Trouble for Turkey?

Feb 13th 2008
From The Economist Intelligence Unit ViewsWire

Lagging political reform may delay EU membership

Recent controversial plans to ease restrictions on the wearing of Islamic headscarves have been portrayed by the government as a step towards greater civil and religious freedom. However, the EU believes there is an urgent need for Turkey to introduce other long-awaited political reforms, with the slow pace of progress over the past year creating uncertainty over the future pace of EU membership negotiations. Although Turkey's EU accession bid and economic reform will remain priorities for the government, there is a risk that more vocal opposition to Turkish membership could hamper progress on both fronts.

Cover story

In January the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) led by the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, reached agreement with the right-wing Nationalist Action Party (MHP) to amend the constitution—which requires a two-thirds majority in parliament—and the Higher Education Law in order to lift the ban on women wearing Islamic-style headscarves, although not veils, at state universities. The ban will remain in place at other levels of education and in public offices.

The changes, which were approved in parliament with a solid majority on February 9th, will cause tensions with hardline secularist forces. The Republican People's Party (CHP), the largest party in opposition, and some university rectors have already strongly criticised the move, and have vowed to challenge the amendments in court. The military and senior judiciary are also opposed, claiming that an easing of the ban will weaken the country’s secular political and educational systems. Hardline secularists are suspicious of the AKP's Islamist roots and believe that Mr Erdogan and his party have a pro-Islamist agenda. The wearing of headscarves is a highly divisive issue in Turkey. Although many secular Turks regard it as a religious symbol that has no place in the education system, opinion polls show that a large majority of Turkish citizens favour an easing of the ban.

Express yourself

With one of the government's main stated objectives being to advance Turkey's EU membership bid, both the AKP and MHP presented the proposed easing of the headscarf ban as an issue of civil and religious freedom. However, it is not one of the political reforms that the EU has been calling on the government to introduce as a matter of urgency. This has raised some concerns within Europe that the AKP government is struggling to give renewed momentum to Turkey's EU membership negotiations.

In mid-December the European Council, which comprises the heads of state and government of the EU's 27 member states, had disappointed Turkey by endorsing the conclusions of an earlier meeting of EU foreign ministers, which criticised the limited progress Turkey had made on political reform in 2007 and warned that long-awaited reforms in the areas of freedom of expression and religion should not be delayed any further. Although during the meeting Turkey was discussed as an enlargement candidate along with Croatia, the conclusions omitted any specific reference to "accession" or "membership" as the final goal of Turkey's negotiations with the EU. In response, the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a firmly worded statement to the effect that turning a cold shoulder on Turkey would not only effect Turkey-EU relations, but also bilateral relations (meaning those with France and Germany).

On December 19th the EU agreed to open negotiations with Turkey on two more of the 35 negotiating chapters covering the EU's acquis (the EU's body of laws)—consumer and health protection and Trans-European networks. While Croatia has formally opened about half of the chapters, Turkey has made much slower progress, with only six chapters opened since the talks began in October 2005: the two on December 19th; plus science and research; enterprise and industrial policy; statistics; and financial control.

The EU is particularly concerned about Article 301 of the reformed Turkish Penal Code, which continues to limit freedom of expression by criminalising remarks that are perceived to insult "Turkishness", Turkey or its institutions. The article has been used by the judiciary to prosecute journalists, writers and academics for their views, mainly on the Kurdish issue and the mass murder of Ottoman Armenians in 1915-17.

The government has promised to resolve the problem by mid-February. Proposed amendments to the article were submitted to the Council of Ministers on January 7th, but they have not yet been presented to parliament in the form of a bill. Moreover, the proposed changes would be unlikely to result in an improvement that would be acceptable to the EU as they merely replace as a punishable offence insulting "Turkishness" with the "Turkish people" and "republic" with the "Turkish republic", although a separate clause could be added, which would exclude "critical remarks" from being deemed punishable. There is also some debate about limiting the power of state prosecutors to file cases against individuals. The government seems to favour limiting prosecutorial power in such cases to the Minister of Justice, but the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) has recommended that it be given to the office of the President. The MHP is against any changes to the article.

And another thing

In addition to the question of freedom of expression, the Cyprus issue remains a hindrance to progress. Turkey is continuing to resist the EU's demand that Turkish airports and harbours are opened to Greek Cypriot aircraft and shipping until the EU makes good its long-standing promise to end the ban on direct trade between the EU and the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC). This resulted in the EU freezing eight of the 35 negotiating chapters in December 2006. Further action may be taken against Turkey when the EU reviews the issue in 2009. The international community is gearing up for another serious attempt to solve the Cyprus problem after the presidential election on February 17th. However, its chances of success will depend heavily on who is elected as president.

Another reform, which the EU has long been calling for in the context of Turkey's membership negotiations, relates to the legal status of religious foundations in Turkey. At present, foundations belonging to religious minorities are not allowed to acquire assets and property or to function abroad. This reform, however, appears less problematic than that of article 301. The AKP government had passed a law during its first term in office, but this was vetoed by the former president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer. The same bill was approved by the parliamentary Justice Commission on January 16th and will soon be put to a general parliamentary vote. Both the parliament and the current president, Abdullah Gul, are expected to approve the bill.

Gathering clouds

The European Commission and a large number of member states, led by the UK, Spain and Italy, will continue to support Turkey's bid for full membership. However, with the UK under the prime minister, Gordon Brown, appearing detached from EU affairs and Turkey making slow progress on political reforms, those member states that are openly opposed to Turkey's eventual accession, such as Austria and particularly France, under the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy, may get stronger. Mr Sarkozy has said that France is willing to allow negotiations with Turkey to proceed, as long as they are limited to those chapters that would lead to his preferred option of a "privileged partnership". This implies that France will probably continue to block talks on economic and monetary union (as it did in 2007), regional policy, agriculture, EU budgetary provisions and institutions

Adding to Turkey's concerns, the opposition camp could be significantly strengthened if, as we currently expect, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, wins next year's federal election in Germany and manages to form a government without the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Like Mr Sarkozy, Ms Merkel favours the privileged partnership option, but has had to refrain from openly backing Mr Sarkozy's position because the SPD in the current "grand coalition" government is supportive of Turkey's EU membership bid.

At the time, Mr Erdogan's appointment of a broadly pro-EU cabinet soon after the AKP's election victory in July last year had been widely viewed as a move to revive Turkey's flagging EU membership negotiations. However, six months down the line, with none of the reforms required by the EU, especially those affecting freedom of expression, having been approved, there is now a tangible sense of uncertainty regarding the future pace of negotiations. The government still appears to be committed to the goal of eventual membership, so some progress will be expected in 2008-09. However, the obstacles are considerable and there is still a risk that the negotiations might drift or even be suspended in the next two years.

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Copyright © 2008 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

Feb 14th 2008 | BEIJING
From The Economist print edition


Darfur's shadow over the Beijing games
Reuters

LOFTY words are always a hostage to fortune. The Olympic movement boasts that the Games “have always brought people together in peace to respect universal moral principles.” Yet history suggests otherwise. Boycotts marred the jamborees of 1956, 1976, 1980 and 1984. In 1968 two American sprinters gave a Black Power salute on the podium. The 1972 Games were blighted when Palestinian terrorists killed 11 Israeli athletes.

Now China, due to host the Games in August, is finding that its Olympic slogan—“One world, one dream”—also rests on hope more than fact. Steven Spielberg, an American film director, has quit as an artistic adviser for the opening and closing ceremonies: China, he said, must do more to stop the bloodshed in Darfur. On February 14th a group of Nobel laureates and athletes said the same in a letter to the Independent, a British daily.

Since Beijing won the right to stage the Games in 2001 China has known that it would have a hard time preventing critics of its human-rights abuses from spoiling the event. In 2006 it was delighted when Mr Spielberg came on board. But to China’s surprise, its behaviour abroad, particularly in Sudan, has been the focus of Hollywood’s ire in the run-up to the Games.

China has reacted angrily to what it calls attempts to “politicise” the Olympics. But recently it has been stung by the attempts of activists like Mia Farrow, an American actress, to portray the games as a “genocide Olympics” because of the killings in Sudan. China buys most of Sudan’s oil and sells it arms. This, say activists, makes it complicit in the state-orchestrated killing that has devastated Darfur.

To deflect such charges, China has shifted a little from its usual refusal to get involved in other countries’ political affairs. Western diplomats credit China with helping to persuade Sudan to accept a UN peacekeeping mission there. But this has not satisfied Mr Spielberg.

Even as it rejects their “politicisation”, the Games are of huge political importance to China. The Olympiads of the 1970s and 1980s were an athletic projection of the cold war; now China’s leaders want to show off their country as a respected world power, no longer weighed down by memories of the killings of pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing in 1989. (They want to top the medal table too.) George Bush has said he will be there.

But activists may be hard to muzzle. What if one of the guests says something rude? The Olympic movement’s rules bar athletes from making political “demonstrations” at Olympic venues. But this week, after much criticism, the British Olympic Association said it was rethinking a decision to ask its team members to promise not to comment on sensitive issues during the games. Politics will intrude one way or another.

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Aarwaa

Pakistan is ruled by three As - Army, America and Allah.

Oil in Venezuela

Exxon's wrathful tiger takes on Hugo Chávez

Feb 14th 2008 | CARACAS
From The Economist print edition

A dispute with Exxon adds to the troubles of Venezuela's president and the state-owned oil behemoth on which he relies


AFTER winning a new term as president by a landslide a year ago, Hugo Chávez decided that it would be a nifty idea to squeeze the remaining private oil companies operating in Venezuela. So he ordered the tearing up of the contracts they signed in the 1990s, under which they were investing to develop deposits of super-heavy crude. In their place would come joint ventures in which Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), the state oil company, would wield the controlling share. A year on, however, one of the multinationals, Exxon Mobil, is fighting back. This has prompted Mr Chávez to complain that the United States is waging “economic warfare” against his country. But such fiery talk cannot disguise the fact that both he and PDVSA are in a swamp of trouble.

On February 7th Exxon announced that it had obtained interim court injunctions in the United States, Britain, the Netherlands and the Dutch Antilles preventing PDVSA from disposing of over $12 billion in assets. It had sought the freeze as a preventive measure, to ensure that PDVSA could pay Exxon's claim for compensation for the seizure of its operation in the Orinoco heavy-oil belt.

Several rivals accepted the government's new terms. Exxon, along with ConocoPhillips, another American firm, chose to invoke the arbitration clause in its contract (which had over two decades to run). More than the money, it is reputed to want to send a firm message to the world's resource nationalists. Or, as Venezuela's deputy oil minister, Bernard Mommer, put it, to “intimidate other producers”.

Such procedures grind slowly. The International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes, a body linked to the World Bank, has yet to convene the panel that will hear the case. In parallel, and seemingly without PDVSA's knowledge, Exxon sought the court rulings. The Venezuelan government insists that the freeze applies directly only to one American bank account (with $315m) belonging to PDVSA. That ruling was upheld at a full hearing in New York on February 13th.

Mr Chávez responded, not for the first time, by threatening to halt oil exports to the United States. These run at around 1.2m barrels a day (b/d) and represent about three-quarters of Venezuela's total export earnings. Under Mr Chávez, Venezuela's economy has become heavily dependent on imports, especially of food. Few believe he can afford to implement his threat, and the oil price rose only slightly.

Not so PDVSA's bonds, whose value dipped sharply on investors' fears that lenders may face a higher risk of eventual default. On the face of things, that makes little sense. With around $100 billion in assets worldwide, including refineries in the United States, the Caribbean and Europe, PDVSA can easily pay any compensation award, which is unlikely to total more than $6 billion at most.

But there are many signs that the once-mighty PDVSA may be running short of cash. Since January 8th, for instance, its customers have been required to settle their bills eight days after shipment, rather than 30 days after receipt, as is customary. By the end of the month it was offering eight super-tanker loads of fuel oil at below market price for cash. In 2007 the company's debt burden rose from under $4 billion to over $16 billion. The uncertainty caused by the Exxon dispute means its borrowing costs may rise.

PDVSA is no longer just an oil producer. Mr Chávez has made it into what Elie Habalian, a former Venezuelan governor of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), calls a “parallel state”. The company has transferred billions of dollars to funds controlled by the president, and directly finances and runs a range of social projects. “There's a ministry of education—but PDVSA educates too,” says Mr Habalian. “There's a housing ministry, but PDVSA builds houses, and so on.” In response to shortages of basic foodstuffs, last month Mr Chávez ordered PDVSA to create a new subsidiary to distribute food, most of it imported.

At the same time, PDVSA's investment spending has been slashed, leading to a decline in oil output, the motor of the economy, for ten consecutive quarters, according to José Guerra, a former Central Bank director. A much-trumpeted government plan to increase oil production to 5m b/d by 2012 does not seem to have got off the ground. Officials claim that daily production is holding steady at over 3m barrels, but other sources (including OPEC) put the figure at less than 2.5m, and falling. Venezuelans use more oil themselves, thanks to a consumer boom and Mr Chávez's reluctance to raise the price of petrol. Officially, consumption is 600,000 b/d; it may be a third higher, reckons Ramón Espinaza, a former chief economist for PDVSA. Meanwhile, Mr Chávez is shipping 300,000 b/d to Caribbean neighbours (notably Cuba) at subsidised prices.

No important new deposits have been found since the president took office in 1999. Officials admit that PDVSA is short of drilling rigs for exploration (though Mr Chávez recently loaned two rigs to Ecuador). Much therefore hangs on the development of the Orinoco belt, with its estimated 250 billion barrels of heavy crude. But many of the companies recently invited (without competitive tender) to take part in these projects are state-owned outfits from countries, such as Iran and Belarus, whose governments are friends with Mr Chávez; most lack both the expertise and the financial muscle to develop them.

Several years of high and rising oil prices, along with PDVSA's policy of secrecy, have helped conceal its difficulties. With a slowing world economy making a further rise in the oil price unlikely in the short term, concealment will get harder. Waiting in the wings is ConocoPhillips, with a compensation demand much higher than that of Exxon. Venezuela's oil company will “fall apart the moment that prices drop to realistic levels,” Mr Habalian says. Unless he changes course, so might Mr Chávez's government.

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Copyright © 2008 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

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Aarwaa

Pakistan is ruled by three As - Army, America and Allah.

Faith, law and democracy
Defining the limits of exceptionalism

Feb 14th 2008 | THE HAGUE, ROME AND TORONTO
From The Economist print edition


The right of faiths to run their own affairs and regulate their adherents' lives has recently become controversial—because of fear of Islam

AMONG family-law buffs, the case is seen as a key example of the messy ways in which religious and civil law can get entangled. It concerns an Italian couple who wed in a Catholic church in 1962. After 25 years of less-than-blissful union, she got a legal separation from a civil court, which told him to make monthly maintenance payments. But he had other ideas: he convinced an ecclesiastical court that their union had never been valid, because they were close blood relations.

After vain appeals to various civil and religious courts in Italy (to which she complained that she never got a chance to tell her story), she turned to the European Court of Human Rights, which in 2001 ruled in her favour and made a modest compensation award. The European judges in Strasbourg had no jurisdiction over church courts—but they did find that Italy's civil judges failed to assess the religious courts' work or note the deficiencies.


In every democratic and more-or-less secular country, similar questions arise about the precise extent to which religious sub-cultures should be allowed to live by their own rules and “laws”. One set of questions emerges when believers demand, and often get, an opt-out from the law of the land. Sikhs in British Columbia can ride motorcycles without helmets; some are campaigning for the right not to wear hard hats on building sites. Muslims and Jews slaughter animals in ways that others might consider cruel; Catholic doctors and nurses refuse to have anything to do with abortion or euthanasia.

Even in determinedly secular states like France and the United States, the political authorities often find that they are obliged, in various ways, to cope with the social reality of religious belief. America's Amish community, fundamentalists who eschew technology, has generally managed to get around the law with respect to social security, child labour and education. In France, town halls serving large Muslim populations ignore secular principles as they get involved in the ritual slaughter of sheep.

Apart from exceptions to existing laws, another sort of problem arises when religious (and other) communities establish bodies that work very much like courts—and may be called courts—that enforce ancient rules that are often called laws.

All these questions, but especially the last of them, have been on the mind of Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Anglican leader caused a furore when he suggested, on February 7th, that some accommodation between British law and sharia, or the Muslim legal tradition, was inevitable and should perhaps be made official.
AP

America's oldest exception: the Amish

At first, there seems not to be any huge problem about the existence of institutions whose members freely choose to respect a set of norms—so long as participation really is voluntary, and the rules do not horrify the rest of society. (Intuitively, most Western societies accept the circumcision, on religious grounds, of baby boys, but they would not tolerate the genital mutilation of baby girls.) But in almost every democracy which aspires at the same time to be fair, secular and tolerant of religious diversity, it is getting harder to mark out and preserve the boundary.

Until recently, religions with deep local roots—like Anglicanism in Britain or Lutheranism in Scandinavia—could rely on well-honed survival instincts; clerics had developed a keen sense of how much “soft theocracy” society could accept, and when to beat a tactical retreat. Even the existence of court-like institutions, dealing in particular with marital and property issues, caused little fuss as long as everybody involved recognised the absolute primacy of the law of land. In Britain, for example, religious courts or beth din used by Orthodox Jews have been recognised by statute—and in 2002, divorce law was adjusted in a way that acknowledged the role of these bodies. (If a Jewish husband refuses to seek a religious divorce—thus denying his wife the chance to remarry in a synagogue—a civil judge can now delay the secular divorce.)

The Church of England uses ancient canon laws to govern the use of church property and its internal workings. But like the monarchy, it knows that the way to retain some vestigial authority is to give up most powers that could be controversial.

What has upset the old equilibrium, say law pundits in several countries, is the emergence all over the world of Muslim minorities who, regardless of what they actually want, are suspected by the rest of society of preparing to establish a “state within a state” in which the writ of secular legislation hardly runs at all. The very word sharia—which at its broadest can imply a sort of divine ideal about how society should be organised, but can also refer to specific forms of corporal and capital punishment—is now political dynamite.

That has rendered controversial some things that were once well accepted, like the existence of arbitration services which lighten the burden of the state by providing an alternative arena in which disputes can be settled. As Maurits Berger, a Dutch specialist on Islam and the law, points out, most English-speaking countries have a tradition of dealing with family law through arbitration—voluntary procedures to whose outcome the parties are bound. (Things are different in continental Europe, where the nearest equivalent is non-binding mediation services.)

The Canadian province of Ontario is the clearest case of an English-speaking place where fear of Islam made religious arbitration untenable. An uproar began in 2003 when Syed Mumtaz Ali, a retired Ontario lawyer, said he was setting up a sharia court to settle family law disputes for Muslims. Such arrangements were allowed by the province's 1991 Arbitration Act and could carry the force of law.

The proposal caused an instant backlash, right across the religious and political spectrum; many Muslim groups were opposed too. Marion Boyd, a retired attorney-general, investigated the matter and initially recommended that the Arbitration Act should continue to allow disputes to be adjudicated by religious bodies—subject to stricter regulation by the state. But that turned out not to be good enough for Ontarians who were nervous of sharia. In September 2005 the province's premier, Dalton McGuinty, decided to prohibit all settlement of family matters based on religious principles under the Arbitration Act. Religious arbitrators could still offer services in the settlement of disputes, but their rulings would not have legal effect or be enforceable by the courts. The province's laws were duly changed.

The political background to these moves is no secret: a general wariness of Islam prompted not only by the September 2001 terrorist attacks, but also by NATO's war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, in which scores of Canadian soldiers have died. Moves to establish sharia tribunals, be they ever so voluntary, aroused “quite a lot of anti-Muslim feelings”, says Alia Hogben of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women (which opposed the tribunals). “It allowed people to say, here they come, they are going to ask for more and more.” Apart from a general fear of theocracy, says Jeffrey Reitz, a professor at the University of Toronto, Canadians were nervous that “some of the progress that's been made with gender equality might be lost if we begin to accommodate various group that have less concern...”

As anxiety over (real or imaginary) Muslim demands for sharia turns into a broader worry about theocracy and religious exceptionalism, many democracies are seeing bizarre multi-polar disputes between secularists, Christians, Muslims and other faiths.

In southern Europe, says Marco Ventura, a religious-law professor at the University of Siena, Catholics are now more worried about the perceived advance of Islam than about maintaining old entitlements for their faith. “Their dilemma is whether the rights which their faith enjoys can be justified when new ones, like Islam, are appearing in Europe.” Some of Italy's Muslims, meanwhile, have been demanding “secularism” in the sense of diluting the Roman Catholic culture of the state, which is epitomised by crucifixes in court rooms, classrooms and hospitals. A Muslim convert, Adel Smith, has been fighting a long battle to get such symbols removed.

In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy has dismayed secularists by stressing the country's Catholic heritage in some recent speeches. But the late (Jewish-born) Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, was a staunch defender of the secular state as a bulwark against all forms of fundamentalism.

Defining the relationship between religion and the state was certainly easier when it could be assumed that religion's hold over people's lives and behaviour was in long-term decline. But with Islam on the rise, and many Christians—even those with the vaguest of personal beliefs—becoming more defensive of their cultural heritage, the line is getting harder and harder to draw. On that point at least, Archbishop Williams was quite correct.


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Aarwaa

Pakistan is ruled by three As - Army, America and Allah.

Pakistan's election
The posthumous poll

Feb 14th 2008 | LAHORE
From The Economist print edition


To a fanfare of suicide-bomb blasts, Pakistanis are due to deliver their verdict on wheat, America and Pervez Musharraf

ON A lofty platform, out of suicide-bomb range, Shahbaz Sharif, a leader of Pakistan's second opposition party, the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) or PML (N), promises poor Lahoris change. “Our leaders have been buying themselves bullet-proof cars and doing nothing for the people!” he thunders. A thousand men—about half the number expected to turn up to a dusty bazaar in the city—roar in approval. Then Mr Sharif is gone: whisked away by a motorcade that may include the two bullet-proof cars given to the PML-N by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

The run-up to a general election due on February 18th has seen relatively little campaigning—but lots of violence. Since the assassination on December 27th of Benazir Bhutto, leader of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), over 400 people have been killed by terrorists, mostly in suicide-bombings. The Awami National Party, the only outfit campaigning hard near the radicalised frontier with Afghanistan, suffered bomb attacks on its rallies on February 9th and 11th, in which 36 perished.


This week the government struck back. In Baluchistan province, it arrested the Taliban's former operations chief in Afghanistan, Mullah Mansoor Dadullah. The same day in north-western Pakistan kidnappers seized Pakistan's ambassador to Afghanistan, Tariq Azizuddin, with his guard and driver. They have reportedly offered to swap them for Mr Dadullah.

The violence may deter many Pakistanis from voting. Even in safer times, most do not bother with it: 41% of voters turned out in the country's previous election in 2002. A low turnout would help President Pervez Musharraf, a recently demobbed army ruler, to rig the election on behalf of his political allies, the Pakistan Muslim League (Q), or PML(Q). Rigging by army spies is another Pakistani election tradition. The International Republican Institute (IRI) has withdrawn election monitors on security grounds—and having been refused permission to conduct exit polls.

Yet it is not clear that Mr Musharraf and his crew could change the result. According to a poll for the IRI, only 15% of Pakistanis approve of Mr Musharraf—half the rating even of his main sponsor, President George Bush, in America. Of those polled, 50% said they would vote for the PPP, now led by Miss Bhutto's widower, Asif Zardari, 22% plumped for PML(N) and 14% for PML(Q). Taking the hint, some PML(Q) candidates have dropped the party symbol, a bicycle, from their campaign material.

Several polls suggest that shortages of wheat and other essential foods, high inflation and worsening power cuts are the main reasons for Mr Musharraf's unpopularity. The shortage of wheat, despite a bumper crop last year, has been blamed on the former prime minister, Shaukat Aziz. To help cut a big trade deficit, nearly 1m tonnes was exported. Smugglers may have disposed of a similar amount. A mafia of well-connected wholesalers are now hoarding the crop. In recent months the price of flour has almost doubled.

Most Pakistanis also blame Mr Musharraf for their country's grave insecurity. According to the IRI poll, 89% think Pakistan should not support America in its “war on terror”. In addition, many accuse Mr Musharraf, or his political allies, of murdering Miss Bhutto; she was killed in a suicide attack after a campaign rally. Miss Bhutto had accused several Musharraf henchmen of plotting to assassinate her.

In a tribal society, where honour and sacrifice are prized, many Pakistanis are expected to give a sympathy vote to the PPP. In Hussainabad, a slum district of Lahore, a gang of men sunning themselves on a rubbish-strewn railway track say that they are normally PML(N) voters but this time will vote PPP. Long since defined by the sufferings of its leading dynasty, the Bhutto clan, the PPP is understandably encouraging this emotion. It has been running a minute-long eulogy to Miss Bhutto on many television channels, which makes no reference to her party.

In fact, pollsters have a dire record in predicting Pakistani elections. Rigging and violence are two causes of uncertainty. Another concerns the feudal nature of many constituencies, and the habit of their hereditary rulers of switching horses from poll to poll. Of 183 outgoing parliamentarians from Punjab, the most populous province, 25 have changed parties to contest this election. Land-owning families, especially in unreformed southern Punjab and Sindh, also cut deals with one another, to ensure their maximum representation in the elected assemblies—for one party or another. As the former party of government, the PML(Q) has many strong land-owning candidates. It may legitimately do better than predicted.

Mr Musharraf must hope his opponents will at least fail to win a two-thirds parliamentary majority. That would allow them to overturn the constitutional changes that he forced through to secure his own recent re-election—and perhaps turf him from power. Indeed, Mr Zardari and the PML (N)'s leader, Nawaz Sharif, neither of whom is personally contesting the poll, said this week that they were ready to form a coalition government.

It was a stirring moment—a promise of civilian rule returning to Pakistan after nearly a decade. Of course, it is a shame that both politicians are massively compromised: by allegations of corruption, brutishness and former misrule. Then again, to believe in Pakistani democracy, you have to believe in redemption.


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Aarwaa

Pakistan is ruled by three As - Army, America and Allah.

Kosovo

Independence day

Feb 17th 2008 | PRISTINA
From Economist.com

Kosovo declares its secession from Serbia

ON SUNDAY February 17th Kosovo declared that it had become the seventh state to emerge from the wreckage of the former Yugoslavia. According to a plan worked out by Kosovo's leaders with foreign counterparts, recognition of the new country is likely to follow from Monday onwards, by America, many European Union countries and others.

Tens of thousands of people packed the centre of Pristina, Kosovo's capital, to celebrate. Posters were plastered across the city, thanking America, Britain and the EU for their support.

Technically Kosovo was a province of Serbia, although its jurisdiction passed to the UN in 1999. Serbia, strongly supported by Russia has said that Kosovo's independence is an illegal act of secession and it will not recognise it. Serbia is set to lower, but not break, diplomatic relations with any state that recognises Kosovo.

Of Kosovo's 2m people some 90% are ethnic Albanians who have long demanded independence. There are believed to be fewer than 130,000 Serbs in Kosovo today. About half live in a compact territory in the north, the rest in enclaves scattered across the rest of the territory.

This is the second time Kosovo has declared independence. The first time in 1991, it was recognised by no one except Albania. This time it will be different, but still Kosovo will not become a state equal with all others. Russia will block its membership of the UN and all other international bodies where it has a veto. A big EU mission is beginning to deploy, with a mandate to keep control of police and justice in the territory. Another part of the mission is supposed to make sure that Kosovo lives up to various standards its leaders have committed themselves to.

The risk is that Kosovo becomes dependent on these missions and thus simply an EU protectorate, its leaders shoving responsibility for difficult issues on to foreigners all too willing to rule. Given Serbia's hostility to Kosovo's independence, heavy reliance on foreigners will be a necessity in any case. Today Kosovo's security is assured by some 17,000 NATO-led troops. They will remain for years, perhaps decades, to come.

One of the biggest problems now is going to be dealing with Kosovo's Serbian minority which rejects independence—the leadership of Serbia tell them to ignore independence. They will probably do so. In May, Serbia will vote in local elections. This will be a big test. What would, or could, Kosovo's authorities do when Serbs hold these polls in other parts of Kosovo? Much will become clear in the next few days. Some of Kosovo's power comes from Serbia. Will that be cut? Will Serbia close the border to Kosovo-Albanians and anyone doing business with them?

On Friday Hashim Thaci, Kosovo's prime minister, addressed journalists saying that all would be done to look after and protect minorities in Kosovo. It was a moment pregnant with symbolism. Since no one had bothered to provide a translation none of the now angry Serbian journalists had a clue what he was saying. For too long Serbs and Albanians have been talking at each other not to each other. In the short term this is bound to get worse. Serbia has also, for now, angrily opted to put aside its efforts to join the EU.

Once the parties end difficult problems must be tackled. Serbs in the north will protest against independence. Kosovo's weak economy will still be weak. Kosovo's neighbours, Macedonia and Montenegro are also bracing for trouble, worried that a vengeful Serbia will take harsh measures against them if they recognise the new state.

For years diplomats dealing with Kosovo have tried to find a way to achieve what was called “final status”. Today most Albanians are delirious, but it is unclear whether they have understood that what is happening now is not final, but rather just the end of a chapter. “We had hoped we'd be finishing the book by now,” says one diplomatic source ruefully. Ylber Hysa, a Kosovo Albanian analyst, says that as far as he is concerned the important thing is not so much independence as getting "Serbia out."

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Pakistan is ruled by three As - Army, America and Allah.

Pakistan's elections

Out with the president’s men

Feb 19th 2008 | LAHORE
From Economist.com


Supporters of Pervez Musharraf suffer

BRAVING suicide bombers, and some unappetising political choices, Pakistani voters dealt a heavy blow to President Pervez Musharraf, their ex-military ruler, on Monday February 18th. His supporters in the Pakistan Muslim League (Q)—or PML(Q)—the former ruling party, were routed. The two main opposition parties, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), whose leader, Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated in December, and the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz)—or PML(N)—shared a big majority of the vote.

With a few results still undeclared, and as widely expected, the PPP was the winner, with 87 of a possible 272 parliamentary seats. The party consolidated its support in southern Sindh province, its traditional stronghold, and made modest gains in Punjab, where over half the seats were fought. But with around 30% support—the PPP’s traditional share—it did not appear to have attracted a huge sympathy vote on account of its murdered leader, as some pundits had predicted that it would.

Most Pakistanis blame Mr Musharraf and his lieutenants, the army spies through whom dictators have often ruled Pakistan, for Miss Bhutto’s death. Yet voters recoiling against Mr Musharraf were more likely to plump for Nawaz Sharif’s PML(N0, which won 66 seats—rather better than the 15 it managed in Pakistan’s previous election, in 2002. Most of these gains were at the expense of PML(Q): with 38 seats, it won less than half of its previous tally. In addition, 27 independent candidates were elected. Most are likely to offer support to whichever party forms the next government.

Several arch allies of Mr Musharraf, a two-time army coupster, were among the losers. They included the PML(Q)’s leader, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, who was defeated in two constituencies. The party’s prime ministerial candidate, Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, the former chief minister of Punjab, lost in two constituencies but won in one.

In a country where voters tend to choose their candidate on the basis of his ability to dish out patronage, the PML(Q)’s defeat is remarkable. In the run-up to the poll, the party’s leaders abused their former powers massively: for example, illegally commandeering government workers and vehicles for their campaigns. It mattered little. In voting away Mr Musharraf’s cronies Pakistanis have restored the main two-party rivalry—the left-leaning, Pakistan-wide PPP against the right-leaning, Punjab-based Muslim League—that has defined their country’s democratic history.

On the fringes of this main drama they also dispatched the country’s Islamist parties to electoral oblivion. In 2002, Mr Musharraf’s agents organised the mullahs into an efficient coalition, the Muttahida Majlis Amal (MMA). This helped them to win unprecedented power, including control of one of Pakistan’s four provinces and 45 seats in parliament. Having fallen out with Mr Musharraf—in particular, over his prosecution of a war against Taliban insurgents in north-western Pakistan—the MMA has splintered. Its rump won three parliamentary seats; its leader, Fazlur Rahman, suffered a hugely embarrassing defeat in his home constituency, but scraped to victory in another.

To form a government, the PPP and PML(N) must enter into a coalition with each other—something which the PPP has offered to do. A partnership between the two Muslim League parties is hardest to imagine, because Mr Musharraf and Mr Sharif, a two-time former prime minister, loathe each other.

In a spirit of national unity, at a time of grave insecurity, many Pakistanis are hoping for an alliance between the PML(N) and PPP. The PPP’s leader, Miss Bhutto’s widower, Asif Zardari, and Mr Sharif have both said that they are prepared to make such a deal. On Tuesday February 19th, in his first statement after the poll, Mr Zardari said his party would prefer to shun the PML(Q).

Mr Sharif meanwhile reiterated his demand that Mr Musharraf must retire or be removed. With the support of other smaller parties—including the Pushtun-nationalist Awami National Party, which won 10 seats in north-western Pakistan—a government of the PPP and PML(N) could command the two-thirds majority needed to impeach the president.

But that is still far from happening. Mr Zardari, a Sindhi landowner with a reputation for corruption, has only shaky support in his party, much less the country. He would be loth to help Mr Sharif, Punjab’s undisputed leader, to build national support. Yet in turning his back on Mr Sharif, Mr Zardari would have to embrace the despised Mr Musharraf and his fallen cronies in the PML(Q). Mr Zardari might not mind that arrangement; but many PPP supporters would mind it enormously.

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Pakistan is ruled by three As - Army, America and Allah.

Feb 19th 2008
From Economist.com

Fidel Castro steps down

FEW Cubans could quite bring themselves to believe that the day would ever come when Fidel Castro was no longer in charge. But after almost half a century in which he imposed communism on his island and defied a unilateral American embargo, on Tuesday February 19th he announced that he would retire as Cuba’s president and as its “commander-in-chief” later this month. When the country’s new Council of State, its ruling body, is unveiled on February 24th, it is probable that it will be headed by Raúl Castro, Fidel’s younger brother.

That will formalise what has been a de facto (and officially “temporary”) transfer of power which began when Fidel underwent abdominal surgery in July 2006. Since then, he has not appeared in public. Photographs and accounts by those who have visited him suggest that while he has been convalescing, he remains extremely frail. In December Mr Castro, who is aged 81, had allowed his name to be put forward as a candidate for the new National Assembly, but he had also said that he would not “cling to office”.

Under Raúl Castro Cuba has edged cautiously towards economic reform. Raúl, who has long been the defence minister and vice-president, heads a collective leadership. Last year he launched an “open debate” on the shortcomings of the communist economy, saying that it needed “structural and conceptual reforms”.

So far these have involved only modest steps, such as turning more state land over to individual farming and official recognition that foreign investors can pay higher wages. Some Cuban economists expect that in the coming months the government will grant more scope for family businesses and foreign investment, and allow state companies more autonomy.

Many of these policies were adopted in the mid-1990s after Cuba’s economy contracted by a third following the collapse of the Soviet Union, its former patron and protector. But some of these were reversed by Fidel after Cuba acquired new allies. Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez supplies the island with highly subsidised oil while China has offered long-term credits. Remittances from Cubans abroad, especially in the United States, help those on the island to make ends meet.

But despite some improvements—power cuts are now much less frequent than a few years ago—Cubans are deeply discontented with their daily lives. Top of the list of grumbles are low wages (averaging only about $20-25 a month), acute shortages of transport and housing and the restrictions on small business. Health care and education remain free but of deteriorating quality. To get by, almost every Cuban must get involved in a tolerated, but officially illegal, informal economy.

Under Raúl, there have also been a few signs of a modest relaxation in Cuba’s police state. In the past few days, four political opponents were released from long jail terms and flown abroad. But human-rights activists say that there are still more than 200 political prisoners in the island’s jails.

Only five years younger than Fidel, Raúl Castro is likely to be a transitional figure. Some commentators do not discount the possibility that Carlos Lage, the de facto prime minister who runs the economy, might be named as the new president. Cuba watchers will study the new Council of State for clues as to whether the pace of reform may now accelerate. Another clue might be the calling of a long-overdue Congress of Cuba’s ruling Communist Party, of which Fidel Castro remains first secretary.

George Bush this week repeated the United States’ call for free and fair elections in Cuba. But as long as Fidel remains alive, a move towards liberal democracy will not happen. Frail though he is, Fidel Castro will continue to exercise a veto power over the pace and direction of change in Cuba. He plans to continue writing regular articles in the official press. “I am not saying goodbye to you. I want only to fight on as a soldier of ideas,” he said in his statement. He has stepped down but he has not quite left the stage.

http://www.economist.com/daily/news/...ry_id=10715023

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Pakistan is ruled by three As - Army, America and Allah.

Kosovo

The world's newest state
Feb 21st 2008
From The Economist print edition

Its declaration of independence is the start of another chapter, not of a new book

AFP
THE deed is done. On February 17th Kosovo finally declared its independence, becoming the seventh state to emerge from the Yugoslavia that self-destructed in the early 1990s. Had it been a republic of the Yugoslav federation, like Croatia or Slovenia, it would no doubt have been independent long ago. But it was a province of Serbia and that difference means Kosovo, for the foreseeable future, will not be a state like the others.

Kosovo has about 2m people, of whom 90% are ethnic Albanians. They say they have been waiting for this moment not just since 1991, when Yugoslavia broke up, but 1912, when Serbia retook most of Kosovo from the Ottoman Turks. By contrast Kosovo's Serbs, who number 120,000 (although no one knows for sure), greeted the declaration with fear and anger.

After the declaration, America and most European Union countries began the process of recognition. Muslim states will follow. Like the people of Albania, Kosovars are that rare combination, a majority Muslim people who are also passionately pro-American. Russia, and of course Serbia, reacted angrily. Russia argues that Kosovo's independence will open a Pandora's box of secessions and so it will block it from joining the United Nations.

Serbia went through the largely empty gestures of annulling the declaration and bringing criminal charges against Kosovo's president, prime minister and parliamentary speaker for an “unlawful attempt to bring about the secession of a part of Serbia's territory.” More significantly, when Kosovo Serbs destroyed two border posts between the Serb-inhabited north of Kosovo and Serbia itself, they won the backing of the government in Belgrade: Slobodan Samardzic, Serbia's minister for Kosovo, said this “might not be pleasant but it is legitimate.”

There are 17,000 NATO-led troops in Kosovo and they have now taken control of that part of the border. But the real story is the hardening of a de facto partition of the new country between parts controlled by Serbia and parts under Kosovo's government. About half of Kosovo's Serbs live in the north, with the northern part of divided Mitrovica their main town; the rest live in enclaves scattered elsewhere. Serb leaders have told them to ignore Kosovo's independence.

On balance, said one EU diplomat, the first few days after the declaration had been “so far, so good”. True, the Serbian areas now amount to a new “frozen conflict” in Europe, like Cyprus or parts of the former Soviet Union. But that has long been expected. Now the UN mission that has been in Kosovo since the end of the war in 1999 should start to wind down and a big EU mission start to wind up.

It will have two parts. One is to oversee police and justice in Kosovo. The other, called the International Civilian Office, is to oversee the application of the plan for an independent Kosovo drawn up by Martti Ahtisaari, a former Finnish president. The office will be headed by Pieter Feith, a shrewd Dutch diplomat. He, like Kosovo, faces a struggle. The core of the plan is the decentralisation of the state, giving Serbian areas much autonomy. But if their leaders are not interested in this, and prefer to secede from Kosovo, then much of the plan will be a dead letter.

So while Kosovo's declaration of independence ends a chapter, its new “final status” is likely to prove merely another chapter in the same book, not the longed-for beginning of a new volume. Few Kosovar Albanians understand this. The eight years in which Kosovo was a UN protectorate may well be followed by a period as an EU protectorate. Diplomats and local analysts say Mr Feith will have to be careful to stay in the background and not let himself be drawn into playing a larger role than his mandate prescribes. Otherwise Kosovo risks getting “Balkan dependency syndrome”—a form of behaviour, already prevalent in Bosnia, whereby local leaders let foreigners do what should be their own work, handing over responsibility for unpopular decisions and, naturally, failures.

“Kosovo is done,” says Migjen Kelmendi, editor of a newspaper called Java, paraphrasing a remark that followed the creation of Albania in 1912. “Now we need to create Kosovars.” He means that Kosovo needs to have its own distinct national and cultural identity, and not to be swamped—as is happening now—by imports and influence from Albania.

Reuters

Hello, Belgrade? What now?But the biggest challenge is the economy. The statistics brim with horrible figures, all unreliable and misleading. If 40% or 50% of Kosovars were really unemployed (as official figures say) and had no other source of income, then everyone would be starving. They are not. Kosovo looks and feels like a poor part of Europe, not a part of the Third World or parts of the former Soviet Union. Unemployment figures are high—two-thirds of young people are jobless—because the grey economy is huge. However most families also have members abroad who send cash home. Generations of Kosovars worked as Gastarbeiter, guest workers, in other parts of Europe. Today their pensions make a huge contribution to keeping Kosovo going.

Some of Kosovo's problems are stark. According to Shpend Ahmeti, director of Kosovo's Institute for Advanced Studies, imports are running at about €1.3 billion ($1.9 billion) a year but exports at a microscopic €90m-130m. Every year between 25,000 and 30,000 young people enter the labour market, most of them unskilled. Business taxes are much higher than elsewhere in the region; interest rates are prohibitive. Like the rest of the Balkans, Kosovo has a reputation (now somewhat outdated) of being plagued by organised crime—a symptom of a weak state.

On the bright side, says Mr Ahmeti, Kosovo is rich in all sorts of minerals which have been mined for centuries. There is also a small “secret Kosovo”—not black-uniformed gunmen, but modern factories making things. In Suha Reka workers glide around the Flor-En meat processing plant in white suits and masks. The nearby Solid shoe factory churns out goods for export, as well as the domestic market. These are green shoots that need tending.

Asked whether independence will make a difference, though, Ahmet Kuci, the commercial director of Solid says no. What will, he says, is cutting taxes. Kushtrim Xhakli, an internet entrepreneur, says the problem lies deeper: stick-in-the-mud thinking and no tradition of letting private companies get larger than one family can control. “They are frightened of modern technology and losing control,” he says.

If Enver Hoxhaj, Kosovo's energetic, young minister of education, has anything to do with it, attitudes will change. He has a ministry of only 200 people but half a million students in education. He has no idea if his 27,000 teachers have the right qualifications. His priorities are to build 76 new schools, to register teachers and to introduce proper vocational training.

Other vital tasks are to improve the rule of law by getting Kosovo's clogged and often corrupt courts to work, and to ensure a reliable energy supply. Power cuts are a daily occurrence. Kosovo also needs to attract foreign investment, and the best way to do that, as Mr Ahmeti says, is to stay out of the news for a bit.

That does not seem all that likely in the short term. The coming weeks and months will see turbulence in the western Balkans. But look at the map. Kosovo and the region are surrounded by the EU. The union is moving in not because it loves Kosovo but because a stable Balkans is in everyone's interest. It may well be that Serbia, the biggest and most powerful country of the former Yugoslavia, retreats, bloodied and embittered, from its attempt to integrate into the EU, at least for a while. On May 11th Serbs vote in local elections and, since they intend to hold these polls in Serb-controlled parts of Kosovo too, there will be plenty of scope for incidents which could turn nasty. Yet all that is cause for concern, rather than panic so far.

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our struggles will not end but ,certainly,life.

Israel

Death from within

Mar 6th 2008 | JERUSALEM
From Economist.com

A gunman brings slaughter to Jerusalem

IT HAD been four years since a suicide bomber last brought death to Jerusalem. The lone Palestinian gunman who killed eight students in a yeshiva, a religious seminary, on the evening of Thursday March 6th, before being gunned down by a former student, jolted the city’s residents back to the fear-filled days at the height of the second Palestinian intifada. The gunman's target was not chosen at random. The seminary is of enormous symbolic importance. It is the ideological cradle of Israel's settler movement and has provided many of its leading figures.

But so far there seems to be no sign that it was on the orders of Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls the Gaza Strip, or any of the other militant groups there. Al-Manar, the television station owned by the Lebanese Shia group, Hizbullah, reported that responsibility had been claimed by the “Galilee Freedom Organisation—the Martyr Imad Mughniyeh”, a previously unheard-of group named after a senior Hizbullah man who was assassinated in Syria last month.

The killings came just a few days after an Israeli army incursion into Gaza that killed at least 110 Palestinians. The Israelis have withdrawn forces and scaled down their attacks. But the surge of fighting threatened to kibosh the already flagging peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, who rules the other, bigger bit of a would-be Palestinian state, in the West Bank. The fighting in Gaza was the heaviest since Hamas took control last June.

Israel had denied involvement in the killing of Mughniyeh, though those denials, pointed out Israeli commentators, were phrased in such a way as to leave some room for doubt. But Israel had been bracing itself for some form of retaliation.

And the killer in Jerusalem was not typical of those who have carried out attacks for Palestinian militants in the past. Besides choosing guns rather than a suicide belt loaded with explosives, he was one of the approximately 250,000 Palestinians from Jerusalem itself. These Palestinians have Israeli residency permits thanks to Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem, which it occupied along with the rest of the West Bank in the 1967 war. Unlike the perpetrators of previous attacks, who have come almost exclusively from elsewhere in the West Bank or from the Gaza Strip, he was able to move freely in Israel itself.

That, whether he was sent by Hizbullah, Hamas or someone else, will create fresh difficulties both for the Israeli security services and for the approximately 1.4m Palestinian Arabs with Israeli residency or citizenship. The intifada and its aftermath have intensified the conflict between their sympathy for their brethren in the occupied territories and their loyalty to the state, causing Jewish Israelis to view them with suspicion. When thousands of Arab Israelis demonstrated against the carnage in Gaza earlier this week, a right-wing Israeli legislator, Effie Eitam, called it “treachery”. He told Arab lawmakers who took part in the protest that “the day will come when we will banish you from [the parliament] and from the national home…you should be expelled to Gaza.”

That kind of inflammatory talk, though still the preserve of the far right, is slowly becoming more politically acceptable among more moderate Jewish Israelis. If Arab Israelis are now seen as potential terrorists too, the hostility will increase.



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Pakistan is ruled by three As - Army, America and Allah.