February 20th 2012

Sudan was bombing South Sudan again last week, only a couple of months after the two countries split apart. Sudan is mostly Muslim, and South Sudan is predominantly Christian, but the quarrel is about oil, not religion. And yet, it is really about religion too, since the two countries would never have split apart along the current border if not for the religious divide.

The Ivory Coast was split along the same Muslim-Christian lines for nine years, although the shooting ended last year and there is an attempt under way to sew the country back together under an elected government. But in Nigeria, Africa’s biggest country by far, the situation is going from bad to worse, with the Islamist terrorists of Boko Haram murdering people all over the country in the name of imposing sharia law on the entire nation.

“The situation we have in our hands is even worse than the civil war that we fought (in 1967-70, which killed between one and three million people),” said President Goodluck Jonathan. That’s a major exaggeration.

In an interview with Reuters, President Jonathan said: “If (Boko Haram) clearly identify themselves now and say…this is the reason why we are confronting government or this is the reason why we destroyed some innocent people and their properties, why not (talk to them)?” But it’s pointless: he already knows who they are and what they want.

“Boko Haram”, loosely translated, means “Western education is forbidden,” and the organisation’s declared aim is to overthrow the government and impose Islamic law on all of Nigeria. In a 40-minute audio message posted on YouTube two weeks ago, the group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, threatened that his next step would be to carry out a bombing campaign against Nigeria’s secondary schools and universities.

This is not only vicious; it is also completely loony. There is no way that Boko Haram could conquer the entire country. Only half of Nigerians are Muslims, and they are much poorer than the country’s 80 million Christians. The Christian south is where the oil is, and the ports, and most of the industry, so that’s where most of the money is too. The same pattern is repeated in many other African countries: poor Muslim north; prosperous Christian south.

There was no plan behind this. Islam spread slowly to south from North Africa, which was conquered by Arab armies in the 7th century, while Christianity spread rapidly inland once European colonies appeared on the African coast in the last few hundred years. The line where Islam and Christianity meet runs across Africa about 1,100 km, north of the equator (except in Ethiopia, where the Christians have the highlands and the Muslims the lowlands).

In general, the Muslims ended up with the desert and semi-desert regions of Africa because Islam had to make it all the way across the Sahara, while the more fertile and richer regions nearer to the equator and all the way down to South Africa are mainly Christian because the Europeans arrived by sea with much greater economic and military power.

There probably won’t be a full-scale civil war in Nigeria this time around, but Boko Haram is targeting Christians indiscriminately. The Nigerian army, not best known for its discipline and restraint, is almost as indiscriminate in targeting devout but innocent Muslims in the northern states.

It will get worse in Nigeria, and it is getting bad again in what used to be Sudan, and Ethiopia is an accident just waiting to happen. Even Ivory Coast may not really be out of the woods yet. There is a small but real risk that these conflicts could some day coalesce into a general Muslim-Christian confrontation that would kill millions and convulse all of Africa.

Christianity and Islam have been at war most of the time since Muslim armies conquered half of the then-Christian world, from Syria to Spain, in the 7th and 8th centuries. There was the great Christian counter-attack of the Crusades in the 12th century, the Muslim conquest of Turkey and the Balkans in the 15th and 16th centuries, and the European conquest of almost the entire Muslim world in the 18th-20th centuries.

It is a miserable history, and in some places it is likely to continue for some time to come.

Originally published by Dawn

How many unemployed does it take to change a Government’s rhetoric? More than 2.67 million, it seems. The new jobless figures released this month raised unemployment to a 16-year high and once again showed young people over-represented among the jobless. But still the talk remains of getting “work shy” benefits scroungers into “hidden jobs”.

In 1981, the reggae group UB40 (named after the unemployment benefit form of the time) used to sing “I am the one in 10” because one in 10 of Britain was on the dole. Now more than one in five 16-24 year olds are seeking work.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development is one of several organisations which believe this figure will edge close to three million by the end of the year. Its Winter 2011-12 Labour Market Outlook , published this month, is particularly hard for a government to shrug off since it is based on reports from members of the redundancies they expect to announce and the hirings they expect not to be making. Their reasoning is simple: there is no predicted growth in the economy and therefore there will be no boost to the numbers of jobs available.

So far the Coalition has stuck to its position that there can be no deviation from its austerity programme: claimants need to be redirected into work by bribes, nudges or shoves. There is no question of devising new policies or strategies to slow down public sector job losses or to support private sector job creation schemes.

David Cameron even appears to find unemployment rather annoying and “unfair”. Not on the unemployed but on “hardworking families” who pay for the benefits. Speaking from the escalator of an ASDA supermarket in Leeds at the end of January, he asked of the assembled workers: “Are you happy that your taxes are going towards families where no-one is working and they’re earning more than £26,000 in benefits?” He went on to praise his hosts for the creation of 5,000 jobs (many so low-paid the taxpayer will be topping them up with tax credits) and for their apprenticeship scheme (also funded by taxpayers) and for offering opportunities to young people (many of them unpaid work experience). His message? There are jobs for the determined: get working.

Iain Duncan Smith who as Secretary of State for the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) must surely be asking how much higher unemployment can go before job creation becomes a political necessity, is also stuck in the “fairness” groove. Of Cameron’s proposals to cap benefits at £26,000, he told the Daily Mail ↑ : “It is not fair to trap somebody in an expensive house which they cannot afford then to go to work on the back of, because they would lose their housing benefit if they went to work – so they are disincentivised from going to work.” That is not an easy sentence to read but fortunately the message has been put more simply by his colleague Sayeeda Warsi, Conservative Party co-chair: “If you can work, you should work”. The Conservative Party’s task is to end “Labour’s something for nothing culture”.

Maria Miller, a Coalition work and pensions minister, has an even simpler answer: “There is no shortage of jobs”. Earlier this month, Miller offered the BBC a variety of explanations for high unemployment figures (transcription via the Guardian): “If you actually look at the facts and the figures, there’s 400,000 jobs at any one point in job centres. I was up in the Wirral on Friday talking to one of our local job centres there and there isn’t a shortage of jobs; what there can be is a lack of an appetite for some of the jobs that are available so we’ve got to make sure people have got the right skills… I don’t think it’s a lack of jobs at the moment; I think it really is making sure that we’ve got people knowing where those jobs are. Every family should be a working family.”

How, in this Government’s vision, has a lack of jobs become the fault of the jobseeker? Those with long memories will remember that an earlier Employment Secretary, Norman Tebbitt, was ridiculed when in 1981 he suggested that the unemployed should not riot, but, as his father had done in the Thirties, instead get on their bikes to find work. But when, a year later, unemployment hit three million for the first time since the Hungry Thirties, neither the Prime Minister nor her Employment Secretary dared argue that there were jobs but that the three million jobseekers had the wrong attitude, or the wrong skills, or needed special coaching. “As we can expand the economy so there will be more jobs available in the future,” Norman Tebbit told parliament. Small comfort, but relatively straightforward.

What we hear today, and not only from the Coalition government, is that the unemployed themselves are to blame. They need retail apprenticeships (stacking supermarket shelves) or compulsory training in writing CVs, or a better attitude from their non-working families. If a dozen applicants chase one job, eleven of them are losers who need to smarten up, or get different expectations.

The experts

In Bait and Switch, Barbara Ehrenreich’s 2005 book about white-collar job hunting in the United States, the author discovers what it is like to be a client of that giant industry of career experts who promise to help the unemployed into well-paid rewarding work. She submits herself to personality and aptitude testing, takes classes in cv writing, is taught how to network, how to strengthen weak skills and how best to lie about her past jobs and experience. It turns out that however much Ehrenreich networks and reframes herself, the jobs are simply not there.

“So after almost seven months of job searching, an image makeover .. an expensively refined… résumé, and networking in four cities, I have gotten precisely two offers … with no salary, benefits or workplace provided.”

What Ehrenreich had discovered was that there is a lot of money to be made out of jobseekers’ anxieties about their inadequacies and of blaming the unemployed rather than the job market.

A similar lesson is being visited on jobseekers in the UK on a grand state-sponsored scale. As unemployment has nudged its way towards three million, an entire new welfare-to-work industry has grown up with it. It even has a trade association, the Employment Related Services Association. Some companies, such as Serco have long experience of taking on former public sector functions. Others have grown out of the voluntary sector with genuine expertise in hard-to-solve areas of unemployment. Yet more have emerged in response to recent governments’ specific welfare-to-work policies.

The privatising of job-seeking under the Work Programme has been one of the more astonishing examples of how a government determined to shrink the state can turn anything into a good business proposition. Like most such handovers to the private sector, the privatising of job-centre functions was sold as a win-win-win situation. Private contractors win by being rewarded when they find jobs for the unemployed; jobseekers win by landing a job; taxpayers win by having fewer claimants to support.

At least, in theory. What, though, happens when the transition from welfare to work is stalled? When there are simply not enough jobs to go round? The best analysis of this that I have seen came from Richard Johnson writing in the Guardian. A former contractor for Serco, he realised that the tendering process meant that those most in need of special help were unlikely to get it. Instead, the imperative would be to fill jobs with easy cases (the applicants most likely to find work anyway) and pick up the payments.

In January, the National Audit Office (NAO) expressed similar concern. It reported its doubts that the private firms which had taken on £3-5 billion worth of Work Programme contracts would be able to meet targets and its fears of “curtailed standards”. It noted that past welfare-to-work schemes had not been successful and suggested that the latest scheme was introduced too hastily with “increased risk of fraud and error”. The NAO also revealed that several companies that had bid for new work had been paid £63 million by DWP for cancelled contracts under earlier welfare to work schemes. In other words, they’d already been paid for no results at all.

How many people will be helped by the new Work Programme? DWP believes that 36 per cent of those referred will find work. NAO thinks this is optimistic. It estimates that the likely success rate of the group “easiest to help into work” will be 26 per cent. This compares with the estimated 25 per cent success rate of earlier welfare-to work schemes (which the current Government considers to have failed). In other words for all the millions already diverted to private contractors they are faring no better, maybe worse, than the Job Centre staff they replaced.

The trade association ERSA responded with insouciance: ‘We welcome these early indicative figures of Work Programme performance levels. The welfare to work industry is working extremely hard to help all customers find sustainable work even in the context of challenging economic conditions.”

Surely someone in Government now needs to respond: “But your industry was brought in precisely because of the challenging economic conditions.” But it won’t say that because the dogma is that the experts are here to get the poorly motivated and work-shy ready and willing to work.

Blaming the jobseeker’s lack of skills or enthusiasm blinds policy-makers to creative solutions that could be effective, for example offering tiny investment grants for taking on trainees or apprentices not with the big companies but in the forgotten small industries at which Britain has excelled in recent years (computer games, animation, music). Another area that has remained almost unexplored by this government is one that should have appealed to entrepreneurial Tory spirits. One surprising statistic in the latest employment statistics is how many people are trying to go it alone; set up micro-businesses or simply practise their skills on a freelance basis. Why not offer bursaries and grants for jobseekers to switch to self-employment rather than hand them over to supermarkets as free shelf-stacking labour?

In a bid to bring down the shocking figure of 3 million unemployed in the early 1980s, Margaret Thatcher’s government encouraged introduced an Enterprise Allowance Scheme which paid £40 a week (in 1981) for those willing to come off the dole to become self-employed. The charity New Deal of the Mind ↑ has argued in detail that this scheme could work equally well today. Its founder Martin Bright was one alumni of the programme; so was Julian Dunkerton who founded the immensely successful clothes label Superdry, along with Turner prize winner Jeremy Deller and the journalist Deborah Orr.

The idea that every unemployed person has either a problem of “attitudes” or “lack of skills” (or both) is not only false, it is cruel and disheartening to those desperate for work. Take the case of Cait Reilly who is taking a case under the Human Rights Act claiming that mandatory work experience is, in effect, “forced labour”. A geology graduate, she says she was asked to stack shelves in Poundland for no pay or risk losing her jobseeker’s allowance. Reilly pointed out she was already undertaking more relevant volunteer work at a museum. She had experience of shop work and had no need of any more.

Maybe more worrying than the incident itself was the astonishing comment of the Secretary of State for employment, Duncan Smith, who called her a “snooty so-and-so” who believed “she shouldn’t stack shelves because she’s intelligent.”

She certainly does seems more intelligent than Iain Duncan Smith about the consequences of unemployed graduates like herself taking unpaid shop work. “We were doing exactly the same work as the paid staff,” she told the Daily Mail. “It makes no sense. If the Government subsidises high street chains with free labour, they don’t have to recruit. It causes unemployment rather than solves it.”

This goes to the heart of the problem. All of us have a stake in lowering unemployment. And of course it is right to give some categories of unemployed a better chance of finding work. Without doubt, we must find ways of improving the life chances of young people by helping them to get the qualifications they need. But shuffling around a diminishing pool of jobs so that the welfare-to-work industry achieves its targets is not the solution.

Originally published in Left Foot Forward

February 17th 2012

Human beings could be influenced by three major forms of power i.e. direct physical power on one’s body, by giving rewards and punishments or by influencing opinion. —Bertnard Russell.

The media industry in Pakistan has gained legitimacy slowly but surely among the people and come out a dynamic strength, particularly broadcast media. It is in essence the third category of Bertnard Russell’s classification of exercising power – power exercised through influencing public opinion.

Media houses, especially news channels have become pivotal actors in influencing public opinion. However, with this tremendous power of opinion shaping, the responsibility that comes with it seems to be amiss. Recently, and very rightfully many questions have been raised about the ethics, code of conduct, impartiality and the accountability of the Pakistani media.

Not too long ago, we witnessed serious concerns about the media’s moral vigilantism when a morning show host went hunting after couples in a park. But seeing how that episode has gotten its fair share of ‘coverage’, I’d like to instead talk about the tragic stampede in Lahore at a concert that resulted in the death of three girls; and how the media’s code of conduct in point of fact comes into question on this horrific incident and the series of events that followed it.

The concert in discussion was organised by the Punjab Group of Colleges (PCG) run by Mian Amir Mehmood, who (also) owns a private channel. Following the developments of this incident closely, it was appalling to realise that this dreadful episode did not even get its due coverage in the mainstream media. Various channels mentioned the news initially but no follow-ups on the developments of the story were reported. Not even local channels that normally extensively cover metropolitan news bothered giving it a highlight.

A press conference was held by the families of two of the deceased girls at the Lahore press club to demand a judicial probe into the matter and to punish those who were responsible for it. This press conference too went mostly unreported.

Being a political science major and a keen observer of news reporting in Pakistan, I have, by now, at least identified how much coverage a news story should get on the basis of its level of priority. The Lahore stampede news story did not so much as make it as a ‘main cover story’.

But wait, could this really just have been just a coincidence? How is that all newsrooms in Pakistan decided simultaneously on the airtime, or lack thereof, of this particular news story? I do not intend to slander someone gratuitously, but if my speculation of a case of media lobbying does stand true, it is a grave situation for the Pakistani public and needs immediate attention.

My speculation only gained strength when I dug into the details of the above mentioned press conference. Impartiality and honesty are the essence of news reporting; however, what happened at the press conference flouted all basic principles of journalism.

I found the proceedings of the press conference sordid. There were journalists who were representing the very same news channel whose owner’s repute was at stake and it was noticeable that they were speaking someone else’s words. The families of the victims were slapped with accusations, such as:

Are you trying to bargain the rate of blood money?

You also are associated with a private TV channel, are they pressurising you to do this press conference against another channel?

You have all the opportunities available to you and you are being given all the attention, it appears that you are just staging a drama here.

If you didn’t trust the management, why did you send your daughter to the concert?

This disgrace to the profession of journalism, kept bringing to mind something Pope John Paul II once said:

“With its vast and direct influence on public opinion, journalism cannot be guided by economic forces, profit, and special interest. It must instead be felt as a mission, in a certain sense sacred, carried out in the knowledge that the powerful means of communication have been entrusted to you for the good of all.”

Ironically, the media has become the very power that it was created to challenge.

These words of the Pope took me back to the times when Pakistan’s private broadcast media was in its initial stages of development. There was a great sense of assurance back then, the hope that there would be a might to challenge the already established and monopolised forces and enlighten the minds of our people.

They vowed to carry the sacred mission; the mission of honesty, sincerity and commitment to the truth. Alas.

Originally published by Dawn

Photo Illustration by Faraz Aamer Khan

February 20th 2012

Syrians are facing an onslaught from their own government, yet the West is unwilling, and realistically unable, to help.

Almost ten years after the invasion of Iraq our squares and embassies are witness to protestors asking for intervention not decrying it, people shocked at our government’s inaction not action.

But in a post-Iraq age the ‘policing’ of the world must be a shared burden – one that relies less on western foreign policy as well as the blood of Western soliders – a burden that emerging and regional powers must step up to.

The expectation that intervention should be a western decision, or western led, must be abandoned. For every potential Iraq there is a Rwanda: Often the west is damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t. The guilt of inaction cannot be ours alone. Nor can the monopoly on humanitarian action be used to justify our own agenda.

The fallout from Iraq has severely dented the ability of the West to intervene where it is needed, not least because of the question of motive. Questions surrounding the reasons for our entry into Iraq continue to be raised in opposition to every intervention mooted since.

A more multilateral approach as epitomised by the UN sanctioned action in Libya suggests a new model for intervention. The situation must be bordering on calamity; there must be wide support internationally, regionally and internally; and a long-term occupation is not an option. Intervention should not be embarked upon lightly.

Nevertheless, even with such legitimacy the west’s involvement in Libya’s civil war was not without controversy.

Eleven years into the occupation of Afghanistan, the British and American public have grown war-weary, tired of the human cost on all sides, and, in a time of economic difficulty, ever conscious of the price tag attached to military action. Even with Benghazi facing an outright massacre, Britons were severely divided on the merits of intervention.

With entrenchment in Afghanistan, cuts in military spending and forces spread thinly the west lacks not only the willpower, but also the military power to always assist those in need.

If it’s unpopular at home, it can be more so abroad. With the civilian cost of Iraq and Afghanistan, the disgusting abuses and crimes committed by the few, and the perenial charge of ‘imperialism’ the west is often at risk of inflaming opinion against legitimate interventions.

The west suffers from contrasting traits of arrogance and moral obligation. When a crisis emerges we think ‘should we, or should we not intervene’, but never consider what the rest of the world should do.

So used to being the policeman of the world, we bear the financial and human cost of war or turn our own policy objectives into world policing with disregard to international opinion and real humanitarian need. Liberal intervention must be seen as entirely separate to western foreign policy.

Syria presents the ideal opportunity for the west to step back while other countries should step up. Our intervention there would undoubtedly inflame the situation. Almost every factor counts against American or European action. From geographic distance to geo-politics – western entry could escalate a civil war into an international one.

Turkey is in an ideal position to broker peace, and if necessary intervene. There is a moral case that other countries, particularly the emerging powers start to take their share of responsibility in a century where they will grow in economic and political significance.

As nations like Brazil and India grow in power they must realise that splendid isolation cannot be an option. The west must let go of the reins just as much as the newer powers must stop assuming that we alone can intervene. As they push for Security Council recognition they must themselves recognise the need to pitch-in, perhaps far more sucessfully than we could ever do.

Intervention isnt always the answer, but when it is we must let go of the presumption that the West alone can act, for right or wrong. The blame for lack of intervention cannot be solely put on us when there are democratic military powers around the globe who also refuse to act.

The Rwandan genocide could have been stopped by the west, but it could also have been stopped by any number of other countries.

A more pluralist, multilateral model of intervention – preferably under the aegis of the United Nations is a healthier approach to the humanitarian problems of the twenty-first century.  The west shouldn’t, and can’t always intervene, but that doesn’t mean that there should be no intervention at all.

It’s time for us to step back and let the other powers of the world step-up.

Syrians are facing an onslaught from their own government, yet the West is unwilling, and realistically unable, to help.

Almost ten years after the invasion of Iraq our squares and embassies are witness to protestors asking for intervention not decrying it, people shocked at our government’s inaction not action.

But in a post-Iraq age the ‘policing’ of the world must be a shared burden – one that relies less on western foreign policy as well as the blood of Western soliders – a burden that emerging and regional powers must step up to.

The expectation that intervention should be a western decision, or western led, must be abandoned. For every potential Iraq there is a Rwanda: Often the west is damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t. The guilt of inaction cannot be ours alone. Nor can the monopoly on humanitarian action be used to justify our own agenda.

The fallout from Iraq has severely dented the ability of the West to intervene where it is needed, not least because of the question of motive. Questions surrounding the reasons for our entry into Iraq continue to be raised in opposition to every intervention mooted since.

A more multilateral approach as epitomised by the UN sanctioned action in Libya suggests a new model for intervention. The situation must be bordering on calamity; there must be wide support internationally, regionally and internally; and a long-term occupation is not an option. Intervention should not be embarked upon lightly.

Nevertheless, even with such legitimacy the west’s involvement in Libya’s civil war was not without controversy.

Eleven years into the occupation of Afghanistan, the British and American public have grown war-weary, tired of the human cost on all sides, and, in a time of economic difficulty, ever conscious of the price tag attached to military action. Even with Benghazi facing an outright massacre, Britons were severely divided on the merits of intervention.

With entrenchment in Afghanistan, cuts in military spending and forces spread thinly the west lacks not only the willpower, but also the military power to always assist those in need.

If it’s unpopular at home, it can be more so abroad. With the civilian cost of Iraq and Afghanistan, the disgusting abuses and crimes committed by the few, and the perenial charge of ‘imperialism’ the west is often at risk of inflaming opinion against legitimate interventions.

The west suffers from contrasting traits of arrogance and moral obligation. When a crisis emerges we think ‘should we, or should we not intervene’, but never consider what the rest of the world should do.

So used to being the policeman of the world, we bear the financial and human cost of war or turn our own policy objectives into world policing with disregard to international opinion and real humanitarian need. Liberal intervention must be seen as entirely separate to western foreign policy.

Syria presents the ideal opportunity for the west to step back while other countries should step up. Our intervention there would undoubtedly inflame the situation. Almost every factor counts against American or European action. From geographic distance to geo-politics – western entry could escalate a civil war into an international one.

Turkey is in an ideal position to broker peace, and if necessary intervene. There is a moral case that other countries, particularly the emerging powers start to take their share of responsibility in a century where they will grow in economic and political significance.

As nations like Brazil and India grow in power they must realise that splendid isolation cannot be an option. The west must let go of the reins just as much as the newer powers must stop assuming that we alone can intervene. As they push for Security Council recognition they must themselves recognise the need to pitch-in, perhaps far more sucessfully than we could ever do.

Intervention isnt always the answer, but when it is we must let go of the presumption that the West alone can act, for right or wrong. The blame for lack of intervention cannot be solely put on us when there are democratic military powers around the globe who also refuse to act.

The Rwandan genocide could have been stopped by the west, but it could also have been stopped by any number of other countries.

A more pluralist, multilateral model of intervention – preferably under the aegis of the United Nations is a healthier approach to the humanitarian problems of the twenty-first century.  The west shouldn’t, and can’t always intervene, but that doesn’t mean that there should be no intervention at all.

It’s time for us to step back and let the other powers of the world step-up.

Syrians are facing an onslaught from their own government, yet the West is unwilling, and realistically unable, to help.

Almost ten years after the invasion of Iraq our squares and embassies are witness to protestors asking for intervention not decrying it, people shocked at our government’s inaction not action.

But in a post-Iraq age the ‘policing’ of the world must be a shared burden – one that relies less on western foreign policy as well as the blood of Western soliders – a burden that emerging and regional powers must step up to.

The expectation that intervention should be a western decision, or western led, must be abandoned. For every potential Iraq there is a Rwanda: Often the west is damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t. The guilt of inaction cannot be ours alone. Nor can the monopoly on humanitarian action be used to justify our own agenda.

The fallout from Iraq has severely dented the ability of the West to intervene where it is needed, not least because of the question of motive. Questions surrounding the reasons for our entry into Iraq continue to be raised in opposition to every intervention mooted since.

A more multilateral approach as epitomised by the UN sanctioned action in Libya suggests a new model for intervention. The situation must be bordering on calamity; there must be wide support internationally, regionally and internally; and a long-term occupation is not an option. Intervention should not be embarked upon lightly.

Nevertheless, even with such legitimacy the west’s involvement in Libya’s civil war was not without controversy.

Eleven years into the occupation of Afghanistan, the British and American public have grown war-weary, tired of the human cost on all sides, and, in a time of economic difficulty, ever conscious of the price tag attached to military action. Even with Benghazi facing an outright massacre, Britons were severely divided on the merits of intervention.

With entrenchment in Afghanistan, cuts in military spending and forces spread thinly the west lacks not only the willpower, but also the military power to always assist those in need.

If it’s unpopular at home, it can be more so abroad. With the civilian cost of Iraq and Afghanistan, the disgusting abuses and crimes committed by the few, and the perenial charge of ‘imperialism’ the west is often at risk of inflaming opinion against legitimate interventions.

The west suffers from contrasting traits of arrogance and moral obligation. When a crisis emerges we think ‘should we, or should we not intervene’, but never consider what the rest of the world should do.

So used to being the policeman of the world, we bear the financial and human cost of war or turn our own policy objectives into world policing with disregard to international opinion and real humanitarian need. Liberal intervention must be seen as entirely separate to western foreign policy.

Syria presents the ideal opportunity for the west to step back while other countries should step up. Our intervention there would undoubtedly inflame the situation. Almost every factor counts against American or European action. From geographic distance to geo-politics – western entry could escalate a civil war into an international one.

Turkey is in an ideal position to broker peace, and if necessary intervene. There is a moral case that other countries, particularly the emerging powers start to take their share of responsibility in a century where they will grow in economic and political significance.

As nations like Brazil and India grow in power they must realise that splendid isolation cannot be an option. The west must let go of the reins just as much as the newer powers must stop assuming that we alone can intervene. As they push for Security Council recognition they must themselves recognise the need to pitch-in, perhaps far more sucessfully than we could ever do.

Intervention isnt always the answer, but when it is we must let go of the presumption that the West alone can act, for right or wrong. The blame for lack of intervention cannot be solely put on us when there are democratic military powers around the globe who also refuse to act.

The Rwandan genocide could have been stopped by the west, but it could also have been stopped by any number of other countries.

A more pluralist, multilateral model of intervention – preferably under the aegis of the United Nations is a healthier approach to the humanitarian problems of the twenty-first century.  The west shouldn’t, and can’t always intervene, but that doesn’t mean that there should be no intervention at all.

It’s time for us to step back and let the other powers of the world step-up.

Originally published by Left Foot Forward

By keeping investments in clean energy off the agenda, the Kyoto process delayed by a decade any serious engagement with global warming. To get the transformation of capitalism on its way, a serious rethink of eco-investment finance is essential.

No-one argues against the proposition that it was capitalism that created the global warming problem. But hardly anyone takes the next step to argue that it must therefore be capitalism that will solve the problem. How will it solve it? The answer is — by financing the transition to a clean energy economy.

The Kyoto Protocol process framed the issue as a public problem that called for government solution and public financing (that is, tax-based financing). The whole process fell apart at the Copenhagen conference in December 2009 – and there has been nothing of note to replace it. Even the limp gesture of a Green Climate Fund amounting to $100 billion (a sum which falls far short of the investments in clean technology required) has not been honoured.

Yet the investments in clean energy needed to really address climate change – the renewal of the entire energy system over the course of the next three to four decades – will dwarf these sums. The International Energy Agency has talked of sums like $20 trillion to be invested up to the year 2030 – less than 20 years away. The Green Climate Fund, even if it ever got off the ground, would raise just 1/200 of the sums needed.

In retrospect, then, one of the greatest failings of the whole Kyoto process was that it never got to grips with this most critical of issues. And by keeping it off the agenda, it delayed by a decade any serious engagement with global warming.

So where are the funds going to come from?

The answer is that they will have to come from the bond markets – the true engines of capitalism. The scale of these markets is awesome. The Bank for International Settlements ↑ states that the total size of the global debt securities market (domestic and international securities) was about $100 trillion as of June 2011.

Almost all of those funds are invested ultimately in projects that uphold the fossil fuel economy – drilling new oil wells, building coal-fired power stations, pipelines and all the rest of it.

Yet the institutional investors (pension and superannuation funds, insurance funds, sovereign wealth funds) which are the dominant players in these markets, are deeply unhappy about making such carbon-exposed investments with all their uncertainties – such as possible exposure to rising carbon taxes, or future punitive actions.

But the funds are not flowing to alternative eco-investments – as yet. In fact, compared to the level needed, the scale of financing of green energy so far is puny. Bloomberg New Energy Finance ↑ estimates that there are $243 billion outstanding fixed-interest securities that meet their definition of green finance, up from $186 billion in 2009. It sounds impressive until you realize that investments in a clean energy economy will call for trillions.

There is a group of financial markets activists based in London that are trying to do something about this. They are called the Climate Bonds Initiative ↑ (Disclosure: I am a member of this group.) So far, the Initiative has issued a standard to be used to certify bonds issued as ‘climate bonds’ with the emphasis on certifying that funds really are directed at low-carbon projects.

Think for a moment what a difference an active ‘climate bonds’ market would make. Governments would no longer be able to spout green rhetoric that they would reach, say, a 10% reduction in emissions by some target date. With climate bonds, they would be held to account, and would be forced to invest the sums raised in projects that would really reduce emissions. If they failed to do so, the bonds would lose value, and the government would face a ‘Greek’ like crisis.

Some caveats. You might think that the whole international finance system is so dodgy that climate change action should have nothing to do with it. That was the Kyoto approach. But in reality, institutional investors would stabilize the financial system by being able to invest in green projects that carry authentication and certification. By tying investment to real carbon emissions reduction processes, the scope for engaging in byzantine financial schemes like CDOs would be drastically reduced.

Wouldn’t climate bonds issued by, say, the Greek government have to carry an impossibly high penalty coupon rate? Yes they would – so the Greek government would not be a likely candidate under current circumstances.

Projects financed by climate bonds would be expected to carry lower interest charges than those for conventional infrastructure projects – because their prospects improve over time – and so the projects that they designate stand a far greater chance of being implemented.

Some questions obviously present themselves. If climate bonds and green finance are so good, why are institutional investors not already crowding into this space? The answer is that the potential bonds targeted at eco-investment are not yet being offered at scale or in sufficiently attractive form to attract major investors. Sean Kidney ↑ , head of the CBI, was at Davos last month talking up the issue, and laying out a framework for accelerating the entry by institutional fund managers into eco- or green investment. Some of his points: the projects offered need to have scale; they need to be structured simply and transparently; and they need to come certified as being able to guarantee that funds raised will indeed be invested in the projects designated.

Secondly, are governments the only agents who could offer, and underwrite, climate bond issues? Certainly not; indeed the whole idea is that development banks should get in on the act as a means of accelerating the uptake of green projects around the world. Development banks operating in Brazil, India or southern Africa would be prime candidates to issue such bonds – particularly if they have insurance backing from the World Bank’s Multilateral Insurance Guarantee Agency (MIGA). Already the World Bank (in partnership with the Scandinavian SEB) have tested the market, issuing small-scale green bonds ↑ , and found a positive response.

Third, the bond markets with their colossal scale represent one option for green finance but not the only one. There are also the equity markets, where stocks and shares in corporations are traded. Globally they amount to around $55 trillion, as opposed to $100 trillion for bonds. But institutional investors got badly burned through their investments in equity markets during the 2008/09 global financial crisis, and they are not rushing back to these markets. Bonds are the way to go.

These approaches to financing the emergent clean energy economy need to be sharply distinguished from ‘carbon finance’.

It is a beguiling idea that carbon markets – the trading of certificates that represent carbon pollution in some form (whether saved or emitted) – will provide a means to mitigate emissions. Behind the long-running debate over cap and trade schemes for dealing with carbon emissions, there stands this ultimate rationale for such approaches, namely the operation of markets for carbon credits (or pollution credits) of various kinds. They are difficult enough to regulate in a national setting, but international carbon markets constitute a financial bubble waiting to happen. The world will not solve its carbon emissions problem by inflating carbon balloons. But of course the ‘carbon markets’ would make a lot of City and Wall Street investment banks and their clients a lot of money – which is why they are promoted so assiduously.

The ‘next’ great transformation of capitalism needs to be focused with laser-like precision on changing the energy markets (from fossil fuels to renewables), the resource and commodity markets (from resource intensity and waste disposal to circular economy resource-linkage), and above all the finance markets to drive the transformation. Until the bond markets are seriously involved, at the scale of tens of trillions of dollars, the transition cannot be said to be seriously under way.

Originally published in Open Democracy

A majority of Pakistan’s internet users say they consider themselves ‘Muslim first’ (49%) , ‘Pakistani’ second (28%) while 23% voted ‘Other’, a survey conducted by The Express Tribune found. On the flipside, the survey results also showed that overseas Pakistanis identified more with being a ‘Pakistani’ than a ‘Muslim’ as compared to locals.

The survey, taken by more than 1,600 online Pakistanis, including expats was designed to measure the population on three different scales: their level of tolerance, level of religiosity and adherence to tradition.

While 77% of online Pakistanis expressed a belief in a supernatural being, only 46% said they identified themselves as a religious person. Some 75% said they believed in the existence of ‘Heaven and Hell’.
A majority of Muslim respondents (63%) agreed to the statement that “Pakistanis are not perfect but our religion is superior to others”.
In a core finding related to tolerance, 66% of Pakistanis voted against the need to influence others to share their set of beliefs. However, only 11% of total respondents said they would experiment with other belief systems.

Men do their own research
Women proved to be more traditional than men with 72% saying that they shared the same religious beliefs as their parents. A large number of male respondents said they had reached their current set of beliefs through research, while a majority of females said that they were raised that way.
The online survey found males were more inclined than women to researching new ideas and more willing to explore their beliefs. On the other hand men (36%) felt it was important to influence others when it comes to religion.

Education and age
The survey found that those who were older, and those holding a doctorate degree exhibited the greatest degree of tolerance and openness to religious plurality.
Older age groups (30+) and doctorate degree holders also exhibited lowest religiosity, suggesting that higher education and greater age results in lower religiosity.

Muslims and Non-religious groups
The sample consisted largely of Muslim respondents and those who identified themselves as non-religious. While members of other religious communities did respond to the survey their results were too few to be conclusive. In general, the Muslim segment gave very different responses to the non-religious segment, displaying a greater degree of intolerance and traditional thinking. Interestingly, a larger majority of the non-religious segment (92%) said they had researched other belief systems as compared to Muslims (72%).

Locals and Expats

The survey found expats exhibited slightly lower religiosity than local respondents. For example the local population showed greater belief in Heaven and Hell, was more regular in prayers and identified more to scripture. Expats were inclined to be more egalitarian than local respondents with reference to religious tolerance.
While a majority of expats disagreed with the statement ‘Pakistanis are not perfect but our religion is superior to others’ 53% of locals agreed with it. Fewer expats (35%) voted in favor of needing God to be moral, compared to locals (44%). A greater number of expats (81%) said they had researched other belief systems, as compared to locals (75%).

Scope of the research
The survey was available for three days during the month of January, 2012 and The Express Tribune obtained over 1,600 results from online Pakistanis and expats. The figures and information presented in this report only provide information about religious perceptions in Pakistan with reference to the online audience’s views.

Read the complete findings of the Pakistan Religious Identity Online survey report here.

Originally published in The Express Tribune

Saira Niazi, a British Pakistani based in Lahore, shares her beautiful photography capturing the life, culture and colour of the beautiful city with the Samosa.

An artist sketching at Jahangir's tomb

Children reciting the Qu'ran at Wazir Khan Masjid

A man selling crisps and balloons at Shalimar Gardens

Women in pink gathering spinach on the outskirts of Lahore

A busy market just off Grand Trunk road

Shalimar Gardens in the evening light

Saira Niazi: In her work she is mainly interested in conveying a sense of shared humanity of all people. She has explored this through a number of mediums including film, art, photography and writing. In the past she ha had her photographs exhibited in a number of locations including Goldsmiths, University of London, the Candid Gallery and Factory 41. Sheis also very interested in writing and has recently completed her second novel, This Restless Soul. She is currently based in Pakistan where she is working on a number of projects including her latest photography project, ‘Stargazing in Lahore’.

February 17th 2012

The Indian youth delegation to Beijing was highly impressed with China and its people.

India and China have had few interactions throughout history due to the insurmountable geographical barrier in the shape of the majestic Himalayas. Even then, nature bowed to the sheer might of the human will when travellers like Xuan Zang^↑ , Fa Xian^↑ and I-tsing^↑ travelled to India to study Buddhism over a millennium ago. In fact, it was the Indian scholars, Kashyapamatanga and Dharmaratna, who introduced Buddhism into China in the first century AD.

The first youth delegates of the India-China Youth Exchange programme visited each other in 2006, the year 2010 marking the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the RoI and the PRC – a historic moment for both countries since they are on the verge of becoming two of the biggest powers in the economic, political and military spheres. Both have managed to weather the Global Financial Crisis triggered in 2008. Unlike the negative or very low growth rates of the economies of Europe and the United States of America, China and India had impressive rates of 8 and 10 percents respectively. To commemorate this, the two countries celebrated the ‘Festival of India in China’ and the ‘Festival of China in India’. The Indian President, Smt. Pratibha Devisingh Patil, paid a state visit to China from 26-31 May 2010, and the Chinese Premier, Mr. Wen Jiabao, had a successful visit to India from 15-17 December 2010.

During his visit Premier Wen Jiabao proposed increasing the number of delegates from 100 to 500. The Indian Youth Delegation’s visit to China from September 20, 2011 saw the first batch of 500 youth delegates coming to visit China: Beijing and Shanghai Groups of 200 delegates each and a Guangzhou Group with 100 delegates. I had the honour of being a part of the Beijing Group.

Prior to this visit, my knowledge about China was only through books. There was an element of romanticism about this ancient civilisation. Images of the Great Wall, the Forbidden City and the Silk Route from Xian captured one’s imagination as a small child. Stories about great Chinese inventions, especially their wonderful display of fireworks have become a part of folklore. There remains a significant Chinese population in India, principally in the eastern city of Kolkata, who have wielded their soft power over Indians through their excellent food. The Spring Festival, with their colourful dragon dances^↑ , is celebrated with much gaiety in this China Town of Kolkata. The northernmost districts of Tinsukia and Dibrugarh, in Assam state of India, also have some Chinese people living down the generations. One can never forget the bridges built by two of India’s most illustrious sons – Dr. Dwarkanath Kotnis and^↑ Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore – with China. Similarly, India loves Professor Tan Chung^↑ for his dedication to Indological studies all his life. In 2010, the Government of India honoured him with the nation’s third highest civilian honour – the Padma Bhushan – for the services he has rendered in translating and popularising information about Indian literature, society and culture to China.

The Indian delegation to Beijing, of which I was a part, was highly impressed with China and its people. They are very disciplined, hard-working, focused and punctual. The physical infrastructure in the form of roadways, railways and airports is world-class. It was astounding to travel at the phenomenal speed of nearly 300 kilometres per hour on a train from Zhengzhou to Xi’an. The cleanliness of the cities is eye-catching. The high point of this visit was meeting Premier Wen Jiabao^↑ at the Great Hall of the People^↑ on the September 22, 2011. His message of the youth being ambassadors of peace, harmony and mutually beneficial cooperation struck a chord in the hearts of all.

While the Indian delegation was left spell-bound by the Chinese display of martial arts, calligraphy and tea ceremony; in return, the Indians regaled the people of China with the multicultural display of folk songs and dances, the wonderful game of Kabaddi^↑ , as well as the ancient technique of Yoga. Meeting students of our own age at the Zhengzhou and Xi’an Universities was also rewarding: we got to understand more about each other’s educational system. Visiting the Terracotta Army^↑ of Emperor Qin Shihuang Di in X’ian was a ‘dream come true’. One is astonished to notice that the face of every warrior differs from the others. The weapons were coated with 5-10 micron layer of chromium to prevent rusting, which portrays the metallurgical prowess of the Chinese people 2200 years back. The carvings of the Buddha in the Longmen Grottoes^↑ in Luoyang are marvellous. I felt I had stepped back in time: it was unforgettable to see such wonderful places. Concurrently, a visit to the Huawei Company^↑ ’s office in Beijing displayed the technological prowess of China, especially in bringing the fruits of such advancements to the reach of common people. All said and done, there was one major lacuna that came to the fore. The inability of the Indian delegates to follow Putonghua and of the Chinese to understand English and Hindi hindered greater intermixing. The Governments of India and China should vigorously promote the learning of each other’s languages by providing more opportunities in the form of scholarships for the people of either country to visit the other and learn.

In keeping with the spirit of this youth exchange programme, the Union Minister for Youth Affairs and Sports, Government of India, Shri Ajay Maken, has invited a 500 member Chinese youth delegation to visit India. Let us hope that such exchanges continue in the future to promote common understandings. This is the time for Asia to regain its lost glory. The new leaders of this process are China and India. By joining hands together, they can lead an economic, social and cultural revival throughout this vast continent. Today’s youth are the future nation-builders. As Prof. Tan Chung says, the guiding principles should be in the form of the Chinese concept of shijie datong and the Indian maxim of vasudaiva kutumbakam, which have the similar meaning of the whole world being a harmonious family for all mankind. Optimism remains the driving force. 

Originally published by Open Democracy

February 17th 2012

There is fresh outrage against the government’s flagship workfare program today, as an advert on a government job seekers’ website revealed the extent of Tesco’s involvement with the work experience scheme, which involves mandatory work under the threat of removal of benefits.

The advert which sparked the concern was for night shift work with Tesco in East Anglia, with pay listed as “JSA + expenses”. The position was advertised as permanent, despite being labelled as part of the “sector-based work academy” (SWBA) scheme, which limits placements to six weeks.

Within hours, a number of similar positions were found by Guardian journalist Shiv Malik: One advertising salary as “benefits and travel to work costs”, another in Clevedon paying “normal JSA”, and a third – the only one clearly labelled “work experience” in the title – again paying”benefit plus travelling costs”.

Tesco’s response to the discoveries has been fluctuating. Originally, their customer care Twitter feed was replying to complaints by delivering the PR line: “We are taking part in a government-led work experience scheme to help young people, this has already led to 300 permanent jobs.”

At 10:32 this morning, however, they changed their tone, and started telling people that: “This is an error made by Jobcentre Plus. It should be an advert for work experience with a guaranteed interview at the end.”

Regardless of whether it was an error – made at least four times, by four different Tesco stores – the fact remains that even the best spin on what Tesco is doing involves getting the free labour of a significant proportion of the 24,000 jobseekers who were told to start working for no pay or lose their benefits.

This represents a significant transfer of wealth from the taxpayer to Tesco, a business which, in a disappointing half year, made only £1.9 billion of profit.

Just as when they refuse to pay their employees the living wage, every person working for the supermarket chain while still receiving state benefits is an in-kind subsidy from the government; this is just more transparently the case when Tesco pays no wage at all.

Tesco has a choice in this matter. Many of their competitors, such as Sainsbury’s and the Co-op, have confirmed that they will not be using work experience labour; but Tesco insists the decision is up to individual store managers, and as a result the allure of free employees seems to tempting to resist.

At it’s heart, however, the problem lies with the government program which legitimises this practice.

The claim that it is aimed towards providing useful work experience that will lead to jobs is demonstrably untrue; both from the preponderance of placements which provide ‘experience’ in jobs which require none, and from the evidence provided by cases like Cait Reilly’s – taken off valuable work experience in Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery to stack shelves in Poundland.

Instead, it is looking more and more like this workfare program is driven by populist anger against ‘benefit scroungers’: The logic seems to be that if they can work, they should work; and if there are no jobs available, they should work for free until there are. It is policy by demonisation, and it is shameful.

Originally published by Left Foot Forward

Sourced from bbc.co.uk

Palm wine, bat stew and carbon markets all made it into the same discussion in Parliament last night – likely for the first time.

Investigators on the Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation (ESPA), an interdisciplinary research programme which draws together physical scientists, social scientists and economists to examine how ecosystem services support human security, health and wellbeing met with Stephen O’Brien, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development at a meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group for International Development and the Environment (APPGIDE).

Tapping palm wine from palm trees is a concrete example, provided by Professor Melissa Leach, an ESPA Investigator from the University of Sussex’ Institute of Development Studies, of how some of the poorest people living in Africa benefit from ecosystems. ESPA’s key objective is to empower communities to better manage and benefit from ecosystems in the future.

A major theme of ESPA’s work is to use ecology, epidemiology and social science to understand how land use and the degradation of natural habitats affects communities and what measures can be taken to reduce vulnerability to disease. An ecosystems approach is essential because ecological changes affect pathogen dynamics, which then affect people. To effectively reduce risk, people’s dependence on certain practices to make a living need to be understood to evaluate the trade-offs that have to be made to reduce infection rates.

Professor Melissa Leach’s presentation revealed that 60% of emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic – transmitted from animals to humans. She said that these diseases are re-emerging due to increasing levels of poverty.

She gave the example of Henipavirus in Ghana. It’s carried by bats and can be transmitted to people through their diet. Ghana’s urban poor are those most likely to eat bat stew and are therefore most susceptible to the virus. She also said pregnant women in Sierra Leone’s farming communities are vulnerable to Lassa fever, which is transmitted by contact with rat feces or urine and is eaten some places as a delicacy. Changing land use patterns, leading to the degradation of natural habitats, can, she explained, have major impacts on the transmission of zoonotic diseases.

Dr James Kairo, ESPA Investigator and Principle Researcher at the Kenyan Marine and Fisheries Research Institute, explained how mangroves provide communities with several critical ecosystem services. They provide charcoal and building materials, coastal protection from fierce tropical storms and flooding and capture carbon. However, around the world, mangroves have been heavily degraded, cut down for timber and/or used as farm land and over fished.

With a global shift in focus towards climate change mitigation though, there is now a new constituency of stakeholders with an interest in seeing degraded mangroves restored, and new forests created. He is working on a project in Kenya that will see the development of a new 117 hectare mangrove forest, potentially made sustainable through carbon markets.

Making carbon into a commodity can bring its own problems, as was highlighted in the audience discussion. It gives national governments title to the carbon sequestered in a country’s soils and forests for the purposes of trading on international carbon markets, which could pose an additional barrier to the efforts of individuals and poor rural communities to demarcate, and gain title to the land on which their livelihoods depend.

Professor Katrina Brown, a Professor of Development Studies at the University of East Anglia, and co-Chair of the ESPA International Programme Advisory Committee, referred to The Millenium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA) which revealed that in the last 50 years, humans have transformed ecosystems more rapidly than ever before. The growing demand for food, fuel and timber threatens to severely undermine the aim of eradicating global poverty, she said.

ESPA’s key objective is to empower communities to manage ecosystems and accrue their benefits but, as Dr Bhaskar Vira, ESPA Investigator and Senior Lecturer at Cambridge, pointed out, there are always winners and losers in the allocation of resources.

This is the key challenge facing ESPA: to ensure the poor are the winners, reaping most benefit from new policies and practices.

Originally published in the IIED