.

But the hesitancy of intellectuals cannot ensconce the fact that citizens in both the West and the Arab world feel divorced and disenfranchised, feelings that indeed foster fundamentalism and radicalism, prompting people to seek refuge in organizations such as:

1) Hamas and to a lesser extent Al Qaeda, political organizations that decoy as NGO’s offering citizens their support and assistance in the absence of the state in lieu of their support;
2) radical right wing political parties such as the PVV, Vlaams Belang and Front Nationale by Marin le Pen, claim to liberate, ridding society of its aberrations, and discrepancies brought on Islam.

Concentrating on the case of the Netherlands, to argue that intellectuals typically refute the idea that populism is a universal principle that emerges in times of turmoil and confusion. Seminal scholar Arendt Lijphart warned in 1968, that the Dutch elite cartel political structure was prone to break down, a warning that only in part explained the presence of undemocratic forces in the contemporary landscape. Lijpharts’ warning corresponds with the empirical reality, namely the erosion of broad-based parties and the re-emergence of political populism.

Populism is theoretically defined by for example Kurt Weyland (1996) through identification of five specific criteria:
1) populist leaders tend to use fear and confusion to build a support base,
2) populist leaders typically circumvent existing institutions or build new ones to position themselves in the political landscape,
3) populist leaders tend to establish we-against-them antimonies to build a support base,
4) populist leaders approach their followers in a semi direct and quasi personal fashion
5) populist leaders typically tap into a group of previously disenfranchised to seek support.

I think that in the opinion of Dutch scholarship a ‘sophisticated’ and ‘savvy’ politician such as Geert Wilders can by no means resemble populists leaders such as the likes of Hugo Chaves, Desi Bouterse, Alberto Fuijimori. But they just like Wilders woe disgruntled, fearful, disenfranchised citizens by using a divisive message, by creating optical metaphors to create we-against-them antimonies. I find the stance of the Dutch intelligentsia interesting, but at the same time highly puzzling because the decision not to study the rise of Geert Wilders and his PVV, will not make it go away.

Noteworthy was an assertion on the Dutch public broadcast (Radio 1, Primtime), that populism in the Netherlands is a benign sort of populism, a phenomenon in its own right, beneficial to society. Said assertion forgoes the reality of a split and torn Dutch society, but also underestimates the effects of populism on the ensuing erosion of the political landscape, brought on by the marginalization of both Labor (PvdA) and Christian Democrats (CDA).

Conclusion
I think that the dismissal of western scholarship to assess western populism on its merit is as equally problematic as their stance on the role of Islam in democratization, a stance confounded in normatism and ascription, and not on the empirical. The position of eastern intellectuals by the same token, is equally problematic and myopic.

I want to reiterate my earlier posit that religion in the western world indeed helped foster civility, by building the necessary networks and NGO’s that gave rise to social and political emancipation. The case of Morocco supports my posit, because NGO’s indeed help to increase civility in Morocco by; 1) addressing the fallacies of society, such as gender disparities, youth unemployment, corruption and: 2) challenging certain dogmatic and fundamental standpoints of Islam, progression can be achieved (Khrouz, 2008 p. 43). Relevant in the case of Morocco is the consistent effort of the civility to mitigate between the bottom the grass-root and the top, by seeking to increase influence at the top, with as ultimate goal to forge gradual change and transformation of the political order, without insurgency and social unrest.

The Jasmine Revolution in the Middle East indeed revealed dynamic civilities that stand up for their rights. The problem is the extent of political repression, and the pervasiveness of dictatorship, encompassing all sectors of society, indeed impeded the possibilities for gradual reform.

[i] The Barometer has identified the frequency of Koran Reading a valid and reliable measure of religiosity. People interviewed were categorized according to the frequency of reading the Koran, and then cross-referenced with the responding in each category that feature democracy as most important ( Amaney and Tessler 2008, p.100-101): Source: Amaney Jamal&Mark Tessler (2008), The Democracy Barometers: Attitudes in the Arab World in: Journal of Democracy, Volume 19, number 1, January 2008, National Endowment for Democracy and the Johns Hopkins University Press

References
Amaney Jamal&Mark Tessler (2008), The Democracy Barometers: Attitudes in the Arab World in: Journal of Democracy, Volume 19, number 1, January 2008, National Endowment for Democracy and the Johns Hopkins University Press (pp.97-110)

Khrouz, Driss (2008) Morocco’s Elections: A Dynamic Civil Society in: Journal of Democracy, Volume 19, number 1, January 2008, National Endowment for Democracy and the Johns Hopkins University Press (pp. 42-49)

Tozy Mohamed (2008) Morocco’s Elections: Islamists, Technocrats and the Palace: Journal of Democracy, Volume 19, number 1, January 2008, National Endowment for Democracy and the Johns Hopkins University Press (pp. 34-41)

Dahl, Robert. (2000) On Democracy (Yale Nota Bene). www.amazon.com

Huntington, Samuel (1993) The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Julian J. Rothbaum Distinguished Lecture Series) www.amazon.com

Lijphart, Arend (1968) Politics of Accommodation: Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands (Campus ; 142). www.amazon.com

AUTHOR: Natascha Adama
URL: http://natascha23.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: nataliapestova23 [@] yahoo.com