Alternatives International

WSF Free Palestine

Palestinian Preparatory Committee — 2012-02-15T19:51:57Z

Occupied Palestine is part of every free heartbeat in this world and her cause continues to inspire solidarity across the globe. The World Social Forum Free Palestine is an expression of the human instinct to unite for justice and freedom and an echo of the World Social Forum's opposition to neo-liberal hegemony, colonialism, and racism through struggles for social, political and economic alternatives to promote justice, equality, and the sovereignty of peoples.

The WSF Free Palestine will be a global encounter of broad-based popular and civil society mobilizations from around the world. It aims to:

1. Show the strength of solidarity with the calls of the Palestinian people and the diversity of initiatives and actions aimed at promoting justice and peace in the region.

2. Create effective actions to ensure Palestinian self-determination, the creation of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, and the fulfillment of human rights and international law, by:

➢ Ending Israeli occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall;

➢ Ensuring the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and

➢ Implementing, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.

3. Be a space for discussion, exchange of ideas, strategizing, and planning in order to improve the structure of solidarity.

Exactly sixty-five years after Brazil presided over the UN General Assembly session that agreed upon the partition of Palestine, Brazil will host a different type of global forum: an historic opportunity for people from all over the world to stand up where governments have failed. The world's people will come together to discuss new visions and effective actions to contribute to justice and peace in the region.

We call on all organizations, movements, networks, and unions across the globe to join the WSF Free Palestine in November 2012 in Porto Alegre, Brazil. We ask you to join the International Committee for the WSF Free Palestine. Participation in this forum will structurally strengthen solidarity with Palestine, promote action to implement Palestinian's legitimate rights, and hold Israel and its allies accountable to international law.

Together we can raise global solidarity with Palestine to a new level!

Palestinian Preparatory Committee for the WSF Free Palestine 2012

Secretariat members:

PNGO – Palestinian NGO Network

Stop the Wall – Palestinian grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign

OPGAI – Occupied Palestinian Golan Heights Advocacy Initiative

Alternatives International represented by: Alternative Information Center and Teacher Creativity Center

Ittijah

General Union of Palestinian women

Coordination office:

PNGO – Palestinian NGO Network

Tel: +970 2 2975320/1
Fax: +970 2 2950704

E mail: samahd@pngo.net

The Big Green Question

George Monbiot — 2012-02-15T15:09:41Z

Is environmentalism compatible with social justice?

It is the stick with which the greens are beaten daily: if we spend money on protecting the environment, the poor will starve, or freeze to death, or will go without shoes and education. Most of those making this argument do so disingenuously: they support the conservative or libertarian politics that keep the poor in their place and ensure that the 1% harvest the lion's share of the world's resources.

Journalists writing for the corporate press, with views somewhere to the right of Vlad the Impaler and no prior record of concern for the poor, suddenly become their doughty champions when the interests of the proprietorial class are threatened. If tar sands cannot be extracted in Canada, they maintain, subsistence farmers in Africa will starve. If Tesco's profits are threatened, children will die of malaria. When it is done cleverly, promoting the interests of corporations and the ultra-rich under the guise of concern for the poor is an effective public relations strategy.

Even so, it is true that there is sometimes a clash between environmental policies and social justice, especially when the policies have been poorly designed, as I argued on this blog last month.

But while individual policies can be bad for the poor, is the protection of the environment inherently incompatible with social justice? This is the question addressed in the discussion paper published by Oxfam this morning.

Oxfam, remember, exists to defend the world's poorest people and help them to escape from poverty. Unlike the rightwing bloggers, it is motivated by genuine concern for social justice. So when it investigates the question of whether concern for the environment conflicts with development, we should take notice. Kate Raworth, who wrote the report, has created an essential template for deciding whether economic activity will help or harm humanity and the biosphere.

She points out that in rough terms we already know how to identify the social justice line below which no one should fall, and the destruction line above which human impacts should not rise.

The social justice line is set by the eleven priorities listed by the governments preparing for this year's Rio summit. These are:

– food security
– adequate income
– clean water and good sanitation
– effective healthcare
– access to education
– decent work
– modern energy services
– resilience to shocks
– gender equality
– social equity
– a voice in democratic politics.

The destruction line is set by the nine planetary boundaries identified in Stockholm in 2009 by a group of earth system scientists. They identified the levels beyond which we endanger the earth's living systems of:

– climate change
– biodiversity loss
– nitrogen and phosphate use
– ozone depletion
– ocean acidification
– freshwater use
– changes in land use
– particles in the atmosphere
– chemical pollution.

We are already living above the line on the first three indicators, and close to it on several others.

The space between these two lines is the “safe and just space for humanity to thrive in”. So what happens if everyone below the social justice line rises above it? Does that push us irrevocably over the destruction line? The answer, she shows, is no.

For example, providing enough food for the 13% of the world's people who suffer from hunger means raising world supplies by just 1%.

Providing electricity to the 19% of people who currently have none would raise global carbon emissions by just 1%.

Bringing everyone above the global absolute poverty line ($1.25 a day) would need just 0.2% of global income.

In other words, it is not the needs of the poor that threaten the biosphere, but the demands of the rich. Raworth points out that half the world's carbon emissions are produced by just 11% of its people, while, with grim symmetry, 50% of the world's people produce just 11% of its emissions. Animal feed used in the EU alone, which accounts for just 7% of the world's people, uses up 33% of the planet's sustainable nitrogen budget. “Excessive resource use by the world's richest 10 per cent of consumers,” she notes, “crowds out much-needed resource use by billions of other people.”

The politically easy way to tackle poverty is to try to raise the living standards of the poor while doing nothing to curb the consumption of the rich. This is the strategy almost all governments follow. It is a formula for environmental disaster, which, in turn, spreads poverty and deprivation. As Oxfam's paper says, social justice is impossible without “far greater global equity in the use of natural resources, with the greatest reductions coming from the world's richest consumers.”

This is not to suggest that all measures intended to protect the environment are socially just. Raworth identifies the evictions by biofuels companies and plantation firms harvesting carbon credits as examples of the pursuit of supposedly green policies which harm the poor. But before the sneering starts, remember that the fight against both these blights has been led by environmentalists, who recognised their destructive potential long before the libertarians now using them as evidence of the perfidy of the green movement.

But there are far more cases in which poverty has been exacerbated by the lack of environmental policies. The Oxfam paper points out that crossing any of the nine planetary boundaries can “severely undermine human development, first and foremost for women and men living in poverty.” Climate change, for example, is already hammering the lives of some of the world's poorest people. You can see the consequences of crossing another planetary boundary in the report just published by the New Economics Foundation, which shows that overfishing has destroyed around 100,000 jobs.

Just as mistaken green policies can damage the poor, mistaken poverty relief policies can damage the environment. For example, where fertiliser subsidies encourage farmers to use more than they need, as they do in China, money supposed to relieve poverty serves only to pollute the water supply. Development which has no regard for whom or what it harms is not development. It is the opposite of progress, damaging the Earth's capacity to support us and the rest of its living systems.

But extreme poverty, just like extreme wealth, can also damage the environment. People without access to clean energy sources, for example, are often forced to use wood for cooking. This shortens their lives as they inhale the smoke, destroys forests and exacerbates global warming by producing black carbon.

With a few exceptions, none of which should be hard to remedy, delivering social justice and protecting the environment are not only compatible: they are each indispensable to the other. Only through social justice, which must include the redistribution of the world's ridiculously concentrated wealth, can the environment and the lives of the world's poorest be defended.

Those who consume far more resources than they require destroy the life chances of those whose survival depends upon consuming more. As Gandhi said, the Earth provides enough to satisfy everyone's need but not everyone's greed.

www.monbiot.com

Project Briefs

Tamkinat Mirza — 2012-01-30T19:08:28Z

Initiative pour un autre monde (IPAM) – Paris, France

IPAM is in support of, and is currently promoting, the Fifth European Meeting of Analysis of Political Societies in Paris on February 2 and 3 in Paris. This meeting is titled “Arab Spring: myth and fiction” and will analyze the wave of protests that swept Arab countries from a comparative historical and political sociological perspective. IPAM also supports Study Day as part of “The war in Algeria, images and representation.” The day is intended to address tools and methods employed by the media during the war in Algeria. It aims to result in analytic findings complement existing military histories, politics and economic knowledge of the conflict.

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Alternatives Montreal — Montreal, Canada
Alternatives is in support of the Voices-Voix coalition. Voices-Voix is a non-partisan coalition of Canadians and Canadian organizations committed to defending the people's collective and individual rights to dissent, advocacy and democratic space. It believes that both citizens and governments have positive roles to play in supporting civil society, and in encouraging respect for democratic rights and values, including free speech, transparency and equality. Voices-Voix documents attacks against organizations, individuals and institutions that have raised their voices, to show the pattern of government silencing of free speech, and offer solidarity to those who have been targeted. The organization promotes debate amongst its members and allies about how to defend the space for democratic dissent and advocacy in Canada, through its forum and events. It also encourages Canadians to raise their voices so that governments meet their core responsibilities to respect the equality, transparency and diversity of voices that make a democracy thrive.

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Forum des Alternatives Maroc (FMAS) – Rabat, Morocco

The Forum des Alternatives Maroc held its 5th meeting on “Community Media for Citizen Information” that took place September 24-25. This meeting, organized by the civil society portal Maghreb-Machrek E-JOUSSOUR of the FMAS, hosted a series of debates around the promotion and development of community media in Morocco. As a six-part series of conferences, the discussions focused on the reform of the communications sector to guarantee freedom of expression and to put into place a legislative framework to guarantee the existence of community media. Participants also discussed challenges and hopes around information and communication as it relates to civil society.

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Teacher Creativity Center - Ramallah, Palestine

The Teacher Creativity Center has launched its 3-year operational plan. The centre provides a space to increase and improve children's access to quality education which integrates human rights-focused and civic education. This plan seeks activate participation of parents and local educational councils to provide a safe educational environment. The Teacher Creativity Center focuses on providing a safe, democratic, and stimulating environment, where human rights and democracy values can be effectively taught. The center will work on accomplishing its objectives for the next three years via activating four principle projects: the civic education program, the human rights and gender program, the social responsibility program, and the educational monitor program. The center seeks, in the next three years, to intensively work in 120 social locations.

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The African National Conference and South African Democracy

Stephen Eldon Kerr — 2012-01-30T19:05:33Z

The African National Congress (ANC) began anniversary celebrations for the 100th time on January 8, 2012. A crowd of 50 000, as well as 46 foreign dignitaries, packed into the Bloemfontein Rugby stadium to watch speeches from President Jacob Zuma and American civil-rights campaigner Jesse Jackson. The self-congratulations will continue throughout the year and will culminate with the ANC national conference held every five years to elect new leaders.

Celebrations are in order. No other African liberation movement is as old as the ANC, and the party can be proud of many of its achievements. It has enshrined a host of civil and social rights in the constitution; guaranteed 12 years of education to every child; reached the 1st Millennium Development goal by halving the number of people who live on $1 a day; and brought housing, electricity, and sanitation to millions of people.

But after 17 years in power the ANC's leaders have run out of ideas. The end of apartheid created space for a new upper class of black politicians and businessmen to emerge, but the majority of South Africans still live in poverty. 40% of South Africans live on less than $2 a day and 40% of South Africans are unemployed. Before 2010 the government had not acknowledged the link between HIV and AIDS, which limited the availability of treatment programs.

ANC supporters point out that South Africa's economic growth is forecast at 4.3% for the coming year, and the government's budget deficit is set to shrink too. The country's relative political stability compared to the rest of the continent means South Africa remains one of the top African destinations for Foreign Direct Investment, notably from China.

Yet the benefits of this growth have not always been used wisely. Foreign capital is too frequently used to maintain the ANC's political dominance; corruption is now so commonplace that it barely registers as news.

When the money is used legally either a select few reap the rewards of growth, or the government misuses the funds. Over the last 17 years the wealth and power of the small class of rich South Africans—regardless of race—has increased exponentially compared to the rest of the population.

Investors, however, continue to bemoan the low education levels of the population, insisting that a more educated workforce is necessary to foster continued long-term growth. The ANC, once the anti-establishment party of change, is now the establishment: protecting its own interests in the face of calls for change. When Jackson roared 'Happy Birthday to the New South Africa' to the gathered ANC crowd in Bloemfontein, the conflation of party and state was all too clear.

Always a broad coalition, the ANC now struggles to present a united front. The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), historically an important part of the ANC coalition, is now highly critical of the government. COSATU fears that neo-liberal economic policies have been pursued without adequate checks on the power of foreign capital. For example, the government recently permitted Walmart to buy one of South Africa's leading monopoly retailers. The government welcomed the capital inflow but COSATU fears the downward push on wages will not be cushioned by increased public sector spending.

Disaffection at the grassroots level has led to the rise of populist politicians such as Julius Malema. Malema, recently removed as the head of the ANC's youth wing, preached anti-white sentiment so strongly that Genocide Watch upgraded South Africa's status from level 5 to level 6: the level before the one characterized by mass exterminations.

As long as South Africa remains sub-Saharan Africa's dominant economy it is unlikely genocide will occur, but Malema's removal highlights the embarrassing level of division within the ANC. As the government strives to maintain a respectable appearance to the international community and investors, ordinary South Africans feel abandoned by the party.

Regardless, 60% of South Africans would still vote for the ANC, and it will always be the party of freedom for the black 79% of South Africa's 50 million people. There are also no other viable alternative black parties at the moment. A real problem for budding South African politicians, then, is the ANC's curtailment of press and judicial freedoms. ANC officials have threatened to leak dossiers containing the private details of journalists who critique the party. In this context, it is difficult for a credible grassroots political movement to gain supporters. The ANC is the party of the establishment, but South Africa needs viable political alternatives if the wishes of the general population are to be taken into account along with the need for economic development.

Some are tired of waiting. In January 2011, the first conference of the Democratic Left was held. Activists at the conference determined to forge a new, post-national liberation, democratic movement among impoverished South Africans. The activists are committed to using grassroots action to pressurize South African politicians; the Democratic Left supported South Africa's first factory occupation at Mine-Line Engineering. The desire for comprehensive change of the current political status-quo exists, but in order for widespread reform to be achieved, the ANC will have to begin fostering a culture of democratic involvement. It remains to be seen whether the political will exists within the party for such reform.

President Zuma dedicated most of his anniversary speech to praising past ANC accomplishments, and with good reason. The party can be proud of what it has achieved, but the party must now start listening to the wishes of its population if it is to have a future it can be proud of too.

Get ‘em Before They Get Nukes: Iran's Scientists Targeted

Tamkinat Mirza — 2012-01-30T19:04:33Z

Iran's alleged militaristic nuclear capabilities have placed the country at the centre of the world's political stage. The nation's nuclear scientists have been assassinated and the identities of their assassins remain unknown.

The most recent victim of these attacks was Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a chemist who worked at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in Iran's Isfahan province. Roshan's death marks the fifth time in two years that a scientist from the state nuclear program has been targeted. He was reportedly killed by a magnetic bomb placed in his car last month, in the same manner as four other nuclear scientists in the past years. The explosion was reported to have been caused by a targeted, focused device: intended to kill one or two people, and small enough to not be heard from afar.

A Trend of Assassinations

Working for Iran's nuclear program has come to be equated with a state of constant insecurity: assassinations, kidnappings and sabotaged equipment are commonplace. Additionally, computer viruses have destroyed information networks and there have been numerous unexplained explosions at nuclear sites, missile testing grounds, refineries and pipelines.

The first Iranian scientist to be targeted in this series of assassinations, Masoud Ali Mohammadi, was killed on January 2010 by a bomb on a parked motorcycle. He was a follower of the opposition Green movement, and a senior official for the Institute of Applied Physics (IAP), where a significant amount of nuclear research is believed to be carried out.

The next attacks had two targets and occurred on November 2010. The victims were Majid Shahriari, another scientist in the nuclear program, and Fereydoun Abbasi Davani, an IAP official. Davani is the only survivor to date of this string of attacks, and is the current head of the overall Iranian atomic program.

Dariush Rezaeinejad was the fourth target. Rezaeinejad was an electronics expert for the nuclear program before he was shot by unknown gunmen on motorcycles.

The most recent attack, on Roshan, was an exact replication of the attacks on Shahriari and Davani, even down to the model of the victim's car: silver Peugeot 405s. These scientist's deaths were no coincidence, it appears.

Iran's Strained Political Relations

The US and Israel unequivocally oppose Iran and its nuclear policies. The US and its allies have been pressuring Iran to halt its uranium enrichment, a key element of the nuclear program, because they are concerned that Iran is attempting to produce atomic weapons in secret. Uranium enriched to low levels can be used as nuclear fuel, but at higher levels it can be used as material for nuclear warheads.

Iran has consistently denied—and continues to deny—any attempts to manufacture nuclear weapons, asserting that its program is peaceful and geared only toward generating electricity.

Despite Iran's continued denial, however, the EU is currently discussing sanctions to the country's oil exports. The USA is leading this global campaign to hinder Iranian oil exports, in an attempt to stop Iran's nuclear program.

Many countries, however, are wary that halting their purchases of Iranian crude oil could badly hurt their own economies. Iran has already received the support of both Japan and China in opposition to imposed embargoes. Iran has also threatened to close the Gulf's narrowest point, the Strait of Hormuz—an export route for 20% of the world's oil supply—if its oil exports are embargoed. Yet this move on Iran's part would drastically hurt its own economy and would be a desperate measure.

The USA is motivated to push these economic pressure tactics because of a November report by the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which documents “credible evidence” of Iran's experimentation with nuclear weapons design.

In response to this report, Iran invited IAEA inspectors to inspect its nuclear plants to discuss any “possible military dimensions” of the nuclear program. Clearly, Iran is willing to cooperate up to this point, and a team of inspectors made its way to Iran for a three-day visit to investigate the matter on January 29.

The Natanz nuclear facility, which reportedly has 8000 centrifuges in operation, is one of two facilities that is enriching uranium in Iran. In January, the IAEA identified the second in the mountains of Qom province. The IAEA also announced that Iran is currentlyenriching uranium to 20% purity at a previously secret facility. Iran has been criticized by the UN for enriching significantly more uranium than needed for civilian use—its current stocks are enough to provide the Tehran Nuclear Reactor with enough fuel for the next 4 to 5 years. The combination of these revelations has increased western criticism and suspicion of the breadth of Iran's nuclear program, and increased tensions between Iran and the US.

According to current and former officials, the United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has repeatedly employed covert means to slow the Iranian nuclear program over past years, including by supplying faulty parts and encouraging nuclear scientists such as Shahram Amiri to defect. While responsibility for the Stuxnet computer virus, which infected and disrupted control of some Iranian centrifuges in 2010, has not been formally taken, many cyber-security experts have put the US and Israel on a very limited list of nations thought capable of creating the virus and of the complexity of the “incredibly precise” attack itself.

Speculated suspects

Iran has blamed both Israel and the USA for the assassinations, and both countries have denied these accusations. However, Israel has consistently created an impression that it is, in part, responsible for the violence and sabotage, without taking formal responsibility for them.

Israel's military chief of staff Benny Gantz recently commented that 2012 “will be a critical year in the connection between Iran gaining nuclear power, changes in leadership, continuing pressure from the international community, and events that happen unnaturally."

As this comment preceded the attack of Roshan by a mere day, it has been taken by many as a hint of Israel's links to the attacks; observers equating the “unnatural events” with the scientist assassinations.

This involvement has precedent. Israel has a history of eliminating enemies abroad—the Munich Olympic attack of 1972 and the assassination of senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabouh in 2010 come to mind. Some have also sepculated that Mossad, Israel's national intelligence agency, has been recruiting Iranian dissidents in Iraq, to conduct operations in Iran.

Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian-American Council, believes that committing these attacks has no downside for Israel. According to her, if Iran decides to retaliate, that could be all the reason Israel needs to take military action.

Parsi told CNN that the assassinations do not match the kind of activity that USA intelligence would carry out in a country where there is no declared state of war. Further, an executive order dating back to Ford's presidency prevents the CIA from carrying out political assassinations. Exceptions have only been made for those organizations and affiliated individuals that the US has been at war with, such as the Taliban. Indeed, it would appear that the US intends to pressurize Iran solely through attempted economic sanctions instead.

There has also been speculation, both within Iran and internationally, that the assassinations were carried out by the Iranian government to eliminate nuclear scientists suspected of disloyalty. One reason for this speculation is the mode of the attacks: in the past, the Iranian government has had a penchant for employing motorcycles in its own “exterminations.” Another reason is the scientists' political loyalties; Mohammadi, for one, belonged to the opposition Green movement. Moreover, if the state is aware of its valuable scientists being targeted, why has it not increased protection for them?

Finally the similar nature of these attacks hints at the involvement of an internal network. Each attack occurred at midday, among civilian crowds, and the perpetrators made clean getaways each time.

Apart from the Iranian government, these details hint at the involvement of another elaborate on-ground network. An group such as Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MeK) would provide such a network and Israel's cooperation with this terrorist group cannot be ruled out. Still, as MeK is on the US list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, it would be a poor political move on Israel's part.

Nevertheless, many political speculators chalk up the attacks to Israel's attemps to coerce Iran into back down in its nuclear power production.

But has the intended effect been achieved? Iran's Vice-President Mohammed Reza Rahimi told state television that the violence would not stop “progress” in the country's nuclear program, and called the assassinations “evidence of [foreign] government sponsored terrorism.”

Indeed, observers of the Iranian nuclear program have commented that these assassinations will not incur major setbacks for the country's nuclear program, but will increase civilian insecurity, and it will deter Iranian scientists from working on the program. But the effects also hold the potential to transcend the local: as Iran-US relations remain strained, there is a possibility for escalation and a very real risk of confrontation between Israel and Iran. At this point, however, the IAEA team's findings will be a key determinant for Iran, Israel and the USA's subsequent actions.

The Decline of British Nationality

Stephen Eldon Kerr — 2012-01-30T19:00:54Z

Over the past twenty years, there has been a decline in the proportion of British citizens who consider their nationality primarily British. A report by Anthony Heath and Jane Roberts for the British Department of Justice shows that since 1979, the number of English, Welsh, and Scottish residents who consider their nationality to be primarily British has fallen. At the same time, the number describing themselves as Scottish, Welsh, or English has risen.

In 1979, 38 percent of Scottish people described themselves as British, a figure which fell to 20 percent in 1992, and then 14 percent by 2006. By contrast, in 1979, 56 percent of Scots described themselves as primarily Scottish, and by 2006 this had risen to 78 percent. This pattern is repeated in Wales and England.

This has led to calls for British identity to be redefined for the twenty first century. As a result, the current British government aims to reassert a ‘traditional British' identity based on a ‘muscular liberalism' that can create a ‘shared national identity that is open to everyone'.

The decline in British national sentiment is partly due to the change in ethnic and religious makeup of the country. In 1951, 4.2 percent of total British residents were born abroad, but this figure had risen to 8.3 percent by 2001. In other words over 2.5 million more people were born abroad in 2001 than in 1951.

The fastest rates of growth occurred during the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1950s, the British government offered citizens of former British colonies the opportunity to move to Britain and to automatically gain full rights as residents. This resulted in large-scale immigration from South Asia and the Caribbean to Britain.

Since the 1960s, the majority of new immigrants have come from Europe. This reflects the gradual integration of Britain into the European Union, and the subsequent easy passage of labour between the Union's member states.

In the 1970s, the majority of European immigrants were Irish, and in the 2000s the majority were Polish. In every decade since the 1970s, Asia has been the second largest contributor to Britain's foreign-born population, with India the largest single contributing country. All of these immigrants have brought into Britain diverse sets of cultures, belief systems, and religions that they cherish, believe in, and are not willing to lose through assimilation.

As Walter Menski notes, ‘immigrants resist outright assimilation, and will therefore reconstruct their own little worlds in diaspora in new ways'. Take a walk through Bethnal Green in London and you might mistake it for Bangladesh. Journey south to Brixton and you won't be able to escape the sounds and smells of Jamaica.

Yet the special relationship between the Church of England the British state excludes other religions from being allowed to feel properly British despite there being a greater plurality of religious belief in Britain than ever before.

First, the close relationship excludes other religions because it symbolises the primacy of the Church of England above all other religions. Second, as Tariq Modmood notes, such a relationship:
‘reinforces the image that Jews or Catholics or Hindus, Muslims or Sikhs are not really British and therefore cannot really be trusted to understand or cherish Britain…or have a lesser birthright to it, and so may legitimately be denied some of the available jobs, prizes, and distinctions and may legitimately be objects of suspicion in times of political and international tension.'

At the same time, many British people have concluded that granting automatic citizenship to former subjects of the British Empire in the 1950s and 1960s was a mistake. British politicians are wary of promoting multicultural policies because of the feared backlash. For example, in a 2003 White Paper, the British government emphasises the view that skilled immigrants should only be accepted as long as they can fill a job that a British resident cannot.

Professor Will Kymlicka of Queens University remarked that the British government ‘felt that the public would not accept increased immigration if there were any possibility that immigrants would take jobs from new residents, even if this cost were more than outweighed by the creation of new jobs.' The same White Paper makes no reference to ‘multiculturalism', instead proposing that immigrants must prove they are no threat to the British way of life. In the twenty-first century, the British perceive immigrants as a burden on their society.

This does not have to be the case. Professor Rainer Baubcock at the European University Institute argues that it is nearly impossible to create a shared identity out of the past, because we can never all share the same history.

Instead, Baubock suggests a shared identity should be formed out of the potential for a common future. In this view, transnational migration is a ‘catalyst that sets into motion a process of self-transformation of collective identities towards a more pluralistic…outlook'.

Rather than the metaphors of the assimilationist melting pot or multicultural salad bowl, the catalyst model suggests that social cohesion between different groups can be assured if citizens understand identities to be overlapping and overarching, and respectfully engage in dialogue with other identities in order to create a coherent identity narrative that balances the needs of all histories and cultures.

In the future British national identity should be built on the idea of a common future. The world is smaller than ever as more people are able to migrate than ever before. A view that sees immigration as the potential catalyst for great things is a truly 21st century view. Potential will sometimes require costs to be advanced, but if we persevere, the returns will make the pain worthwhile.

Obama and the indefinite detention and torture act

Kartiga Thiyagarajah — 2012-01-30T18:56:18Z

Each year, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of the United States is amended to accommodate the Department of Defense's budget for that fiscal year. The NDAA for Fiscal Year 2012 (FY2012) is particularly controversial because it infringes upon American citizens' constitutional rights.

The NDAA FY2012 is set to take effect on March 3, and includes a provision that has the potential to allow American citizens to be arrested, detained indefinitely, and tortured if suspected of terrorist acts. This imprisonment may occur both domestically and in foreign prisons not run by the US.

Further, “enhanced interrogation techniques” that were previously made illegal by the 2005 Anti-Torture Bill can now be applied to both American and non-American detainees. Techniques include waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and various forms of psychological torture. Most disturbing, individuals' arrest and interrogation can occur without charge and trial, and without being read their Miranda Rights.

On December 16, the US Senate voted in favour of the NDAA FY2012. Although President Obama warned that the White House would veto the new legislation, his administration ultimately approved the bill. According to White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, the new legislation will not “challenge the president's ability to collect intelligence, incapacitate dangerous terrorists and protect the American people.” For this reason, the administration did not push for a veto.

The bill has received severe backlash for its violation of basic human rights and the constitutional freedoms that Americans have grown accustomed to. Without being provided legal representation, anyone can now be suspected of terrorism and of having ties to terrorist organisations by the US government, and subsequently subjected to inhumane interrogation tactics.

Since its inception, the US Constitution has avoided military control of American lives. The NDAA FY2012, however, has made way for a new police state to reign over the US.

Republican Congressman and Presidential Candidate Ron Paul has vocalized his disdain for the new legislation. “This step where they can literally arrest American citizens and put them away without trial...is arrogant and bold and dangerous.” He likened the legislation's enactment to “legalizing martial law.”

Obama's decision to approve the NDAA FY2012 will not leave his political career unscathed. He has already faced accusations that he has disregarded many of his campaign promises. Now he stands charged with violating American civil rights. Not only have his opponents seized this opportunity to discredit his leadership of the country, but even many of his supporters now express concerns with his administration.

Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Anthony Romero, who once believed in Obama's campaign promise of ‘change', stated that, “He will forever be known as the president who allowed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law.”

Award-winning journalist and best-selling author Chris Hedges has sued the Obama administration for the provisions made in the NDAA FY2012. As an experienced foreign correspondent, Hedges has reported on countless terrorism-related events across the world. He claims that by broadly implicating those with “terrorist ties,” the new act may enable journalists who report terrorist related news to be labeled as supporters of enemy forces.

Hedges has also made public speculations regarding the motivations behind the legislation: “I suspect the real purpose of this bill is to thwart internal, domestic movements that threaten the corporate state. I suspect it passed because corporations, seeing unrest in the streets; knowing that things are about to get much worse; worrying that the Occupy movement will expand, do not trust the police to protect them. They want to be able to call in the Army. And now they can.”

The future of Hedges' lawsuit and the NDAA FY2012 remain uncertain. However, the new legislation has undoubtedly compromised the fundamental rights outlined by the US Constitution, and propelled American citizens into a state of constant insecurity.

Internet Censorship and The Case of MegaUpload

Liza Ponomarenko — 2012-01-30T18:49:51Z

Nations that limit access to the Internet violate a human right which has become essential to life in the 21st century: the freedom of speech and communication through the Internet. A lack of censorship within this digital platform is a precondition to efficient Internet communications, and modifications to this norm impinge on some basic democratic norms.

Universal Music Group's (UMG) recent prosecution of the Hong Kong-based online storage site MegaUpload—a site well known for illegally hosting copyright material—demonstrates how corporations are seeking to limit Internet freedoms.

On 9 December 2011, MegaUpload posted a self-promotional video on YouTube which included a number of UMG artists such as Kanye West, Will.I.Am, Jamie Foxx, Sean Combs, Alicia Keys, and Chris Brown. YouTube acted fast and removed the video.

Normally, YouTube removes videos only after a copyright holder requests such removal—in accordance to guidelines laid out in the United States Digital Millennium and Copyright Act (DMCA). The DMCA aims to protect both copyright and Internet freedoms, and copyright holders who abuse DMCA taked-own procedures are required to pay large monetary fines.

In this case, YouTube overstepped DMCA guidelines, as UMG and DMCA had a pre-existing agreement regarding copyrighted property. In response to YouTube's action, MegaUpload filed a lawsuit, a temporary restraining order, and a preliminary injunction against UMG for violating DMCA provisions.

On 15 December 2011, a judge gave UMG twenty-four hours to explain its actions: MegaUpload claimed that its right to free speech had been violated. It stated that Universal had “chosen to sabotage MegaUpload's promotional campaign, effectively censoring [MegaUpload's] ability to convey [its] message with [its] own original content... [despite the fact that] a significant number of today's top recording artists actively support [its] services.”

In its response, UMG claimed that the take-down was not governed by the DMCA, but by a separate agreement with Youtube which gives UMG the right to block or remove videos directly. In its own court filing, UMG stated that “the UMG-YouTube agreement grants UMG rights to effect the removal of user-posted videos through YouTube's Content Management System (CMS), based on a number of contractually-specified criteria that are not limited to the infringements of copyrights owned or controlled by UMG.”

These “criteria” have not been made public.

In other words, UMG has a private agreement with YouTube, which apparently exists outside of the DMCA. This allows UMG to remove content from YouTube, even when the content does not infringe on UMG copyrights. Undoubtedly, this is an unabashed form of censorship.

It is unclear whether whether YouTube has similar agreements with other corporations. It is clear, however, that the UMG-Youtube agreement has a score of unexplored implications for corporate Internet censorship and Internet freedoms. The fact that this agreement remained publicly unknown until MegaUpload filed its lawsuit is questionable and arguably, unethical. Internet users have a right to information regarding agreements between corporations, especially when these agreements directly affect them.

The video in question has been restored on YouTube pending the results of legal proceedings. However, the case reveals a need for international provisions regarding Internet freedoms, as national rules appear to be insufficient when large corporations and websites such as UMG and YouTube are not based out of one country.

If the Internet is to continue to be a tool that fosters free speech and communication, it must be specified what freedom on the Internet actually consists of. At the very least, private agreements such as the the UMG-YouTube contract must be made publicly known, to create a more elaborate picture of how the internet landscape is currently governed by negotiations between various megacorporations.

Oil exploitation in Nigeria: Five Decades of Environmental and Social Injustice Remain Unaddressed.

Geneviève Lavoie-Mathieu — 2012-01-30T18:48:53Z

Following President Goodluck Jonathan's abrupt decision to abolish a consumer fuel subsidy, Nigeria entered a new period of civil unrest. The unrest began as a citizens' protest but quickly transformed into a national strike in opposition to widespread corruption in general and increased oil prices in particular.

The strike has ended and the fuel subsidy has been partially reinstated, but the situation is not much better. In Nigeria, sub-Saharan Africa's biggest oil producer of crude oil, the oil industry has consistently been more of a curse than a blessing.

Paradoxically, Nigeria remains a net importer of refined petroleum products because itlacks modern refineries. The country has a wealth of natural resources and fertile land, but poverty, unemployment, and crime remain serious problems in Africa's most populous nation.

These problems can largely be attributed to two root causes. First, ethnic and religious tensions which have led to discrimination and violence; Nigeria has over 250 ethno-religious groups. This has led President Jonathan to declare that the situation is 'even worse than [during] the civil war'.

Second, the oil industry fuels systemic corruption. The oil boom of the 1970s, which transformed Nigeria into the sub-Sahara's fastest growing economy, was also an opportunity for rent-seeking activities and corruption in both private and public sectors to grow as speculators sough preferential contracts.

The attempt by president Jonathan to tackle corruption by eliminating the fuel subsidy is seen by some as the only way forward because the biggest beneficiaries of the subsidy were the owners of fuel-importing companies - among the richest people in the country. The government estimates it will save 1 trillion naira ($6.2 billion) in 2012 by eliminating the subsidy.

Critics of the subsidy argue that fuel importers overcharge for fuel in corrupt accounting procedures. Critics note that fuel bought for local consumption is sold at a high profit by smugglers over the border in Cameroon and Benin.
Consequently, critics argue, it is illusionary to believe that getting rid of the fuel subsidy will solve the problem of corruption. Several NGOs and Human Rights defense groups have argued that the policy is a smokescreen to 'usher in a new era of impoverishment for Nigerians' in a country where ‘pay and perks' are among the world's highest in a country, yet the vast majority of the population live on or less than 2$/day.

Analysts have criticized the timing and context of President Jonathan's decision to remove the fuel subsidy, suggesting it was a political move to counteract low public opinion.

Further, continuing attacks by the Boko Haram, an Islamic sect that is fighting against Western style education, have not let up. The group is based on an "extreme interpretation of the Qu'ran, in which violence is an accepted means to deal with 'non believers' or 'infidels.” Thus, a climate of uncertainty, violence and fear has been installed.

Boko Haram has been trying to create an insurgency styled on those in Afghanistan and Somalia, but it lacks the formal organisational structure and leadership of terrorist groups such as al Qaeda and al Shabaab.

The divide between Christians and Muslims has been amplified within Nigeria. The country's Christian population is roughly located in the south for the most part, with Muslims in the North.

In a country where long-standing civilian divides have hampered development and remain a sensitive subject, groups such as Boko Haram have the potential to recruit marginalised youth in efforts to radicalise them.

The oil industry is also disastrous for the environment. Over 5 decades of repeated oil spills have dissolved biodiversity in some places, and have left many people without a means of basic income in others. Oil spills in the Niger Delta are literally a 'daily occurrence'. Experts estimate that in total some 13 million barrels of oil have been spilt in the Niger Delta since oil exploration began in 1958. This is the equivalent of one Exxon Valdez every year for 50 years. The set of pipes that have been constructed date back to the 70s and the vast majority of them have been poorly maintained.

To improve the situation stringent regulation is urgently required, and there is widespread support for a proposal by the EU commission to extend binding EU environmental and safety regulations to cover European oil companies operating overseas.

While the recent mass protest revealed Nigerian people's anger, it also brought together Muslims and Christians political capital, something that would have been unthinkable a month ago.

The Pakistani State's Islam: From Instrumental to Uncontrollable

Maria Naimark — 2012-01-30T18:47:46Z

The last twenty years have seen a dramatic rise in the influence of extremist groups, particularly the Taliban, in Pakistan. Though the state has been linked in some way to Islam from the time of its creation in 1947, it has only been since the 1980s that fundamentalism has grown enough to seriously threaten the state and become one of Pakistan's defining characteristics.

This development can be explained by the Pakistani government's instrumental use of religious empowerment both to enhance domestic legitimacy and to justify foreign policy (particularly involvement in Afghanistan), and the ideological blow back of this decades-long policy.

While resources and support were provided to religious institutions, groups, and leaders to strengthen the state, this ultimately backfired: religious networks became uncontrollable and, ironically, now pose one of the biggest threats to consolidated nationhood, internal stability, and effective development. Pakistani military and intelligence have used religious parties for decades as convenient instruments for keeping domestic political opponents at bay and also for adventures in foreign policy.

Pakistan's Historical Relationship with Islam

Pakistan was formally created on August 14, 1947, under the tutelage of the Muslim League. From this date until 1956, Pakistan was led by a civil government that placed little overt emphasis on Islam. The military coup in that year, however, put Ayub Khan in power, whose rule “deepened divisions between a secular and westernised ruling class and a mass of people living according to time honoured Indo-Islamic traditions. This sowed the seeds of potential radicalisation in the future.

Though Ayub Khan did not promote Islam to the forefront of public policy, he did not definitely solve the riddle of its place in Pakistan. His military successor Yahya Khan (1969-71) was preoccupied with a devastating cyclone and a civil war in the East in 1971, leaving little time to resolve the Islam question.

While the story of Bangladeshi separation in 1971 is important to understanding Pakistan, an in-depth account of the event is beyond the scope of this article. However, it encouraged a geo-political re-orientation towards the Muslim Middle East, and highlighted the weakness of Pakistani nation identity, encouraging leaders to seek channels through which to solidify it. Economic grievances and a blatant power imbalance pushed the East to separate with the help of India in December of Khan's last year as ruler.

Civilian rule resumed under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1972-77), who began a practice that would be radicalized following the pivotal 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan: subverting Pashtun tribal structures, a process that entailed extremists taking political control of a district, replacing them with conservative politico-religious leadership cells.

Many of the original architects of the Islamization of Northern Pakistan believed that they could eventually re-create the traditional elder-based social system once the Soviets were driven out of Afghanistan. This hope turned out to be highly misguided.

It was Zia-ul-haq—the country's third military president—who seized power in July 1977 and dramatically injected religion into Pakistani politics and society at all levels. Since his ascension to power, Pakistan has undergone a cultural revolution: religion is now embedded in daily life.

In 1985, he proposed the Shari'at Bill: Giving power to interpretations of Shari'ah in all areas of state policy, enhancing its authority in the judicial system, and elevating the Qur'an as the country's supreme law. Though this was not passed into law until 1991, its influence was evident immediately. At this time, the Jamaat-e-Islami—a fundamentalist Islamic group founded in 1941 in opposition to nationalism, which it condemned as a Western conspiracy— encouraged a move from an ethical to a legalistic approach to Pakistan's Muslim identity.

Education and military were key pillars of religious empowerment, both intended to shore up government support and fill the ideological and nationalistic void present in the weak Pakistani state.

Madrassas—religious education centres— were now revived and altered from locally controlled and funded to state-managed and monitored: making religious learning politicized, modernized, and militarized institutions that. In time, these would radically challenge state's right to control policy-making, interpret Islam, and define the parameters of Pakistani nationalism.

Traditionally, ulama (religious scholars) were reluctant to get involved in politics but their opposition to modernisation and encouragement from government altered this tendency. The scope of madrassas has broadened, while the number has increased manifold since 1980. Zia's Islamicization program raised the status of ulamas and mullahs, opening new opportunities for them in public affairs. They became increasingly wealthy and powerful, and occupational affiliation with Islamic institutions became economically gratifying—a change that would eventually pit religious leaders as challengers of the state that had expected continuing obedience for this empowerment.

Note that students left madrassas with only a base knowledge of the world coupled with a rigid belief in the supremacy of Islam and their responsibility to play a role in its spread. This fact has become particularly de-stabilizing for Pakistan's internal and external relations over the years.

The military has been a second fundamental institution promoting extremism. Zia, himself a high-ranking military officer, encouraged the army to act as guardian of ‘ideological' frontiers of the Muslim community, whose limits would be set by the shariah. In this way, application of force could be legitimized through religion, and ventures in India and Afghanistan strengthened and supported.

The army began to align itself more closely with Islamic symbols and increase recruitment from lower classes, which were more prone to religious radicalisation out of a real desire for change.

The 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan motivated further Islamization in its militant form. The Afghan Civil War eroded popular attachment to local hierarchies of rural and tribal society and to the land, replacing conceptions of familial religion with a global, all-encompassing struggle in which a strict, literal reading of Islamic law was favoured.

It was also during this conflict that involvement of militant Islamic groups with senior military leadership and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was cemented. Certain scholars go as far as to argue that the collaboration of military and Islamists has been the primary force advancing Islamic ideology, and it is certainly true that Pakistani help to the Taliban's military force, (the provision of camps, weapons, and funds) has been well-documented. Arguably, as the army is Pakistan's only modern institution and the backbone of the Pakistani state, its patronage (institutional and financial support), is extremely influential in the empowerment of religious leaders.

While the 1979 Iranian Revolution is occasionally cited as a catalyst for religious fanaticism in Pakistan, it was nowhere near as influential as the geographically and culturally closer Afghanistan, and serves as more of an excuse to hide the fundamentally instrumental nature of Islamic policies in Pakistan. However, the Revolution did radicalize the sectarian conflict between Sunnis and Shias in the nation, adding to the instability and grievances felt by Pakistanis that pushed them to join militant groups.

After Zia's unexpected death in 1988, the policies he had undertaken to support Islam in attempts to buffer the state from criticism proved to have a long lasting and substantial influence. Islamic legal provisions were used by zealous Islamists to implement their personal views, and mullahs incited protests against women's photographs displayed on billboards—the state's authority diffused steadily since the 1980s.

Civilian leader Benazir Bhutto, daughter of former leader Zulfikar, became Prime Minister in 1988 and spent the next decade fighting for power with Nawaz Sharif amidst the deteriorating economic situation. Political squabbles took time and energy away from the nation's pressing developmental problems. With the tendency now entrenched, they continued to use jihadist groups as strategic assets, supporting them in Kashmir and Afghanistan.

Politicians were led to justify their control over the state by appealing to Islam, which created a feedback loop that made control increasingly precarious. A clear indication of this was that when General Pervez Musharraf defined his agenda to make Pakistan more moderate after seizing power in 1999, it was immediately undermined by the military's close working relationship with Islamic groups and reliance on them to pursue its regional objectives.

His reign was largely unsuccessful at curbing violence, and he was replaced by Asif Ali Zardari, leader of the PPP and widower of Benazir Bhutto, in 2008. Zardari has been associated with gross corruption since the beginnings of his political career, and that truly autonomous politicians unconstrained by religious and military constituencies are rare in Pakistan, and them having the ability to act unhindered without retribution is even rarer.

Reasons for the amplification of fundamentalist Islam and its current place in Pakistan

While the government directly funded and empowered religious groups, there are certain features of Pakistani statehood that made the populace particularly receptive to its influence and extremism.

Though all nations have in some ways been arbitrarily delineated and experience tensions between national and international pulls, in Pakistan this disparity is particularly salient, owing to the country's structural weakness, the indeterminacy of its political boundaries, and the early onset of authoritarianism which made resorting to Islam a desirable last resort. Fundamentalist Islam in particular is incompatible with nationalism, and the influential Jaam-e-Islami was founded partially in response to the “Western” construction of nationalism. Islamism has thrived in Pakistan based on its lack of consensus regarding ideology and identity, the search for which has been delayed by opportunistic political groups and individuals.

Apart from Islam being a convenient substitute for nation-state building, the failure of domestic political economies and policies has done much to alienate populations and push them to religion, which has historically found fertile ground where oppressive circumstances are present.

A move towards economic liberalisation that began with Ayub Khan increased the gap between rich and poor, unemployment and corruption are rampant, and Pakistanis have few economic or political options. Sectarian violence and jihadist terrorism have become a condition of life in Pakistan, so much so that Pakistan has been branded a failed state by some Western observers. It has also been commented often that the desperate conditions faced by most people leave them with no option but to turn but to extremist religious politics.

Secular parties have failed at developing Pakistan and improving living conditions, and their candidates have consistently turned out to be incompetent, nepotistic, and corrupt. In 1986, the government allocated 33.9% of total expenditures to defence, 3.2% to education, and less than 1% to health (World Bank 1986). This distribution did not improve much in the following decade.

Annual GDP growth in the 1990s averaged only 4% a year, while military spending in the same time period averaged 30% of GDP, an amount far above the 1990 global mean of roughly 3.7%. The meagre economic growth was not enough to keep up with population increase and, more alarmingly, it was squandered on weapons and soldiers instead of going to infrastructure, jobs, and productive education.

The UNDP 1991 Human Development Report noted that a key factor contributing to lack of growth has been Pakistan's neglect of social development issues. It is unsurprising then, that madrassas which charge no fees and provide free food and clothing are an extremely attractive option for young men in Pakistan.

This phenomenon is particularly noteworthy when analyzing the most conflictual region of Pakistan: the tribal areas of NWFP and Baluchistan near the Afghan border, where one child in three still dies before their 5th birthday. It is also the strongest foothold of the Taliban. The Taliban targets tribal leaders through intimidation and assassination, and more than 200 Waziri leaders who resisted Taliban domination were reported murdered by Taliban agents in 2005 and 2006.
The traditional tribal structure that the Pakistani government sought to alter since the 1970s has been destabilized, with dangerous consequences.

In the face of poverty, anti-Westernism swelled and the lure of the ‘pure' Islamic tradition grew strong. This drama unfolds in one of the world's least developed regions, which unfortunately traps it further in a cycle of violence that sucks up the limited funds trickling into the area and prevents necessary investment in even the most basic infrastructure. An anecdote regarding last year's flooding illustrates the shocking extent of corruption in Pakistan: politicians disassembled dams and risked putting entire towns under water in order to protect their own lands.

Since 2000, extremist presence has spread and strengthened. President Musharaff relied on Jamiat Ulama-i-Islam—a particularly religious group even by Pakistani standards—to govern Baluchistan, viewing it as an indispensable partner in provincial and national assemblies. American officials noted that Pakistan's sporadic, grudging cooperation with regards to extremists reinforced the view that Pakistan's intelligence agencies are more in touch with what is going on in the Taliban insurgency than the government lets on publicly.

Though militant groups were outlawed in 2002 following an attack on Indian parliament, the military remained ambivalent and extremist religious groups resurfaced within a month—with new names— continuing their activities with relative impunity.

Organisation is becoming more streamlined as well: the formation of the Tekrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in December 2007 by various Taliban groups effectively brought together 27 Taliban groups under one umbrella. The union was viewed as an attempt to pursue Talibanization in Pakistan while conducting a ‘defensive jihad' against Pakistani security forces, which are clearly not effective enough to deter the growing and strengthening extremist networks in the country.

A sign of this trend is the progressively more ‘global' character of the Pakistani Taliban: since late 2004, tactics widely used by Iraqi insurgents and al-Qaida fighters started to appear in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area and have since spread widely. Scholars have speculated that a new generation of terrorists seems to have emerged in Pakistan: while most men in Pakistan's tribal areas grew up carrying arms, it is only in the last few years that they have begun to organise themselves around a Taliban-style Islamic ideology similar to that of their Afghan counterparts. Pakistan's foreign policy continues to be based largely on the manipulation of Islamic militant groups as tools for covert action, influence, and remote control.

However, this policy is becoming continually less successful and more difficult to manipulate for state purposes since its origins under Zia, and further usurps government authority.

Implications and Challenges

The current situation in Pakistan does not augur well. There is little prospect that the security establishment will crack down on the Taliban when it both helped create it and continues to be intertwined with it.

Despite the religious fanaticism sweeping across Pakistan, which has cost the lives of two liberal-minded governors in the past year, the military still believes it can hastily engage with militant groups.

In retrospect, the project embarked upon in the 1970s in pursuit of domestic stability and foreign policy initiatives, the social engineering to empower radical Muslim extremists, aided and abetted for a decade by the CIA to bleed the Soviet Union in Afghanistan— championed and sustained by Pakistani leaders—was short-sighted. They believed they could continue the management of strong religious forces indefinitely and to their advantage, but the political momentum of radicalisation appears to have gone beyond the ability of the Pakistani state to contain it, let alone suppress it.

The blow back from decades of policies of empowerment and funding appear too great a challenge for the Pakistani state at present, and its seems that leaders are choosing an easier route of simply acquiescing to and working with religious extremists instead of the more difficult role of actively opposing them. Considering the intense volatility of the region, this is likely to have grave consequences. More broadly, the dynamic encountered in Pakistan has been repeated throughout the world numerous times (pre-Pinochet Chile's polarized society, language politics in Sri Lanka, Quebec's FLQ, etc): elites cannot maintain their grip on ideologies and groups that they had been utilizing instrumentally as they snowball out of control.

However, it is unproductive to view the situation as completely lost. Though less support for the Taliban would mean a re-definition of the role of Pakistan in the region and a revival of the debate regarding the nature of the Pakistani nation, sustained commitment from domestic elites and international allies could encourage a move towards this direction, however much change of policy, ruling configuration, and ideology it would require.

The permissive circumstances that allow the Taliban to thrive (a weak state, a low level of economic development, and disillusionment with the state, to provide a few) must be confronted, not with rhetoric and empty promises, but with action- and not vacillating, half-hearted measures, but strong and consistent Pakistani military action wherever required and at whatever cost. The Pakistani government must work to definitively disassociate itself from extremist groups and establish its own effective, secular, and professional bureaucratic cadre.

While international forces may help, real progress can only come from within Pakistan, namely, a promotion of more moderate political parties, a dialogue with tribal elders, and selective investment in education that is not solely religious, and infrastructure that improves the day to day lives of local people. The final goal is perhaps the most important, as the point at which citizens feel that state institutions provide them with better prospects than religious groups is also the point at which the scale will tilt to favour the government against extremists. An implication that all governments can take away is that productive investment in human capital and standards of living is a strategy that will not come back to haunt the state, as many instances of ethnic, nationalist, and religious mobilizations have done.