The assassination of Benazir Bhutto yesterday has left me, momentarily, stunned. Although I was highly critical of Bhutto, even before she first became Prime Minister of Pakistan following the still-unsolved death of President Zia ul-Haq in 1988, as evidenced by my review of the first edition of her autobiography Daughter of the East, I am nonetheless shocked by her death. I must confess that I never believed that she was risking so much when she returned to Pakistan earlier this year after a long exile; I never believed that the risk of assassination was real. The fact, then, that a gunman could get a few metres in front of her Land Cruiser and fire directly at her indicates a remarkable degree of personal courage that I did not ascribe to her, as well the likely complicity of some elements within the Pakistani state in her assassination.
All day today I have been trying to figure out: where does responsibility lie? It seems to me that the reports of Rory McCarthy and Jason Burke of The Guardian offer the clearest way through the possible list of suspects. That list boils down to 4:
1. Militant Islamists: the very way in which the attack was carried out--death by shooting and a suicide bombing in a public place with many resulting casualties--makes militant Islamists a clear suspect. Note here that suggesting that militant Islamists may have been involved does not in any way suggest a role for al Qaeda. There have been several groups in Pakistan that have threatened to kill Benazir Bhutto, and many more that may have wanted to do so but whom have not articulated this aim. Bhutto's role as a female politician in a very conservative society, leading a secular, notionally social-democratic, political party, and with close and strong ties to the US state, all made her a particular target for that small minority of militant Islamists that espoused violence, and who have been allowed to prosper in Pakisan, often under the tutelage of the state, since the late 1970s. The roots of militant Islam in Pakistan are comparatively recent, dating back to the Islamicization policies practised by Zia ul-Haq from the late 1970s, the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and the rise of the Taliban in 2 short years in the mid 1990s thanks to the support of the Pakisanti state (and in particular its security apparatus, the ISI). However, in recent years the regime of Pervez Musharraf, which has sought to be a key ally of the US, has pandered to militant Islamist elements, and has, in the provinces, at times, relied upon their support, despite his own supposed 'liberalism'. It has been a pathologically contradictory political alignment, whose explosive elements have been seen this year in the assault on the Lal Masjid in the heart of Islamabad. It could well be responsible for the assassination.
2. The military: Bhutto did a deal with the military when she returned to Pakistan earlier in the year. Upon her return, however, there was, of course, a major assassination attempt on her life, one which killed scores of her supporters, and which required a huge breach of security, as did her assassination. However, saying the military might have been behind the assassination is not the same as saying Musharraf might be behind it. He has clearly very little to gain, and much to lose, by this assassination. Rather, Bhutto herself, prior to the 18 October assassination attempt in Karachi, suggested that elements within the military, closet supporters of former President Zia, sustained by elements within the ISI, together wanted her dead. No doubt, there were many in the ranks of the military who did indeed view Bhutto as a threat. The 'deep state' in Pakistan is real, although it is not understood; and it could have been responsible. Again, as I already noted, there was a major security failure that allowed the assassination to take place; this suggests some complicity within some elements of the state.
3. Political opponents: The political use of murder is extremely widespread in Pakistan, and is used by those in power and those outside but seeking power. Bhutto's relationship with longtime rival Nawaz Sharif had always been tense. Sharif rose politically during the regime of Zia ul-Haq; as a consequence, he was never forgiven by Bhutto, because Zia had ordered the hanging of Bhutto's father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the founder of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) which Benazir Bhutto led since the mid 1980s. While it is unlikely that Sharif himself could be involved, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that militant supporters might have felt that assassination was the best way of preventing a PPP victory in the forthcoming elections--although these may now be cancelled because of the assassination.
4. A combination of these: The killing of Zia has never been explained. Pakistan lacks the capacity to mount a full and complete investigation of the assassination of Bhutto, and thus it too may never be explained. Moreover, elements within the deep state might want to prevent such an investigation, even if they had nothing to do with the assassination, because it would reveal far too much of their behind-the-scenes power in contemporary Pakistan. Thus, I believe it is likely that the truth will never be known.
Having said that, Jason Burke has reminded us of a previous attempt on Bhutto's life: not the one on 18 October of this year, but one in the early 1990s. Then, Ramzi Yousef, who is now in prison in the US for the first attempt to blow up the World Trade Center, tried to assasinate Bhutto. The attempt was financed by money from outside Pakistan, coordinated by senior Islamist militants in the Gulf, and used local criminal elements and a local Afghan hardline commander with Saudi Arabian links. Throw into this volatile combination an element of the deep state, and a plausible, even if probably partial, explanation for the assassination begins to emerge. However, it is an explanation that will only ever be a theory.
I first met Benazir Bhutto in the mid 1980s, when she was in her early 30s, and when she was seeking to galvanize support for the PPP as it led the struggle against the military regime of Zia ul-Haq. She was an impressive figure, a reasonable speaker, but, unlike her father, not a politician that espoused a vision. Her politics had little depth to them; they were the politics of rhetoric, as I stressed all those years ago in my review of her autobiography. That was why, when corruption allegations against her and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, emerged, particulary in the mid 1990s, I could believe them, and quite easily, despite the fact that she did not need the money, as she was from a hugely privileged background: the Sindhi feudal elite.
That Bhutto was a member of the Pakistani ruling class was amply demonstrated during her two terms as Prime Minister. She was deeply disappointing, doing nothing to challenge the deep state, doing nothing to question the culture of corruption that pervades the Pakistani ruling elite, and, most importantly, doing little to challenge the profound social inequality and pervades Pakistan, one of the most unequal and inegalitarian societies I have experienced. Her politics were opportunistic to the core, and in this she demonstrated the venality that pervades South Asian politics. Indeed, this was witnessed only this year, in the prolonged machinations between Bhutto and Musharraf, machinations that had nothing to do with principal and everything to do with trying to divide the spoils of power.
Having said that, though, she had made small differences to the lives of the Western-educated elite in Islamabad and Karachi. The one thing that was notable about Bhutto's Pakistan, as opposed to Zia's Pakistan, was that it was more liberal: the press was freer, women were freer, the country was not as oppressive as it had been--although it was still a very conservative place. Indeed, in this sense, Musharraf's Pakistan is a logical continuation of Bhutto's, which is perhaps one reason why the US was so keen to forge a partnership between the two.
That partnership could not have worked, because it reflected the needs of the Pakistani ruling classes, and not the Pakistani people. The PPP that Bhutto led was one that was founded by her father to meet the aspirations of the people: of workers, of students, and, most especially, of peasants. That PPP was the only mass popular movement that Pakistan has known. It was the people's party, a party against the elite, and in favour of social justice. Pakistan desperately needs this kind of mass-based political party. The PPP needs to be rebuilt, or a new, broadly-based party that represents the aspirations of the subordinate built: a modern, democratic organization defending the social, economic, political and human rights of Pakistan's people. If the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, who dominated the PPP, leads to these kinds of changes in the PPP, then benefit could come from her death. Sadly, though, my experience of Pakistan over the last 25 years suggests that this will not happen.
Friday, December 28, 2007
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
a new view
A local weekly newspaper in Peterborough, where Trent University is located, has published a short biographical article on me, of all things. It is somewhat embarrassing, but here it is.
Trent University professor has travelled the world trying to rouse global empathy
Date: 2007-12-12
By Kathryne Miller
Haroon Akram-Lodhi remembers sitting with men in Africa, in the fields they farm which have produced little or nothing, leaving these husbands and fathers broken and in tears because they are unable to feed their families.
In Asia, India, everywhere he has traveled he has been confronted by poverty and inequity – situations so horrendous and powerful that they have changed his life and driven him to try and change the world.“The fact of the matter is that you get confronted by this wave of inhumanity, you have to think about how the world is going to solve it and I do think that we are teetering towards a situation which, if we don't solve it, it will destroy us.”
Mr. Akram-Lodhi has brought his vast knowledge and experience to Trent University as professor of International Development Studies. He teaches his students about human inequality, agrarian change, and gender and economic policy.
Born in Glasgow, Prof. Akram-Lodhi was raised in Canada. He finished high school in Thunder Bay by the age of 15.As he got older, he would save his money to feed a passion for travel. But his trips were very different than those vacations most young people look forward to.
“I traveled to a lot of poor places and I had to confront my own feelings about the poverty that I was seeing, particularly in India and Bangladesh. The sort of poverty that you see there is something which is very degrading to the human spirit but at the same time you see this incredible resilience of people and the way in which they struggle to maintain dignity in the face of incredibly adverse circumstances. When I started university I knew that this is what I wanted to work on.”
Prof. Akram-Lodhi did well in his studies.He ended up working for more than a decade at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, the Netherlands.Then he felt the itch to find a new professional challenge and was eventually offered a position at Trent University.
“I must be frank and confess that before I looked into Trent, I did not know very much about it. However, once I started looking into it, I was struck by several things: the fact that it had the oldest international development studies program in Canada; and that it was, in many ways, from a teaching point of view, quite similar to the Institute of Social Studies, in that teaching was rigorously critical and interdisciplinary--which I liked, a lot.”
Professor Akram-Lodhi did not make the decision alone to take the post at Trent.His wife Catherine and their two children, aged eight and six, also had a say.“The position at Trent was an important position for him.” explains Ms Akram-Lodhi.“We talked about it as a family and I thought that he could do a lot for Trent.”
The professor now commutes from the family home in Toronto to his job here.The couple have decided to settle in Toronto to give their children more of a geographic anchor.Their son was born in London, their daughter in Thailand and they have travelled extensively.
Now Prof. Akram-Lodhi is sharing his experience and knowledge with students here.“The students at Trent are, in my experience, quite remarkable. They are committed, motivated and challenging. This comes together nicely in my classes, I hope.”
And the professor also hopes he sparks in his students the same kind of passion he holds to make the world a better place.“For much of humanity, life is brutal: it is short, it is filled with violence, it is filled with poverty, it is filled with injustice. However, it does not have to be this way. There are reasons why the world works the way it does, and I want my students to have a better understanding of how poverty processes are not inevitable but are made by people.”
When they understand that, they come to understand that we have the imagination, the knowledge and the people that could make the world a far more tolerable place, in a very short period of time. There is good reason to hope for a far, far better tomorrow: but it requires that we all work towards it, collectively, for the good of all. So let's get to it.”
For his students, learning under such an avid tutor can be a challenge. At least, so says Vincent Heney, former student and current teaching assistant to Prof. Akram-Lodhi.“He's incredibly knowledgeable and he's a brilliant academic. When I was a student it was intimidating. But as a colleague it's quite a privilege to be around someone who is so revered in the academic circles of development. Yet Haroon's a very personable guy. He's very down to earth.” It is his fierce commitment to humanity that makes Prof. Akram-Lodhi such a remarkable teacher and man.
“I think Haroon is a beautiful human being,” muses his wife.“He is completely selfless.”And it seems almost impossible to separate the man from the scholar or the humanist.
“I am very fortunate. I really enjoy my work. However, it is not a job, it is a way of life. It never goes away, it is always there, and I am always learning, thinking, communicating and disseminating ideas and advice based upon those ideas.”
The weblink for this article is:
http://www.mykawartha.com/article/24120
Trent University professor has travelled the world trying to rouse global empathy
Date: 2007-12-12
By Kathryne Miller
Haroon Akram-Lodhi remembers sitting with men in Africa, in the fields they farm which have produced little or nothing, leaving these husbands and fathers broken and in tears because they are unable to feed their families.
In Asia, India, everywhere he has traveled he has been confronted by poverty and inequity – situations so horrendous and powerful that they have changed his life and driven him to try and change the world.“The fact of the matter is that you get confronted by this wave of inhumanity, you have to think about how the world is going to solve it and I do think that we are teetering towards a situation which, if we don't solve it, it will destroy us.”
Mr. Akram-Lodhi has brought his vast knowledge and experience to Trent University as professor of International Development Studies. He teaches his students about human inequality, agrarian change, and gender and economic policy.
Born in Glasgow, Prof. Akram-Lodhi was raised in Canada. He finished high school in Thunder Bay by the age of 15.As he got older, he would save his money to feed a passion for travel. But his trips were very different than those vacations most young people look forward to.
“I traveled to a lot of poor places and I had to confront my own feelings about the poverty that I was seeing, particularly in India and Bangladesh. The sort of poverty that you see there is something which is very degrading to the human spirit but at the same time you see this incredible resilience of people and the way in which they struggle to maintain dignity in the face of incredibly adverse circumstances. When I started university I knew that this is what I wanted to work on.”
Prof. Akram-Lodhi did well in his studies.He ended up working for more than a decade at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, the Netherlands.Then he felt the itch to find a new professional challenge and was eventually offered a position at Trent University.
“I must be frank and confess that before I looked into Trent, I did not know very much about it. However, once I started looking into it, I was struck by several things: the fact that it had the oldest international development studies program in Canada; and that it was, in many ways, from a teaching point of view, quite similar to the Institute of Social Studies, in that teaching was rigorously critical and interdisciplinary--which I liked, a lot.”
Professor Akram-Lodhi did not make the decision alone to take the post at Trent.His wife Catherine and their two children, aged eight and six, also had a say.“The position at Trent was an important position for him.” explains Ms Akram-Lodhi.“We talked about it as a family and I thought that he could do a lot for Trent.”
The professor now commutes from the family home in Toronto to his job here.The couple have decided to settle in Toronto to give their children more of a geographic anchor.Their son was born in London, their daughter in Thailand and they have travelled extensively.
Now Prof. Akram-Lodhi is sharing his experience and knowledge with students here.“The students at Trent are, in my experience, quite remarkable. They are committed, motivated and challenging. This comes together nicely in my classes, I hope.”
And the professor also hopes he sparks in his students the same kind of passion he holds to make the world a better place.“For much of humanity, life is brutal: it is short, it is filled with violence, it is filled with poverty, it is filled with injustice. However, it does not have to be this way. There are reasons why the world works the way it does, and I want my students to have a better understanding of how poverty processes are not inevitable but are made by people.”
When they understand that, they come to understand that we have the imagination, the knowledge and the people that could make the world a far more tolerable place, in a very short period of time. There is good reason to hope for a far, far better tomorrow: but it requires that we all work towards it, collectively, for the good of all. So let's get to it.”
For his students, learning under such an avid tutor can be a challenge. At least, so says Vincent Heney, former student and current teaching assistant to Prof. Akram-Lodhi.“He's incredibly knowledgeable and he's a brilliant academic. When I was a student it was intimidating. But as a colleague it's quite a privilege to be around someone who is so revered in the academic circles of development. Yet Haroon's a very personable guy. He's very down to earth.” It is his fierce commitment to humanity that makes Prof. Akram-Lodhi such a remarkable teacher and man.
“I think Haroon is a beautiful human being,” muses his wife.“He is completely selfless.”And it seems almost impossible to separate the man from the scholar or the humanist.
“I am very fortunate. I really enjoy my work. However, it is not a job, it is a way of life. It never goes away, it is always there, and I am always learning, thinking, communicating and disseminating ideas and advice based upon those ideas.”
The weblink for this article is:
http://www.mykawartha.com/article/24120
Monday, October 29, 2007
Canada's development co-operation
Canada currently delivers about $4.1 billion a year in development co-operation, or what is commonly known as 'foreign aid'. Moreover, Canadian aid has been increasing in nominal (non-inflation adjusted) terms for the last several years--as recently as 2001 Canada's development co-operation was just $1.9 billion. Nonetheless, in an October peer evaluation of Canada's development co-operation effort, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development's (OECD) Development Assistance Committee suggested that Canada's development co-operation policy lacks focus and political direction. Of course, the OECD did not say this quite as bluntly as this; it is a diplomatic talking shop. Nonetheless, the point was made.
According to the Washington-based Center for Global Development (CGD), Canada as a country scores pretty well in the CGD's 'Commitment to development index'. This index evaluates OECD countries on the basis of the size and quality of development co-operation, their openness to exports from developing countries, their policies to promote investment and technology transfer to developing countries, their openness to migration, their commitment to controlling greenhouse gas emissions, their efforts to secure peace and security, and their attempts to combat corruption. Canada is ranked 7th in the OECD. It does not score well in aid, but does do well in trade, investment and technology. It scores less well on the environment and on security, as well as migration. The countries with the biggest commitment to development, according to the CGD, are not surprisingly 'the Nordics': the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland. It is to Canada's credit that it places in this league; the Nordics are indeed impressive donors.
If Canada is doing so well, in relative terms, in its commitment to development, why is it falling short in its development co-operation? According to the OECD, part of the problem is that the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) has a weak mandate and is insufficiently results-oriented. The weak mandate is reflected in the lack of a clear statement as to what is the purpose of Canadian development co-operation. This is reinforced by changing political circumstances, which result in improvised policy pronouncements, at the expense of a clear direction. Changing political circumstances are reflected in ministerial appointments; five ministers have had responsibility for CIDA over the past six years, and the average tenure of the head of CIDA over the past few years has been 18 months. This, of course, goes back to the body politic, and the transition from the Liberals, under two prime ministers, to the Conservatives, ruling from the position of a minority.
The OECD report proposes that CIDA should do what is actually already Government policy. This reflects the iterative character of such reports; the conclusions were seen by the Canadian Government long before the report was published, allowing the Government to pre-empt the findings of the report in the last Budget. In the Budget, two lines signified quite an important change in Canada's aid policy. The first noted that the Government intended to focus bilateral (country to country) aid on fewer countries where 'we will aim to be among the largest five donors in core countries of interest'. The second was the pledge to 'put more of our staff in the field, allowing us to be more responsive and make better choices on the ground'. Both these recommendations, which were made in the OECD review in October, were in the Budget in March.
In fact, the first recommendation shows the remarkable degree of consensus within the Canadian establishment about development co-operation. This is because it was under the previous Liberal-led government of Paul Martin that the first intention to reduce Canada's number of development 'partners' to 25 was announced. These countries have been receiving upwards of 40 per cent of Canada's development co-operation over the past few years, and indeed in 2006 the top 20 recipients of Canadian aid received 68 per cent of the total.
As to the second recommendation, there can be little doubt that CIDA is far to ensconced in its headquarters in Hull. Only between 10 and 20 per cent of CIDA's staff works abroad, in the field.
So: does the OECD--and the Government--have it right? Only partially. The problems with Canada's aid program are three: it is inefficient; it is distorted; and it is inadequate. Canada's development co-operation is inefficient precisely because of some of the problems identified in the OECD review: as anyone who has worked with CIDA (as I have) will tell you, it is extremely bureaucratic and inflexible. It has a culture of form filling and box checking that, in my view, demonstrates the worst aspects of the 'development industry'. However, that is only part of the problem. It is also staffed by a surprising large number of people who have little, if any, interest in international development. Many CIDA staffers are career civil servants brought in to fulfill a task. This means not only a lack of professional commitment to international development; it also means a lack of adequate preparation--or indeed understanding--for the work that they have to do. As a consequence of this, CIDA relies very heavily on a coterie of well paid consultants, some of whom are very good (I have to say that--I was one!), but many of whom are professional consultants that earn their living by securing the next contract and the next contract is secured by giving the client what they want to hear. The lack of adequate preparation is also reflected in CIDA's attachment to the latest development 'fads': it is somewhat ironic that having scaled back rural development programs for some years, with the new World Bank World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development, agriculture is back, and, in all likelihood, CIDA will now have to try and revive an expertise in a policy area that it neglected for decades. Finally, the lack of adequate preparation means that CIDA often plays 'follow the leader'; and in development co-operation, this means, far too often, follow the neoliberal leader.
As for distortions in the aid program, the biggest is, of course, Afghanistan. Not even mentioned in the Martin Government's list of 25 development 'partners', Afghanistan is far and away Canada's largest aid recipient, and will receive more than $1 billion by 2011. However, Canadian aid in Afghanistan is embedded within a broader discourse: defence, diplomacy and development. The aid effort in Afghanistan is very closely tied into Canada's military mission there; with the defence leg being much stronger than the other two it is totally unclear as to what exactly is the purpose of Canada's aid in Afghanistan--other than providing support for the military mission.
Finally, there is the inadequacy. Canada has committed itself to the UN target of devoting 0.7 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) to development co-operation. Currently, Canada devotes around 0.35 per cent of GDP to development co-operation. This is where the discussion on concentrating foreign aid should be located. One of the reasons Canadian aid needs to be concentrated is because it is, in global terms, so paltry. If you don't have a lot of money, you don't have a lot of money to go round, which means you have to make strict choices--it is a very neoliberal perspective. Others of a less neoliberal persuasion might suggest that increasing the amount of money increases the choices that can be made, and that that is what is extremely important in understanding why Canada's development co-operation record in aid--as opposed to say trade, investment and technology--is not as good as one might hope.
Canada's development co-operation spending has increased for several years. Canadians are respected in the field, and have made important contributions to international development. Nonetheless, in global terms, Canada is not an important bilateral 'player' in international development. Part of this is because of inadequate resources for the tasks at hand; part of this is because of distortions caused by Canada's foreign policy; and part of this is because of inefficiencies within CIDA. These are the issues that must be sorted out by the new generation of international development activists that are emerging from the universities and from civil society.
According to the Washington-based Center for Global Development (CGD), Canada as a country scores pretty well in the CGD's 'Commitment to development index'. This index evaluates OECD countries on the basis of the size and quality of development co-operation, their openness to exports from developing countries, their policies to promote investment and technology transfer to developing countries, their openness to migration, their commitment to controlling greenhouse gas emissions, their efforts to secure peace and security, and their attempts to combat corruption. Canada is ranked 7th in the OECD. It does not score well in aid, but does do well in trade, investment and technology. It scores less well on the environment and on security, as well as migration. The countries with the biggest commitment to development, according to the CGD, are not surprisingly 'the Nordics': the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland. It is to Canada's credit that it places in this league; the Nordics are indeed impressive donors.
If Canada is doing so well, in relative terms, in its commitment to development, why is it falling short in its development co-operation? According to the OECD, part of the problem is that the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) has a weak mandate and is insufficiently results-oriented. The weak mandate is reflected in the lack of a clear statement as to what is the purpose of Canadian development co-operation. This is reinforced by changing political circumstances, which result in improvised policy pronouncements, at the expense of a clear direction. Changing political circumstances are reflected in ministerial appointments; five ministers have had responsibility for CIDA over the past six years, and the average tenure of the head of CIDA over the past few years has been 18 months. This, of course, goes back to the body politic, and the transition from the Liberals, under two prime ministers, to the Conservatives, ruling from the position of a minority.
The OECD report proposes that CIDA should do what is actually already Government policy. This reflects the iterative character of such reports; the conclusions were seen by the Canadian Government long before the report was published, allowing the Government to pre-empt the findings of the report in the last Budget. In the Budget, two lines signified quite an important change in Canada's aid policy. The first noted that the Government intended to focus bilateral (country to country) aid on fewer countries where 'we will aim to be among the largest five donors in core countries of interest'. The second was the pledge to 'put more of our staff in the field, allowing us to be more responsive and make better choices on the ground'. Both these recommendations, which were made in the OECD review in October, were in the Budget in March.
In fact, the first recommendation shows the remarkable degree of consensus within the Canadian establishment about development co-operation. This is because it was under the previous Liberal-led government of Paul Martin that the first intention to reduce Canada's number of development 'partners' to 25 was announced. These countries have been receiving upwards of 40 per cent of Canada's development co-operation over the past few years, and indeed in 2006 the top 20 recipients of Canadian aid received 68 per cent of the total.
As to the second recommendation, there can be little doubt that CIDA is far to ensconced in its headquarters in Hull. Only between 10 and 20 per cent of CIDA's staff works abroad, in the field.
So: does the OECD--and the Government--have it right? Only partially. The problems with Canada's aid program are three: it is inefficient; it is distorted; and it is inadequate. Canada's development co-operation is inefficient precisely because of some of the problems identified in the OECD review: as anyone who has worked with CIDA (as I have) will tell you, it is extremely bureaucratic and inflexible. It has a culture of form filling and box checking that, in my view, demonstrates the worst aspects of the 'development industry'. However, that is only part of the problem. It is also staffed by a surprising large number of people who have little, if any, interest in international development. Many CIDA staffers are career civil servants brought in to fulfill a task. This means not only a lack of professional commitment to international development; it also means a lack of adequate preparation--or indeed understanding--for the work that they have to do. As a consequence of this, CIDA relies very heavily on a coterie of well paid consultants, some of whom are very good (I have to say that--I was one!), but many of whom are professional consultants that earn their living by securing the next contract and the next contract is secured by giving the client what they want to hear. The lack of adequate preparation is also reflected in CIDA's attachment to the latest development 'fads': it is somewhat ironic that having scaled back rural development programs for some years, with the new World Bank World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development, agriculture is back, and, in all likelihood, CIDA will now have to try and revive an expertise in a policy area that it neglected for decades. Finally, the lack of adequate preparation means that CIDA often plays 'follow the leader'; and in development co-operation, this means, far too often, follow the neoliberal leader.
As for distortions in the aid program, the biggest is, of course, Afghanistan. Not even mentioned in the Martin Government's list of 25 development 'partners', Afghanistan is far and away Canada's largest aid recipient, and will receive more than $1 billion by 2011. However, Canadian aid in Afghanistan is embedded within a broader discourse: defence, diplomacy and development. The aid effort in Afghanistan is very closely tied into Canada's military mission there; with the defence leg being much stronger than the other two it is totally unclear as to what exactly is the purpose of Canada's aid in Afghanistan--other than providing support for the military mission.
Finally, there is the inadequacy. Canada has committed itself to the UN target of devoting 0.7 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) to development co-operation. Currently, Canada devotes around 0.35 per cent of GDP to development co-operation. This is where the discussion on concentrating foreign aid should be located. One of the reasons Canadian aid needs to be concentrated is because it is, in global terms, so paltry. If you don't have a lot of money, you don't have a lot of money to go round, which means you have to make strict choices--it is a very neoliberal perspective. Others of a less neoliberal persuasion might suggest that increasing the amount of money increases the choices that can be made, and that that is what is extremely important in understanding why Canada's development co-operation record in aid--as opposed to say trade, investment and technology--is not as good as one might hope.
Canada's development co-operation spending has increased for several years. Canadians are respected in the field, and have made important contributions to international development. Nonetheless, in global terms, Canada is not an important bilateral 'player' in international development. Part of this is because of inadequate resources for the tasks at hand; part of this is because of distortions caused by Canada's foreign policy; and part of this is because of inefficiencies within CIDA. These are the issues that must be sorted out by the new generation of international development activists that are emerging from the universities and from civil society.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
a new format
I have reformatted the layout of my devlog, in order to show a number of links to alternative development and heterodox economics websites. Normal postings will resume shortly; I need to write something about the new World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development from the World Bank.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
summer 2007 activities
The summer of 2007 was, as usual, a busy few months.
In terms of research, for most of the summer I worked on two papers. One was commissioned for Third World Quarterly , and is on the relationship between market-led agrarian reform and neoliberal enclosure. The paper is now finished, and will be published before the end of the year. The second was for a forthcoming collection entitled Gender Equality and the Millennium Development Goals in an Age of Human Insecurity, and examines the macroeconomics of the MDGs from a gender perspective. This paper is currently in its third draft; the book will come out next year. I have also done final work on a review essay for the Journal of Agrarian Change, entitled 'Land reform, rural social relations and the peasantry', which was published in volume 7 number 4 of that journal.
In addition, I was appointed to the United Nations Development Programme's International Expert Group on Gender Equality, Economic Growth and Poverty Reduction. As a result, I attended an intense, exhausting and very rewarding two-day workship at the University of Essex in Colchester, UK in June with members of UNDP's Gender Team and an impressive international panel.
Also in June I attended the annual meetings of the Canadian Association for the Study of International Development. I found this event to be an extremely revealing portrait of the state of academic international development studies in Canada. As a result of these meetings, I agreed to become Co-Chair of the Editorial Board of the Canadian Journal of Development Studies, a post that will be both demanding and important in the development of international development studies in Canada.
I have been continuing my tasks as Co-Editor of the Routledge-ISS Book Series Studies in Rural Livelihoods. As part of this role I have been busily working on my next book, which will be edited with C Kay of the ISS, and which is entitled Political Economy, Rural Livelihoods and the Agrarian Question: Peasants and Globalization.
In July I had the opportunity to act as respondent to a series of questions posed by the BBC Vietnamese service on land disputes in Vietnam, while in May I acted as a respondent for Peterborough This Week, offering my views on global inequality.
Finally, of course, as befits anyone involved in teaching, I worked during the summer on my lectures for the 2007-2008 academic year, and I hope that my future students will find the results worthwhile.Thursday, September 27, 2007
brutal generals and dissenting monks
Brutal generals and dissenting monks
If priesthood forms an alliance with the winner of 1990 election, a 'very significant force' would be born
Penniless, devout and thoroughly dangerous.
Amid reports of mounting violence inside isolated Myanmar, that assessment now seems to be the ruling military's view of the unarmed, maroon-robed Buddhist monks leading the popular revolt against 45 years of dictatorship.
Numbering 400,000 to 500,000 in a country that is 90 per cent Buddhist, with a monastery in virtually every community, the monks in what used to be called Burma command huge respect, providing spiritual guidance and a ubiquitous role at weddings, funerals and other events in the community.
The monks are traditionally aloof and secretive, and the absence of foreign correspondents in the country makes their aims hard to read, said A. Haroon Akram-Lodhi, a professor of international development studies and Asian specialist at Trent University.
But recent reports of an alliance with the famous dissident suggest a shift in the landscape.
"This is the most surprising development if it turns out to be the case," Prof. Akram-Lodhi said.
"Together they would be a very significant force ... and the military would have to use a lot of violence."
Sixty years after Burma secured its independence, the generals running one of Asia's most repressive nations have changed its name to Myanmar, built a shiny new, eerily empty capital city 320 kilometres north of Rangoon (now called Yangon) and struggled to persuade their few foreign friends the current upheaval can be contained.
But in many regards, Myanmar's crumbling infrastructure and its 50 million impoverished, ardently religious people remain stuck in a time warp in which Buddhism remains the basis of daily life.
Thus it was hardly surprising that the army held its fire for several weeks, as throngs of demonstrators led by monks choked the streets of Rangoon, Mandalay and other cities, galvanized over a 500-per-cent jump in fuel prices last month.
"An attack on the monks is an attack on people's faith, and that's where there's going to be a lot of problems," Prof. Akram-Lodhi said.
It is thought that about 10,000 monks have been taking a role in the protests. And they know how to yank the military tiger's tail.
Dependent entirely on donations for their livelihood, the monks' recent announcement that they would no longer accept handouts from the junta struck a particular nerve, said Myint Swe of the BBC's Burmese-language radio service.
"The government wants the image they are pious and helping the monks."
Drawn from the Theravada, or southern, school of Buddhism, Myanmar's monks have long been politically active - "the worst of all" the trouble makers, George Orwell wrote in Burmese Days, his 1934 novel about British imperialism's fast-fading glories.
From the British colonial era, through to the 1988 rebellion in which an estimated 3,000 civilians died, non-violence has been the monks' hallmark.
And by every estimate, the support they enjoy is near universal.
"The country is very devout. It's also incredibly poor and unequal, and people find solace in their faith," Prof. Akram-Lodhi said.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
the sub-prime financial crisis
Summer has come to an end, and, in the aftermath of Labour Day, we can start to look forward to the autumn. Over the course of the summer, the global economic event that will most be remembered has been the sub-prime financial crisis in the US. It is an event that will continue to reverberate for some time; and yet it is not well understood. Moreover, the relationship of the sub-prime financial crisis to globalization and international development is all but absent in most commentary. Yet the relationship is key; in order to understand the sub-prime financial crisis, you have to understand its international (development) dimensions.
First, though, it is important to be clear about what the crisis in global financial markets is all about. The answer is simple: people in the US are borrowing too much. Many of the people that have been borrowing have been those that previously would not have passed a credit check--they were 'risky'. The US mortgage industry constructed a set of complex financial instruments to 'tap' this segment, and thus created a new financial market--the sub-prime mortgage. Sub-prime is a nice way of saying that the US financial system started making what Barbara Enhrenreich has called NINJA loans--'no income, no jobs or assets'. Why did people take these loans? The answer is simple: the US financial sector offered them the loans. This was not a silly choice on the part of poor households. Those who had nothing were given the chance to get a loan to buy a house, the price of which has been going through the roof, and which therefore offered the poor their first real chance of benefiting from the financial speculation that they see all around them. It was a wholly rational choice. Remember, in any financial crisis that is driven by people borrowing too much, their are two culprits: those that do the borrowing; and those that do the lending, that is to say, in this case, US finance capital. How did the crisis get out of hand? Intermediaries between borrowers and lenders encouraged both to undertake speculative investments, so that they could rake in their commissions.
Why did the crisis break? Simple. You are given a mortgage at a low ('sub-prime') interest rate for a year. You take it, hoping that you will be able to pay your mortgage once the temporary low interest rate is removed. However, when the interest rate rises, and you don't have the cash, you start to have problems meeting your interest payments. One in 7 US homeowners with sub-prime mortgages failed to keep up their payments during the second quarter of 2007 and 619000 mortgagees face repossession. Multiply this more than a million times--some 6 million US households, or 2.5 million people, are in risk of mortgage default when their interest rates are reset in the next 18 months, sitting on debts of US$1,000 billion--and all of a sudden there is a US debt crisis. The onset of the debt crisis frightens the banks, who immediately want to sell the claims they can make on the mortgages provided by specialist lenders, and who thus provided the foundation on which the sub-prime mortgage market was built. In the debt crisis, then, there is, by the financial institutions, a 'flight to quality': that is, they want to sell risky high return assets and buy safer, lower return assets.
Why then has the sub-prime financial crisis gone global? How did 'contagion' take place? The answer is that the sub-prime financial crisis is the mere tip of the iceberg--the global financial crisis runs far, far deeper. In order to understand the global dynamics of the sub-prime crisis, it is important to ask: how has it been the case that US households have been able to incur such massive debts? In the world of global finance, someone, somewhere has to be providing the money that temporarily allows people and countries to spend more than they have. Where, then, is this money coming from?
There is, globally, a glut of savings. In Asia in particular, but also in parts of Latin America,
peasant farmers, urban workers, street vendors and sex workers, amongst others, are saving large proportions of their incomes, because they have no security for the future . These savings have flowed, through financial intermediaries like banks, insurance companies and the like, from China, Brazil, India and other countries to the US, as non-Americans buy US assets at an historically unparalleled rate. In other words, capital from around the world has been flowing into the US, financing the purchase of assets that allows US banks and other financial intermediaries to lend on to groups within the US that are also spending more than they earn. Pay-day loans, rent-to-buy furniture, easy credit cards with exorbitant interest rates--US financial capital has been increasingly seeking to lend money to those who could least afford to pay the interest because money has been flowing into them from the developing world. They have done this is in the knowledge that the US government will not allow the US financial system to fail should poor borrowers default: it will, if necessary, bail out financial capital threatened with default. Thus, when Long Term Credit Management threatened default, Wall Street made sure it was bailed out; and this would happen again. Thus, no one does not expect that the US Federal Reserve, the US central bank, will not to cut interest rates, because this will shore up over-extended US finance capital. A rate cut is inevitable, will lower the cost of borrowing and lending, and thus benefit overstretched US finance capital.
Global financial crises are always about excessive credit being made available to borrowers, followed by a speculative splurge, falling prices, default and hysteria. This one is no different. Nonetheless, it is important to be precise and clear about the details of this crisis. Poor farmers and dispossessed workers save; their savings flow to the US; this helps US finance extend credit to poor people who cannot pay; they are unable to pay; and the Federal Reserve steps in to ensure the viability of global finance, US banks, and the US economy. The fact is, though, that poor US households need jobs, not credit, in order to be able to buy; that peasant farmers and dispossessed workers in developing countries need security that their savings, unfortunately, do not secure; and that global finance capital needs to be disciplined, so that its excesses, which are so recurrent, do not continue.
First, though, it is important to be clear about what the crisis in global financial markets is all about. The answer is simple: people in the US are borrowing too much. Many of the people that have been borrowing have been those that previously would not have passed a credit check--they were 'risky'. The US mortgage industry constructed a set of complex financial instruments to 'tap' this segment, and thus created a new financial market--the sub-prime mortgage. Sub-prime is a nice way of saying that the US financial system started making what Barbara Enhrenreich has called NINJA loans--'no income, no jobs or assets'. Why did people take these loans? The answer is simple: the US financial sector offered them the loans. This was not a silly choice on the part of poor households. Those who had nothing were given the chance to get a loan to buy a house, the price of which has been going through the roof, and which therefore offered the poor their first real chance of benefiting from the financial speculation that they see all around them. It was a wholly rational choice. Remember, in any financial crisis that is driven by people borrowing too much, their are two culprits: those that do the borrowing; and those that do the lending, that is to say, in this case, US finance capital. How did the crisis get out of hand? Intermediaries between borrowers and lenders encouraged both to undertake speculative investments, so that they could rake in their commissions.
Why did the crisis break? Simple. You are given a mortgage at a low ('sub-prime') interest rate for a year. You take it, hoping that you will be able to pay your mortgage once the temporary low interest rate is removed. However, when the interest rate rises, and you don't have the cash, you start to have problems meeting your interest payments. One in 7 US homeowners with sub-prime mortgages failed to keep up their payments during the second quarter of 2007 and 619000 mortgagees face repossession. Multiply this more than a million times--some 6 million US households, or 2.5 million people, are in risk of mortgage default when their interest rates are reset in the next 18 months, sitting on debts of US$1,000 billion--and all of a sudden there is a US debt crisis. The onset of the debt crisis frightens the banks, who immediately want to sell the claims they can make on the mortgages provided by specialist lenders, and who thus provided the foundation on which the sub-prime mortgage market was built. In the debt crisis, then, there is, by the financial institutions, a 'flight to quality': that is, they want to sell risky high return assets and buy safer, lower return assets.
Why then has the sub-prime financial crisis gone global? How did 'contagion' take place? The answer is that the sub-prime financial crisis is the mere tip of the iceberg--the global financial crisis runs far, far deeper. In order to understand the global dynamics of the sub-prime crisis, it is important to ask: how has it been the case that US households have been able to incur such massive debts? In the world of global finance, someone, somewhere has to be providing the money that temporarily allows people and countries to spend more than they have. Where, then, is this money coming from?
There is, globally, a glut of savings. In Asia in particular, but also in parts of Latin America,
peasant farmers, urban workers, street vendors and sex workers, amongst others, are saving large proportions of their incomes, because they have no security for the future . These savings have flowed, through financial intermediaries like banks, insurance companies and the like, from China, Brazil, India and other countries to the US, as non-Americans buy US assets at an historically unparalleled rate. In other words, capital from around the world has been flowing into the US, financing the purchase of assets that allows US banks and other financial intermediaries to lend on to groups within the US that are also spending more than they earn. Pay-day loans, rent-to-buy furniture, easy credit cards with exorbitant interest rates--US financial capital has been increasingly seeking to lend money to those who could least afford to pay the interest because money has been flowing into them from the developing world. They have done this is in the knowledge that the US government will not allow the US financial system to fail should poor borrowers default: it will, if necessary, bail out financial capital threatened with default. Thus, when Long Term Credit Management threatened default, Wall Street made sure it was bailed out; and this would happen again. Thus, no one does not expect that the US Federal Reserve, the US central bank, will not to cut interest rates, because this will shore up over-extended US finance capital. A rate cut is inevitable, will lower the cost of borrowing and lending, and thus benefit overstretched US finance capital.
Global financial crises are always about excessive credit being made available to borrowers, followed by a speculative splurge, falling prices, default and hysteria. This one is no different. Nonetheless, it is important to be precise and clear about the details of this crisis. Poor farmers and dispossessed workers save; their savings flow to the US; this helps US finance extend credit to poor people who cannot pay; they are unable to pay; and the Federal Reserve steps in to ensure the viability of global finance, US banks, and the US economy. The fact is, though, that poor US households need jobs, not credit, in order to be able to buy; that peasant farmers and dispossessed workers in developing countries need security that their savings, unfortunately, do not secure; and that global finance capital needs to be disciplined, so that its excesses, which are so recurrent, do not continue.
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