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  #101  
Old Monday, June 08, 2009
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The human cost of Sri Lanka's war

Alongside some of the government’s finest military hardware at a ceremonial parade in Colombo on June 3rd were dozens of disabled soldiers in gleaming wheelchairs. Sri Lanka has paid a heavy price for its recent rout of the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the defence secretary and brother of the president, has admitted that 6,261 soldiers were killed and 29,551 wounded in three years of fighting. He revealed, too, that a total of 23,000 troops have died since the first casualties in October 1981, when the Tigers’ leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, sprang off a bicycle and shot two soldiers running errands in the northern town of Jaffna. Prabhakaran and much of the army he built are now dead. The Tigers have not disclosed their losses but the Sri Lankan army commander, General Sarath Fonseka, says an estimated 22,000 have been killed in the past three years, and 9,000 have surrendered.

The human cost to both sides was particularly heavy during the final three months, as the Tigers were driven into a fast-shrinking pocket of land in the north. The distinction between Tiger combatants and the civilians they were holding to fend off the onslaught blurred fatally. Thousands of non-combatants were killed or wounded, mostly in shelling by the army. It had been ordered to notch up a speedy victory, amid calls from abroad for a truce.

At the United Nations human-rights council in Geneva, Sri Lanka last month shrugged off attempts by Western countries to institute an inquiry into alleged war crimes by both sides. But it still faces the fury of the Tamil diaspora and the threat of sanctions, such as the withdrawal of trade privileges from the EU. Confident, however, in the backing of countries such as China and Russia, President Mahinda Rajapaksa can defy what he terms Western “doublespeak”. And on June 3rd he made another big victory speech, his third in two weeks. He paid glowing tribute to army families, saying some had given up all their children to the armed forces.

In Samadhigama, a poor village 280km (175 miles) north-east of Colombo, a sobbing 87-year-old Ukkubandage Sumanawathie knows what he is talking about. Five grandchildren died in the war. A sixth is missing in action. Mrs Sumanawathie lives with her 36-year-old daughter, Saman Malini. No celebratory flags fly in her village, as they do in Colombo. Instead, little white markers cut out of polythene bags are still planted along the narrow rubble lane to the cemetery. Mrs Malini’s teenage son was buried there in an unmarked grave on May 12th. The army brought his remains in a sealed coffin, with a framed statement calling him a hero. He had served for less than six months.

Mrs Malini will use her son’s death benefits to put a headstone on his grave and complete their half-built brick house. A local official says most poor bereaved families do the same. With just 172 households, Samadhigama has 130 soldiers. Kukulewa, the adjoining village, has 160 from 270 households. Socially, says the official, enlistment is the “accepted thing to do”.

Many villages around Sri Lanka are now coping with such post-conflict difficulties. Demobilisation, however, is unlikely to be one of them. Recruitment has in fact increased, ostensibly to get rid of mines and to secure territorial gains.

The defence secretary has promised to keep paying death benefits to army families despite fiscal constraints. With thousands of such households to support—and at least 5,000 permanently disabled veterans to rehabilitate—the government has appealed for donations. There are also private initiatives, including one to buy commode toilets for disabled soldiers who can no longer use squatting pans. But Harsha de Silva, an economist, argues that this piecemeal fund-raising is insufficient. He urges the government to set up a veteran’s administration. And there should be savings on arms purchases, he points out, that could be diverted towards caring for some of the war’s many victims.
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Politics this week

Jun 25th 2009
From The Economist print edition


Iran’s street protests in the wake of a disputed presidential election spread from Tehran, the capital, to a string of big cities across the country, but then seemed to subside after the authorities cracked down, leaving at least 20 people dead. A young woman, Neda Agha Soltan, became a symbol of the protests after her dying moments were posted on the internet. Discord within the upper ranks of the clerical establishment ensured that the crisis was by no means over.

With American troops due to withdraw from all Iraqi towns at the end of the month, insurgents carried out a campaign of bombings. On June 20th at least 70 people were killed by a truck bomb in Taza, a Turkmen town just south of the disputed city of Kirkuk. Two days later at least seven bombs went off in and around Baghdad, killing over 30 people. Two days after that another bomb attack, in a Shia part of the city, killed more than 70 people.
Somalia’s fragile government called in vain on its neighbours, Ethiopia and Kenya, to send troops to help it resist a growing jihadist insurgency bolstered by al-Qaeda-linked fighters from Pakistan and Afghanistan. But it was reported that the United States had secretly begun to resupply the Somali government.


Farm hands

Democrats working on America’s climate-change legislation in the House struck a deal that gives the Department of Agriculture the authority to supervise efforts to reduce carbon emissions by farmers. With little Republican backing, Democratic leaders had to secure the support of colleagues from rural districts.

Mark Sanford, the Republican governor of South Carolina, caused a stir when he disappeared for five days. His staff said he had gone hiking in the Appalachians. In fact, Mr Sanford had been in Argentina. On his return he admitted to an extramarital affair with a woman there.

Antonio Villaraigosa ruled himself out of the running for governor of California. The mayor of Los Angeles had been tipped to enter the field of candidates seeking to succeed Arnold Schwarzenegger.


Two Metro trains collided in Washington, DC, killing nine people, the worst-ever accident on the city’s network.

Battle ready

At least 80 people were killed in an attack by an unmanned American aircraft in the tribal areas of Pakistan. The attack was in South Waziristan, the stronghold of Baitullah Mehsud, leader of the Pakistani Taliban, and came as the Pakistani army prepared a new offensive in the area.

America reached an agreement with Kyrgyzstan that will allow American armed forces to continue using the Manas air base, their only base in Central Asia, to support operations in Afghanistan. In February the government had insisted the base must close.

An American journalist from the New York Times and an Afghan colleague were reported to have escaped after seven months as prisoners of the Taliban, who took them hostage in Afghanistan. Their driver is still being held. They regained their freedom in North Waziristan, in Pakistan.
Formal charges were announced against Liu Xiaobo, one of China’s most prominent dissidents, who was detained last December after the publication of a charter calling for political reform.

An American navy ship continued to track a North Korean vessel believed to be carrying weapons to Myanmar in breach of UN sanctions. North Korea boasted of being a “proud nuclear power” and was believed to be poised to anger the outside world further with a new missile test.

A conservation group reported that 30% of the world’s species of sharks are under threat of extinction because of overfishing. Shark meat and liver oil are becoming more popular, and demand remains high in Asia for shark fins.

Drugs run

The UN’s annual report on illicit drugs found significant reductions in the production of cocaine, opium and cannabis, but an increase in the output of synthetic substances, such as ecstasy and methamphetamine. Cocaine cultivation fell by 18% in Colombia, the world’s biggest producer of the drug.

A battle between FARC rebels and security forces in Colombia’s Cauca province killed at least 25 rebels and seven police officers. Authorities said that a local FARC commander known as El Enano (the Midget) was among the dead.

The United States and Venezuela decided to reinstate their ambassadors. Venezuela’s envoy was expelled by America last September after it alleged that America was plotting to overthrow Evo Morales, the Bolivian president. Venezuela then threw out America’s man.

Clothing maketh the man

In a rare address to both houses of France’s parliament, President Nicolas Sarkozy lent weight to a possible ban on the Islamic burqa, saying that such garments were “not welcome on French territory”.

Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, the president of Ingushetia, a Russian republic in the north Caucasus, was almost killed in an assassination attack by a suicide-bomber. Ingushetia, next to Chechnya, has recently become the most violent place in the north Caucasus.

Russia’s Supreme Court ordered a retrial of three men acquitted of being accomplices in the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, a crusading journalist whom Vladimir Putin described as a “marginal” figure. None of the men are accused of the actual killing.

A former prime minister of Kosovo, Agim Ceku, was arrested in Bulgaria. He is wanted by Serbia on war-crimes charges.


Two tonnes of rare whale meat were distributed in Greenland as part of celebrations to mark the start of an era of self-government. After nearly three centuries of rule by Denmark, Greenland’s 56,000 people will gradually take control of most domestic affairs, although defence and foreign policy remain in Danish hands. Greenlandic is now the official language.


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Politics this week




Here was a military coup in Honduras after Manuel Zelaya, the leftist president, tried to organise an unconstitutional referendum to allow him to stand for a second term. He was arrested and deported by the army, which acted with the support of Congress and the Supreme Court. The head of Congress was sworn in as president, pending an election in November. The Organisation of American States, the United States and the European Union all condemned the coup and called for Mr Zelaya’s reinstatement.


Argentina’s first couple, President Cristina Fernández and her husband and predecessor, Néstor Kirchner, fared badly in a mid-term legislative election, losing their majority in Congress. Several centrist leaders did well in a repudiation of the Kirchners’ populist economic policies. Mr Kirchner resigned as leader of the ruling Peronist movement. Once the election was over, authorities in several provinces declared health emergencies as deaths from swine flu rose to 35.
In Nicaragua, Alexis Arguello, a former world-champion boxer, was found dead at his home. He was the victorious candidate of the ruling Sandinista Party in an election for mayor of Managua last year that the opposition claimed was fraudulent.
Not a surprise

Iran’s Guardian Council declared that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been re-elected as president, dismissing claims of ballot-rigging. Mr Ahmadinejad said his victory was a defeat for Western foes seeking to overthrow the Islamic system, but opponents insisted his win was illegitimate. Opposition protests were attended by fewer people. Security forces rounded up hundreds of opposition figures. Nine locally hired members of the British embassy were detained, though later most were freed.


A Yemenia airliner with 153 people on board crashed into the sea as it came in to land at Moroni, the capital of the Comoros. There was one survivor, a 14-year-old girl.

American troops completed their withdrawal from cities in Iraq, despite a recent rise in suicide-bombings. The Iraqi government announced a holiday to mark “National Sovereignty Day”, and said its forces would be able to maintain security. Barack Obama said the pull-back was a milestone but warned of “difficult days” ahead.

A strike of the sword

Around 4,000 American marines, backed by NATO aircraft, launched a big offensive against the Taliban in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand river valley.



The high court in Delhi ruled that consensual gay sex in India was not a crime, overturning a 19th-century law that bans what it terms sex “against the order of nature”. Gay sex was previously punishable by up to ten years in prison. A few days before the decision the second-ever gay-pride march was held in the capital.

North Korea test-fired more short-range missiles, ratcheting up tensions in the region and defying recently tightened UN sanctions. Meanwhile, South Korea’s defence minister said that the North is “definitely” trying to enrich uranium, giving it another method to make nuclear bombs. The South claims the North has 40 kilograms of plutonium, enough for at least six bombs.

China delayed a plan requiring all new computers in the country to be equipped with internet-filtering software. Web users claimed this as a victory, though an official said it would only be “a matter of time” before the filtering system was introduced.

Malaysia’s prime minister, Najib Razak, relaxed some of his country’s racial-preference laws in an effort to encourage foreign investment. He said listed companies would no longer have to sell at least 30% of their shares to ethnic Malays. However, listed firms will have to sell 25% to the Malaysian public, of which half will be reserved for ethnic Malays. Mr Najib’s main rival, Anwar Ibrahim, has promised more sweeping reforms to the laws.


Squaring a circle

Germany’s constitutional court ruled that the European Union’s Lisbon treaty is compatible with German law, but only if the German parliament passes a new law to make clear that it participates fully in EU legislation. The court seems to think the EU has a “democratic deficit” that is best filled at the national level, not through the European Parliament.
Albania’s election was too close to call. The centre-right coalition of the prime minister, Sali Berisha, got 70 seats, as did the centre-left opposition led by Edi Rama. There may be another election this autumn.


The prime minister of Croatia, Ivo Sanader, unexpectedly stepped down, saying he wanted to give up politics. Croatia’s hopes of joining the EU have been stymied by a border dispute with neighbouring Slovenia.


Russia put into force a ban on casinos and gambling joints across most of the nation. They are now allowed only in parts of the country that are a long way from Moscow.
Reverse discrimination




America’s Supreme Court ruled that New Haven, Connecticut, was wrong to deny promotion to white firemen because no blacks had scored high enough marks in a qualifying exam to warrant advancement. The case attracted a lot of interest, not least because one of the judges on the appeals-court panel that saw its previous decision in the lawsuit overturned was Sonia Sotomayor, Barack Obama’s nominee to the top court.


The House voted narrowly, by 219 to 212, in favour of a climate-change bill that establishes a cap-and-trade system to reduce emissions. The legislation is not without its critics (44 Democrats voted against it) and it is expected to receive a rough ride in the Senate.


After almost eight months of argument and litigation, Minnesota’s Supreme Court decided that Al Franken had won the state’s Senate race for the Democrats, by 312 votes. The result gives the Democrats 60 votes in the Senate, enough to break a filibuster.
Gallup reported that the drinking habits of Americans haven’t changed during the recession, with 64% enjoying the occasional tipple. There has been anecdotal evidence that drinking has increased during the downturn. Beer remains the favoured libation, though the percentage of wine-drinkers has increased since Mr Obama took office.



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  #104  
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Development aid from authoritarian regimes
An (iron) fistful of help

Jun 4th 2009
From The Economist print edition

China, Iran, Russia and Venezuela have been doling out largesse. Should Western democracies be worried?



CONGO and the International Monetary Fund are arguing about a bail-out. What’s new, you might ask. Dog bites man. But the sticking point is, unexpectedly, not the country’s economic policy, but how exactly to repay a $9 billion credit that Congo secured last year from China.

China’s deal with Congo, and the disputes arising from it, are examples of a growing trend. Authoritarian governments are using their money to buy influence abroad. Sometimes the money comes as a commercial loan; sometimes, as a grant; frequently, as both. These flows are changing the business of aid, undermining attempts by Western countries to improve their programmes and encouraging recipients to play donors off against each other.

The use of aid to win friends and influence people is not new. America and the Soviet Union both used aid as a weapon in the cold war. Now a 21st-century equivalent is emerging. A study this week by a group of American institutions, Freedom House, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia, looks at the use by China, Iran, Russia and Venezuela of what it calls “authoritarian aid”. The study, “Undermining Democracy”, is the first attempt to estimate the global scale of such operations.

China’s assistance programme is the most active. In 2007 its leaders said they would offer African countries $20 billion in new financing (they did not say on what terms or over what period). Hu Jintao, the president, repeated a promise to boost aid and cancel debts during a trip to Africa this February. The World Bank says China already gives Africa $2 billion a year (more than the bank itself does). China does not publish aid figures and a study in 2007 for the Centre for Global Development, a think tank in Washington, DC, put the figure lower, at $1.5 billion-$2 billion a year (with a third to a half for Africa). But all estimates agree that aid has been rising relentlessly (see chart) and that China, once a recipient, is now in the middle rank of donors, on a par with Australia or Spain, though with more commercial lending.

Over the past ten years, Venezuela’s aid has been comparable to China’s, though it is now falling behind. Gustavo Coronel, a critic of President Hugo Chávez, says Mr Chávez has made $43 billion worth of foreign “commitments” since 1999. Roughly $17 billion could be described as aid, including cheap oil to Cuba and cash transfers to Bolivia. The report estimates that Venezuela’s cheap-oil programme alone is worth $1.7 billion a year, though its most flamboyant feature—cheap heating oil for poor Americans—was recently scrapped.

Russian and Iranian aid is more impenetrable than China’s but flashes of information light up the murk. Iran offered $1 billion to Lebanon’s Shias to help them rebuild their ruined houses after the 2006 Israeli war. This year, Russia offered Kyrgyzstan $2 billion, a gesture made, by amazing coincidence, just after Kyrgyzstan had thrown out American forces. Russia has long used energy prices and debt forgiveness to cajole or punish neighbours.


If you include another generous undemocratic donor, Saudi Arabia—whose aid, $2 billion in 2007, fluctuates as much as the oil price (see chart)—then total “authoritarian aid” comes to $10 billion a year and possibly more. That is a substantial, though not a game-changing sum. It is almost 10% of total aid from rich countries, and about what Britain or Japan gives.

But its significance lies not just in its total value. Autocracies offer an alternative to western aid in several ways. In the past decade rich countries have tried to improve a dismal record of development spending by linking aid closely to the priorities of recipients (rather than financing a big project which the country does not need) and by demanding good governance. China and the rest do not.

Much of their aid is overtly political. Iran’s offer of free electricity to Shia parts of Iraq is one example, Venezuela’s bankrolling of Cuba another. Most is steered towards a few friendly regimes, or (in China’s case) places with natural resources. China has pledged $600m to Cambodia, more than ten times as much as America. It has given Myanmar $400m in the past five years; American aid to the country is worth about $12m a year.

Naturally, help from harsh regimes is rarely encumbered with pesky demands for good governance. This makes it welcome to corrupt officials and even to those merely sick of being lectured by Westerners. Alas, it can encourage bad governance. China, the report says, is training 1,000 Central Asian policemen and judicial officials “most of whom could be classified as working in anti-democratic enterprises”. The report concludes that authoritarian regimes are using aid to boost their soft power. If so, the spread of authoritarian aid is a challenge to more than just Western ideas of the right sort of giving.

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The week ahead


Jul 5th 2009

From Economist.com

Barack Obama visits Russia, and other news

• AMERICA'S president, Barack Obama, embarks on a three-day trip to Russia on Monday July 6th hoping for a thaw in relations that have been chilly for several years. A new treaty on nuclear arms to replace START, which expires in December, America’s plans for a missile-defence shield in eastern Europe and NATO expansion in that region are issues that may be raised in Moscow. The hosts might also have some advice for the visitor regarding the American-led offensive in Afghanistan.

• THE progress of America’s surge in Afghanistan will become clearer over the week. Thousands of American marines are attempting to expel Taliban fighters form strategically important strongholds in Helmand province in the south of the country. America is deploying over 20,000 extra troops to try to ensure that presidential elections can go ahead in August. America also wants to disrupt the drug trade: most of the country’s opium poppies are grown in the region.


• INDONESIA, the world’s biggest Muslim-majority democracy goes to the polls on Wednesday July 8th to elect a president. The incumbent, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, promises “more of the same” with his election slogan. Despite his patchy record Mr Yudhoyono will win outright on the first ballot with more than half of votes cast, according to opinion polls. The lacklustre showing of his two opponents has helped him. Megawati Sukarnoputri, his predecessor, was a mediocre president and Jusuf Kalla, the president’s deputy, cannot convincingly take more credit for the government’s successes than Mr Yudhoyono.

• LEADERS of the G8 group of rich countries are set to meet for two days beginning on Wednesday July 8th in L’Aquila, an Italian town devastated by an earthquake earlier this year. Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s embattled prime minister, shifted the meeting from Sardinia in order to attract funds to the town. The various prime ministers and presidents are set to discuss the world economy, climate change and other topics, although stories about Mr Berlusconi's private life and the customary antics of demonstrators could overshadow the high-level pow-wow.

• BRITAIN’S government is expected to unveil its plans for reforming the banking sector this week. The long-awaited proposals for legislation in the government’s white paper may include measures to stop banks becoming “too big to fail” by demanding that bigger banks hold proportionately greater capital than smaller ones. There may also be new liquidity and regulatory requirements for larger and more complex financial institutions. But an unseemly spat has broken out over who should wield the most power to police Britain’s banks.

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When the learning curve is long

Jun 25th 2009
From The Economist print edition

After an abrupt about-face, an agency frets about its footprint

Still Pictures

Brazil’s burning desire for pasture
IF ANYONE suggested the World Bank did not take global warming seriously, its bosses would bristle: only last October, they would point out, the institution issued a “strategic framework” laying out its thinking on development and climate change. This promised more emphasis on noble things like energy efficiency and renewable power; and more bank support for “sustainable forest management, including reduced deforestation.”

Those words intrigued green campaigners, who were up in arms over a $90m loan by the bank’s private-sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), to the Bertin group, Brazil’s leading beef exporter. As the greens observed, cattle farming is widely seen as the biggest threat to the Amazon’s trees.

Doubts about the loan were not confined to angry tree-huggers. In a paper that was initially confidential but leaked on the internet, the bank’s own Independent Evaluation Group (IEG)—which is supposed to watch the secondary effects of the agency’s work—had argued that the credit posed “a grave risk to the environment”.

The IFC overruled this advice, saying in January 2008 that its loan to Bertin would help the firm “in establishing sustainable operations throughout its supply chain, especially with its cattle suppliers in the Amazon region.” But on June 12th there was a change of heart. The bank said it was pulling out of the Bertin project: it was no longer satisfied that its concerns over sustainability were being met.

There were yelps of glee from greens—along with harder questions about how possible it really is for the world’s leading development agency to promote growth, satisfy its member governments and protect the planet all at the same time.


Defenders of the bank say that its concerns over climate change are more than verbiage: of the $7.5 billion it lent for energy projects in 2008, a respectable $2.7 billion went to efforts aimed at saving energy or boosting renewable power. This was twice as much as it had lent for such projects in 2007. Admittedly, the bank does also fund coal-fired projects, but it insists that wherever possible, it will opt for greener forms of power.

Earlier this year, a (public) report by the IEG said the bank could congratulate itself on promoting energy efficiency. But as it recognised, this success did not mean everyone’s heart had turned green: rising fuel prices had made energy saving an easy sell in many countries. And this benign atmosphere may not last. There are poor countries that see environmentalism as a luxury that hurts their immediate growth prospects. On June 22nd Ethiopia blamed power cuts on the World Bank’s refusal to fund a 60MW diesel generator.

David Wheeler, a former World Bank economist who is now at the Centre for Global Development, a think-tank, says such tensions are bound to persist. The bank’s regional units are under pressure to meet lending targets and get money out to governments. In that culture, the bank’s bureaucrats won’t work too hard on goals that hold little appeal for client countries.

Still, when countries want to act over climate change, the bank can do a lot to assist. Mexico, for example, has sought help with cutting energy use in city transport and producing cleaner power. The bank is lending it $500m in low-interest credits out of a $5.2 billion Clean Technology Fund to finance new bus networks, replacing the gas-guzzlers that clog Mexico’s roads.

Vinod Thomas, the IEG’s director-general, sums up the dilemma: “Climate change threatens to derail development, while business-as-usual development threatens to destabilise the climate.”

Managing this tension will involve a lot more reflection about the trade-off between growth, the mitigation of climate change and adaptation to its effects. At the bank, some thinking does seem to be going on: that is the topic of its next World Development Report—an annual assessment of the fight against poverty.

Whatever the report says, it will be hard to convince poor countries that action over climate change is a necessity, not a luxury, and that it will not impede growth. The Bertin shambles may go down as a warning for everybody involved in a giant exercise in on-the-job learning.

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