Daily Archives: September 2, 2022

Afghanistan has long been a rentier state dependent on international aid. Aid has had a mixed impact on the long-run performance of the Afghan economy. From 2001 to 2021, the flow of aid undoubtedly shaped the contextures of a modern economy and bureaucracy, boosted a nascent but thriving civil society and private sector, and integrated Afghanistans economy into the world economy. Meanwhile, international assistance created a culture of dependency, increased systemic corruption, and hampered state legitimacy. Upon the collapse of the Afghan republic, international grants covered about 75 percent of the governments public expenditures. With a gradual decline in international assistance starting in 2014, economic growth slowed, while poverty and unemployment kept rising. The pandemic and the intensified conflict in the later years of the republic had already led the economy to the brink of a collapse.

When the Taliban took over on August 15, 2021, Afghanistan became a pariah state. The country was isolated from the international financial markets, and its economy began a free fall. An absolute majority of the population lost its purchasing power due to loss of employment, distorted civil service salary payments, reduced household incomes (particularly for the female-headed households who are denied the right to work), and the suspension of development aid. Total domestic expenditure declined by 60 percent. More than 82 percent of households lost their wages, 18 percent of families resorted to the negative coping mechanisms of child marriage or child labor, and 7.5 percent of families started begging for survival. Of those still employed, at least 70 percent lost a significant portion of their incomes.

The challenges of a failing economy and an extreme humanitarian catastrophe are rooted in three interrelated existential crises triggered by the triumph of the Taliban in Afghanistan: a legitimacy crisis, an accountability crisis, and a crisis of governance.

First, the two primary correlates of state legitimacy are the peoples perception of how rightfully the rulers hold and exercise power, and how satisfied the citizens are with the state in terms of the latters ability to maintain order and deliver public goods. The rise of the Taliban by means of force and the peoples dissatisfaction with them are at odds with these principles. Afghanistan is now in a state of anarchy. There is no constitutionnot a single law that would define the civil rights of the citizensand people have no influence over decisions that impact them in their everyday life. State-society relations are reduced to an oppressor-oppressed relationship.

The Talibans conceptualization of government is a theocracy guided by a group of clerics responsible for enforcing a dogmatic and intolerant version of Islampreached to them in Pakistani Madrasascombined with a set of primitive tribal norms of behavior. This combination was manifested in the form of a terrorist group in the past, and the current de facto regime has only produced full-scale religious violence, radicalization, and violations of basic rights. This dogmatic perception held the Taliban back over the past year, despite persistent national and international calls for the Taliban to embrace opportunities to negotiate with their fellow Afghans to form a political consensus and a coherent national discourse to bring the fractured Afghan polity together. Consequently, anarchism and the absence of a responsible and legitimate government in Afghanistan have triggered and fed the humanitarian catastrophe and economic turmoil, which cannot be patched up unless the root causes are addressed.

Second, the de facto rulers in Afghanistan have failed to generate accountability, both to the international community for their commitments under Doha Agreement and to the people of Afghanistan for their socio-economic management, budget expenditures, and delivery of public goods. The Taliban have censored the media and silenced dissenting voices and civil society; they have left no accountability mechanism in place.

The Taliban are mobilizing revenue from multiple sources simultaneously. These sources include formal and informal taxation. In addition, the exploitation of Afghanistans natural resources and the Talibans monopoly over opium cultivation, production, and trafficking are the cash cows of the de facto regime. Although the Taliban have reportedly reduced corporate taxes slightly to stimulate the crippled private sector, they have drastically increased informal collections, business license taxes, services fees, and other pity taxes, which is also an important driver of the skyrocketing retail prices in Afghanistan. Service fees for national ID cards, passports, birth certificates, marriage certificates, and collections from street vendors, for instance, have increased by up to 300 percent.

Upon entering Kabul, the Taliban started overexploiting Afghanistans natural resources. Over the past year, the Taliban-controlled Ministry of Mines and Petroleum has awarded contracts for the exploitation of close to 200 small-scale and large-scale mines across Afghanistan. This August, the ministry collected $7.9 million in revenue in just one week. On average, the Talibans revenue from mining amounted to $23.8 million last month, according to the data on the ministrys web portal. The Taliban are trucking up to 500,000 tons of coal to Pakistan each month via the Kharlacha, Gholam Khan, Chaman, and Torkham crossings. The Talibans Ministry of Finance taxes coal exports at $60 per ton, including a recent ten percent increase. The gross revenue to Afghanistan from the sale of coal (priced at $200 per ton) totals up to $130 million a month, most of which accrues to the Taliban for their prerogative to award and manage contracts.

The Taliban have budgeted $2.6 billion in expenditures and targeted $2.1 billion in revenue for the current fiscal year. With the Talibans over-taxation and relative efficiency in revenue mobilization, the actual revenue will be much higher than anticipated. But parlous revenue extraction from a rapidly contracting economy with austerity on the spending end puts the economy under further pressure. Despite a meager allocation of $0.31 billion (11 percent) of the total budget for development, the Taliban regime has not yet initiated any significant development project. Besides, humanitarian assistance and the salaries of thousands of teachers and health workers across Afghanistan are being paid by UN agencies, which saves the Talibans treasury a significant amount each month.

The question of what happens to the millions of dollars of revenue flowing into the hands of the Taliban, which pays for nothing except salaries to its civil servants (based on a reduced salary scale), remains unanswered. The Ministry of Finance has not made a breakdown of its revenue and expenditure public, nor is there any other transparent mechanism to ensure monitoring and transparency.

Third, a competent bureaucracycurrently missing in Afghanistanis a crucial element of a responsible government. The Taliban administration is filled with incompetent clerics who have incapacitated the institutions of service delivery. The international communitys provision of much-needed humanitarian aid and vital services has been a major relief for the Taliban regime.

Afghanistans acute humanitarian and economic challenges are more of an institutional and accountability failure than the result of a lack of resources. The incompetent leadership, a disrupted bureaucracy, the absence of women in public services, the flight of human capacity, and interventions with humanitarian aid delivery have decreased the value of money and exposed more than 90 percent of Afghans to food insecurity. A UN report estimates that the immediate cost of the Talibans ban on womens work to the Afghanistan economy is $1 billion, the equivalent of 5 percent of GDP.

The Talibans refusal to appoint a competent and independent central banker cost Afghanistan the collapse of its financial sector. The immediate repercussion of a failing banking system is the growth of informal financial markets, which could trigger potential money laundering concerns in Afghanistan and beyond.

The Taliban are ruling Afghanistan by force, opaquely, and without the consent of the people. They have failed to deliver on their promises to negotiate a political settlement, maintain security, end relationships with international jihadi networks, respect human rights, and providing public goods to the people of Afghanistan.

The international community has a moral obligation to assist the people of Afghanistan in rescuing their country from its current path toward radicalization and humanitarian catastrophe. Without proactive initiatives by the international community, the status quo will only lead to further misery for Afghans and the spread of jihadism beyond Afghanistan.

The narrative of inclusive government emphasized by the international community and some domestic elements is a failed narrative and cannot guarantee a sustainable solution to Afghanistans protracted conflict. Over the past twenty years, ensuring inclusivity has always been a challenging issue, and the liberal-minded elites could not agree on forming an inclusive government. Now, with the totalitarian Taliban on the scene, the idea of forming an inclusive government is absurd. Inclusivity in the form of putting some people of specific backgrounds into a Taliban government will be the repetition of the failed and destabilizing experiences of the past. A long-term solution to Afghanistans instability lies in all sides submission to the will of the people through a legitimate process. The international community should hold the Taliban accountable for their behavior and pressure them to jointly negotiate with other Afghans to decide the future course in Afghanistan.

Mirwais Parsa is a Research Fellow at the Center for Governance and Market, University of Pittsburgh.

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The Taliban's Triumph Has Been Afghanistan's Tragedy - The National Interest Online

This article is a response to Janan Ganeshs piece: Yes, GDP is (almost) everything

In his recent article Yes, GDP is (almost) everything, Janan Ganesh argued that despite the rising critiques of economic growth as an obscurer of what we genuinely value in society (nature, happiness, justice, and so on), a rising GDP is still the surest measurement of a morally desirable society, even for all its faults. He says:

There are two problems with the line that GDP isnt everything. One is that no sentient being has ever claimed that it is. The other is that GDP is very nearly everything. Immigrants versus nativists, cities versus provinces: the cultural fault lines that marble the body politic of the western world were there before the crash of 2008. The difference was that governments couldveil them with cash.

This article is sober and incisive, and possibly the most direct insight into not only the intellectual culture of growth-based economies, but also a snapshot into their real functioning. Modern heterodox economic movements, ecological, donut, wellbeing, and so on, might balk at this idea, but I would argue that at the basic level, Ganesh is entirely correct in his correlation of social success and GDP growth. Degrowth and other strands of ecological economics (or even Collapsitarians) are indeed correct that endless growth on a finite planet cant go on forever, but that doesnt mean our contemporary body politic doesnt require it.

As the gears of the neoliberal era rust against extreme weather, pandemics, war, looming famine, and the early onsets of peak oil, its delivery of growth is sluggish and ever more pained. As growth plateaus, it is easy to correlate this trend to rising social tensions. Strikes, fuel poverty, even government overthrows in places like Sri Lanka are closely tied to this sluggish GDP. Correspondingly, extremer politics and reactionary erosion of rights are springing up to try quell the unrest, but little is done (if it even could be) to ameliorate the underlying issue: global GDP is stumbling.

Looking at all this, its obvious Ganesh was correct that we needed GDP to ensure the contemporary social contract, and thats exactly why we need to end it.

Diminishing Returns

As the world is subject to a crushing ecological collapse driven primarily by this growth in its economy, many have convincingly suggested that we must include global ecosystems in the value system of global markets. The economic order, so the logic goes, is an unstoppable juggernaut that has no need to care for that outside it, but what is included within it has an inherent advantage. This has been the logic of ecosystem services, as well as its more modern derivatives such as carbon credits and natural tokenisation. In Indonesia, farmers were paid to preserve their adjacent jungles, and as long as the project continued the forests remained. Yet, when the project funding dried up, not only did they begin deforesting again, but on a more extreme level than farming communities who were never involved with the scheme at all.

This is the quandary of Ganeshs piece. He outright acknowledges that economic growth doesnt resolve underlying tensions, but merely drowns it out in the distractions of prosperity. It induces us to let our arbitration abilities atrophy, further justifying the pursuit of growth as the only metric towards social desirability. It is an antibiotic remedy, integral in appropriate dosage, but exacerbating the problems it seeks to solve if overused. Much as economic growth tends to deliver less and less profit as it goes on, the social dividends seem to be depreciating too. The recovery after the 2008 financial crash was failing to deliver even before COVID hit. Donald Trump rose to power on a wave of social and economic discontent, and countries like Chile almost collapsed amongst anti-austerity riots.

Human infrastructure (mainly concrete) alreadyoutweighs all living biomass on earth, and if this sheer amount of physically embodied GDP was failing to satiate the socio-economic needs of developed nations (let alone the Global South), how much more mass could we need to paper over tensions now?

Fighting the Inevitable

However, where Ganesh is incisive in his correlation of GDP to the social contract of modern nation states, his opinion on the opponents of GDP from degrowthers to (apparently) David Cameron and Prince Charles are less cognisant:

The looming recession will be painful. But it will also drive a certain kind of post-materialist humbug from polite discourse. Growth will be harder to dismiss as a bean counters tawdry obsession when there is so little of the stuff to go round.

Rather, as hard biophysical limits are approached and the stability of systems (from climate to the US-unipolar world) begins to unravel, various voices are cautiously approaching the question of a world without growth. Whether it isReuters publishing on this economic heresy or European governments requesting voluntary water rationing, the discourse on degrowth (outside its dedicated partisans) is only growing.

The end of growth is a physical certainty, and a green, non-extractive growth only a myth; anartefact of statistical errors and economics wishes. The question asked by serious political economy now is not how do we perpetuate growth, but rather, if it will be degrowth by design, or by disaster.

Teaser photo credit: By Arjun R Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58243501

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GDP is (almost) everything, and that's the problem - Resilience

Victoria 3, the next entry in Paradox's series of grand strategy games, finally has a release date. The next entry in the Victoria series will launch on PC on October 25th, 2022.

Much like its previous entries in theVictoria series,Victoria 3 will see players take the helm of a society spanning from 1836 through 1936, seeing players navigate the years after the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, all the way through World War I and into the years leading up to the Second World War. Players can shape their society to meet the challenges the sim throws at them, from dealing with massive social issues that are starting to assert more control in the populations, through industrialization and more.

Via this morning's press release:

"Victoria 3 is a deep socio-economic and political simulation that endeavors to represent the needs and desires of every person on earth across a century of dramatic technological and social upheaval. Growing populations will have to be fed, but they will also make political demands to increase or maintain their power. Pass laws and social reforms to reflect the wishes of your citizens, or try to impose a brighter future on a nation that may not appreciate your forward thinking."

Like pretty much every Paradox grand strategy game, you can take the role of virtually any society on the planet during this time period, from Great Britain or post-Napoleonic France to even Asian powers such as the Japanese and the Qing Chinese. No two games will ever be alike as real-world scenarios mix with the world reacting to the decisions the player makes in their rise for dominance. Players can influence laws, social reform, and more.

Victoria 3 takes the simulation to a new level as every citizen of a nation is simulated as well, from the lowliest of farmer to the politician looking to make a name for themselves. Additionally, world trade is an important element to ensuring economic dominance staves off economic collapse.

Victoria 3 evokes an era that saw unprecedented technological improvements, social reforms, and more, while also being marked by war that helped shaped the modern world we live in even today. Victoria 3 is set to release on PC this October 25th, for $49.99.

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Victoria 3 Launches On October 25th, Bringing The Victorian Era To Life In Paradox's Grand Strategy Sim - MMORPG.com

Its unlikely that in 1970, when I was 12, I could have imagined myself covering the collapse of an empire. Nor could I have dreamed that 51 years later, my passion for Russia would still be alive, if battered by its barbaric invasion of its neighbour, Ukraine, in February 2022.

But back then, when I was a young girl, I did dream of being a foreign correspondent; in particular, a foreign correspondent in what was then the Soviet Union. From that romantic notion to doom-scrolling social media for news on the latest atrocity in Ukraine is quite the narrative arc.

Read more: Russia is fighting three undeclared wars. Its fourth an internal struggle for Russia itself might be looming

As far back into my childhood as I can recall, there were dinnertime conversations about how brutal capitalism could be, how Joseph Stalin had saved Europe from fascism and my favourite story of all, how the brave Soviet experiment with socialism would reap the benefits of communism at some point, sometime, in the future.

A new world, in the nirvana of time and place, where all human beings would live as equals! My father was from war-torn Malta, and he was a believer, at least in a better world. He remained that way to the end.

And when he encouraged me to go the Soviet Union for the first time in 1983, Iwas wearing his rose-coloured glasses. Everything seemed to be on the way to nirvana even the empty shops, the long queues for offcuts of substandard meat, and the clothes shops that sold thousands of copies of just one item of clothing in the same size and the same colour. This, I reasoned, was a place sacrificing something life for something better.

In 2022, after 30 years of Russias integration into the global economic and financial system, that long-lost world of deficits the word Russians used for everything not available was ancient history.

But by March 2022, the nirvana of nascent capitalism born in the 1990s had abruptly and eerily been shut down, thanks to the deep and wide sanctions imposed by the West on an invading belligerent Russia.

Its been a long road from nothing to something to uncertainty again. The world is yet to see whether Russians will again rise against a ruler whose voracious appetite for land and blood has returned them to an Orwellian nightmare.

In 1983, when I first travelled to Russia with a friend in the dead of winter, Orwell was hovering in my mind. Although nothing I saw could have been further from my own reality, I reasoned there was purpose. The driver sent to ferry us from the then only international airport in the capital was such a welcoming touch, I thought. The driver was of course associated with the UPDK, the Directorate for Service to the Diplomatic Corps, an agency of the Foreign Affairs Ministry charged with looking over the shoulder of any and all foreigners who dared then visit for leisure or work.

UPDK still does much the same job, if now under commercial auspices although as Russias President Vladimir Putin tightens the noose around the freedoms won by his own people, the agency may well return to its darker days. But back in 1983 there was still, for me, romance to the Russian capital. The streets from Sheremetyevo Airport to the city centre were virtually empty, because cars were in deficit, and the trip took a brisk 15 minutes. Magic, I thought no traffic.

Arriving at the decrepit and now demolished Intourist Hotel on what was then Gorky Street, it was like being in the twilight zone. These two young female foreigners couldnt figure out what all the men and women hovering at the front of the hotel were up to. Maybe they were there to greet us? How friendly, I thought. It turns out they were awaiting tourists of the male variety and businessmen to proffer thewares of what we discovered was a highly lucrative trade in sex work.

Inside, surly desk workers looked over our documents and briskly marched off with our passports, which was a momentarily discombobulating feeling. But when they returned minutes later with our passports in hand, I thought how efficient! All foreigners, still to this day, need to have their passports registered with UPDK, as though our arrival at the airport and delivery to Intourist hadnt alreadybeen clocked.

A rickety lift took us to our floor, where a babushka sat on a chair in the hallway, arms comfortably perched over her bosom, scowling at us for reasons unclear. Still, I thought kindly of her; it was icy cold outside and this poor woman had to come to work.

Looking out our hotel window overlooking Gorky Street, we spied huge red banners with Lenins image fluttering in the wind. That must be the Lenin Museum, we decided. This place is going to be easy to navigate, I thought. The next day, we decided to put our lives on the line and make our way across Gorky Street through foot-high snow underpinned by ice.

Gorky Street was what in Australia wed call a highway six lanes wide and connecting the heart of the city centre, across from the Kremlin, to the outer reaches of the city. We hadnt seen the underpass to allow foot traffic to avoid the car traffic, which led to our first brush with the law. In the end, taking pity on us, the militsiya, or local police, accompanied us to the underpass and across the road, from where we emerged like magic just below the fluttering Lenin banners.

Sadly, a near hour-long effort to cross the road didnt get us to the Lenin Museum. As we looked up Gorky Street, there were Lenin banners fluttering everywhere. Most were worse for wear much like the rest of the city as it turned out but flutter they did, as if to say, Welcome to the land where we all sing from the same song sheet.

Only briefly in the scheme of time has this turned out to be untrue. The more than 30 years between 1991, when the old order collapsed, and 2022, when it threatens to rise again, was perhaps the nirvana.

Read more: 'Today is not my day': how Russia's journalists, writers and artists are turning silence into speech

When I was a child, being a foreign correspondent seemed like the best job in the world, particularly for a kid from the inner western Sydney suburbs at a time when travel was expensive and rare. I didnt see the inside of an aeroplane until I was 17.

But as a child, I imagined the vest-wearing, bespectacled, notepad-carrying reporter in fields of war, penning stories for faraway Australia, hungry for newsfrom the world out there, far, far away from our marooned island nation. And so it came to pass for this dreaming migrant child, carrying the burden common to my socio-economic and racial class of low expectation. Just minus the vest. But it didnt come easily.

I had spent years in newsrooms, commercial and the ABC, spiriting myself over to the then Soviet Republic of Russia each year on my annual break to poke around and observe. Id been travelling in and out of the USSR, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, since that first trip in 1983. Friends in Paris who, as young university students on exchange to Moscows State University, had met some like-minded Russians, led me to a woman who would become my lifelong friend.

Natasha Yakovleva was a film archivist with the state archives. She died recently, so trips to Moscow now feel empty. Back in 1985 when I met Natasha, she was as curious about me as I was about her, and surreptitiously she showed me the weird and wonderful underbelly of this intriguing city, about which, oddly, I felt I understood less and less with each visit.

By 1989, the ABC was ready to open a Moscow bureau and post its first correspondent. I was devastated when the job didnt come my way, although when the second position did later that year, I was happy not to have been the first correspondent in. Establishing a physical bureau, navigating the vagaries of UPDK and hiring support staff while filing on a big story would have been a herculean effort for a then young, single female.

Soviet society was thought by its members to be matriarchal. And in the sense that women carried the major burdens of life, including family life, in a country of constant deficits, perhaps it was. But men, like everywhere else, in every significant aspect of life outside the home, held all the power.

Operating as a foreign correspondent in this environment was often confusing. My questions were always entertained, but I was invariably considered exotic for having asked. My desire to understand the place was always welcomed but my curiosity was considered, by some, a little unbecoming for a woman.

The one saving grace for me was that socialism had given the Soviet people a strong sense that everyone was in the same sinking boat men, women and children. There was an affordance of empathy for hardships suffered and help when help was needed. That made a difference in reporting the place.

The demise of the Soviet Union was slow, burning with disappointment and rage and, of course, with anticipation. By the time I arrived as a correspondent, it was well and truly underway, though the end couldnt have been imagined.

Politically and geo-strategically isolated, the Kremlin plastered over the long and obvious economic disasters while holding out the promise of better days to come. And coercion was the tool of choice to ensure people maintained the faith, much as now in 2022, even if the faith is no longer communism but nationalism.

Mikhail Gorbachev came along in the mid-1980s. Perestroika (political and economic reinvention) and glasnost (openness) gave people the right to think for themselves about how they wanted to live and work.

But it enraged the bureaucrats and the hard left of the Soviet Communist Party. As a result, it wasnt a smooth, seamless transition from diktat to free thinking, and it brought societal schisms some of which were entirely predictable, some of which were not.

There were those who feared freer thinking would let loose the hounds of capitalism, which would kill off the achievements of their forebears whose blood and hard work had built the Soviet industrial base and, of course, rip away the sureties on which their lives were built. There were those who thought just a little freedom would do the job of making people feel valued and hopeful of a better life, and give them the chance to do something for themselves, outside the regimes boundaries, to make their lives better. And there were those who wanted the chains to be thrown off completely.

Add to that potent mix 14 largely resentful republics outside of Russia (the most politically and economically important republic of them all), and the result was years of social upheaval, from the Kremlin to the most far-flung corners of the Soviet empire.

The reverberation from that upheaval, the breaking apart of a 70-year-old federation of states built on dogma and held together by coercion and fate, is what the world now sees playing out in Ukraine.

By 1989, when I arrived in Moscow as a correspondent, even the most fearful regularly took to the streets in protests for and against Gorbachevs rule. There would be tens of thousands, sometimes even a million or more people, crushing into each other, carrying each other along with sheer body weight, overseen by scores of KGB and militsiya.

We saw this again on the streets of Russias big cities in 2022 as people protested Russias invasion of its neighbour, only this time the protests were smaller in number, people were instantly arrested, and they were entirely unified in what they wanted no war.

Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the protests were almost confused; some wanted a break put on reform, others wanted more and faster reform. There were uprisings against rulers and parliaments across the 15 Soviet republics, the most frightening of them being when local Soviet officials defended their political fortresses with force, though relatively few were killed. As punishment, the food-producing republics and their subjects who wanted freedom from Moscow imposed food blockades on the capital. Deficits of cars, furniture and clothes produced by decades of a malfunctioning economy suddenly seemed quaint, even preferable.

Throughout it all, I had a group of Russian friends holding my hand, taking me to the edges of Soviet society, where I could see how people were experiencing the teetering of an empire. Some of them are still holding my hand to help me understand what rage and fury brought their country to invade its neighbour.

When the USSR finally collapsed in December 1991, I again felt as I had when I first travelled there in 1983: I was in the land of the brave. Their new world wassomething neither they nor their forebears could ever have imagined. Now, in 2022, it all seems threatened.

Read more: Military history is repeating for Russia under Putin's regime of thieves

The odd thing about Russias relationship with women was the strange contradiction at its heart. While women had and have no real power, they simultaneously had and have all the power.

They cleared those underground crossings of ice and snow in labour for which they were physically unsuited. They were prevalent among university graduates in medicine and engineering, even if that led to a downgrading in the salary and status of both professions. They rarely appeared on politician roll calls, yet their influence was evident in politics. And, most certainly, the influence of womens thinking, needs and demands was evident in the manoeuvrings of local communities. There was a respect, and it was not secret.

When it came to journalism, some of the toughest were women. Anna Politkovskaya is a name still recognised in the West. Her fearless reporting of the war Russia waged against the semi-autonomous republic of Chechnya as it tried to break awayfrom Moscow remains a high point of independent journalism in a country where that has never been easy, and where it now appears to have been snuffed out completely by a new law penalising journalists for telling the truth about the war with Ukraine.

When Politkovskaya was gunned down returning to her apartment in Moscow in 2006, the Russians I knew were sad but not shocked. They expected something to happen to her. Who writes about atrocities perpetrated by the Kremlin without consequence?

Politkovskayas murder and the murder and harassment of dozens of journalists, activists and politicians since 2006 put paid to any notion that media in Putins Russia was free in the sense we understand media freedom in the West.

But like all those killed or harassed, Politkovskaya was respected, heard. The Kremlin might wish to forget her and her reporting, but many havent. To this day, no one sits at her desk at Novaya Gazeta. (In March 2022, following two warnings from the censor, the paper suspended its operations until, it said, the end of Moscows so-called special military operation in Ukraine.)

Still, the retort I hear most often about this assassination is why didnt she just stick to issues that were safe to cover, issues that women should cover? Theres that odd relationship with women, again.

Read more: How long can Vladimir Putin hold on to power?

Into this I waded, in my early thirties, single, very excited to be on my first posting and covering what appeared to me then to be the most consequential story in the world. The USSR was in its death throes.

Gorbachev was tussling for authority with Boris Yeltsin, and on the streets, Russians were rooting for both men. The hard left of the Communist Party was keeping a watchful, anxious eye on the new liberties granted: the ability to trade; the new television programs which questioned; the protests which, while overseen by a still operative KGB, gave the newest freedom of all the right to protest.

Even though many in my circle thought that if communism was going to survive, it would need more than a little miracle, no one thought it would collapse. The system was corrupt and few showed any real loyalty to it. But the system did provide free health care, education and accommodation. Cradle-to-grave security was a big deal.

Russians also knew that the nirvana Lenin had promised, Stalin had corrupted and Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko had failed to revive was gone as an idea as much as an achievable destination. But life without the Communist Party was still unthinkable.

The new buzzword was biznez. Making do in a nation of deficits was no longer cutting it. Even the class of people who proudly maintained they pretend to pay us, we pretend to work were looking to find ways to do their own thing. My local state cafe, which rarely had anything but diluted coffee to offer its customers, and from which its manager, Galia, made a paltry amount of money each month, suddenly changed.

Galia was an imposing figure: tall, graceful and gracious, and most of all, determined. She decided to offer the locals something new real coffee, food and service. With her blonde beehive perched atop her strikingly Slavic face, Galia tapped into her contacts in the caviar industry, sourcing bucketloads of the stuff, red and black. When word spread, the customers came, queuing around the block to buy a slice or two of bread with caviar, and Turkish coffee that tasted real. She was in business for a good six months before the cafe was firebombed.

The era of mafia had taken hold, with thugs whose only way of doing biznez was to extort. Galia refused to pay for protection and her business was annihilated. This was life as the Communist Party lost control.

While danger was everywhere for those Russians trying to make a go of the new trade freedoms, fear of it was abating among others. By 1990, just six months before Russians experienced their first dance with democracy with the election of President Yeltsin, young people were making their voices heard. They would gather on street corners to deride the party mafia that guarded its own turf and operated protection rackets to ensure only a new class of post-communist entrepreneurs could live well. People werent afraid to talk about the issues anymore.

On television, Vzglyad, or Outlook, was a talk show hosted by the immensely popular Alexander Lyubimov, the son of a well-known spy. Looking back now from Putins Russia, this was a high point of media freedom. Lyubimov openly discussed with guests the ills of Soviet communism, what people wanted from government, how they would get it, what Gorbachev was doing right and wrong, how the feud between Yeltsin, president of the Russian republic, and Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, might hinder progress towards a capitalism-based nirvana.

In 1990, my friends could barely believe what they were watching. Now, in 2022, even using the word war to describe the Russian invasion of Ukraine is penalised. As I spend nights doomscrolling for information on the war with Ukraine, I wonder how Lyubimov feels about the gains he forged being squashed so comprehensively?

As a correspondent, I would often hit the streets back then to test the limits of the newfound intolerance of the regime, and the reactions, while mixed, had one idea in common. Living as they had was no longer possible; personal freedom couldnt be the price for cradle-to-grave security.

Of course, few ordinary folk followed their desire for more freedom and a better life in a functioning economy to its logical conclusion. They thought the old structures could be reformed, renewed, revitalised. Certainly, no one I knew thought the old structures might actually collapse under the weight of the reforms. Not even Gorbachev.

And so, as 1990 ushered in a newly empowered Yeltsin, who held court at the Russian parliament, oddly named the White House, the demands for more grew louder and louder led by the non-Russian republics. The Communist Party was becoming very tetchy indeed.

Read more: A former journalist recalls Ukraine's 1991 vote for independence and how its resilience endures

On August 19 1991, Russia and the world woke to startling news. Gorbachev had been put under house arrest while holidaying with his family in Crimea. In the dead of night, a group of 11 men (of course) had hastily put together a State Committee on the State of Emergency (GKChP) to return the USSR to its natural pre-Gorbachev state.

Led by the KGB chief, Vladimir Kryuchkov, the committee declared that the Soviet Union was falling apart. It said Gorbachev had refused to return order to the country and the protesters had eroded the authority of the state; extremism had taken hold. The GKChP encircled Moscow with tanks, and by morning, the capital had erupted in fury, fear and concern for Gorbachev, who was by then incommunicado.

On February 24 2022, when Putin sent Russian tanks across the border into the Donbas region of Ukraine, proclaiming his intent to rid Russias neighbour of its extremists and Nazis, I thought of what Gorbachev had said about the Emergency Committee many years after the failed 1991 coup:

I said to them they must be mad if they think the country would simply follow another dictatorship. People are not that tired.

Russian shelling may yet break the Ukrainian resolve to fight. But it wont be soon. Putin is now assessing how much fight the Ukrainians have in them and how many urban Russians still have memories of 1991 coursing through their veins. The difference: Gorbachev was largely unwilling to turn his military against his people. Putin is different.

When, in August 1991, the centre of Moscow was occupied by its own military, with columns of tanks rumbling through its main streets and soldiers armed with assault rifles fending off angry citizens, Muscovites screamed for sanity to prevail. Go home to your mother, was the most frequent refrain. Do you know what you are doing? was another. While there was animosity towards Gorbachev for failing to deliver on his reforms, he was preferable to the putschists.

I felt safe, mostly. But never safer than when I scrambled onto a tank to speak with a group of soldiers in their early twenties. They looked terrified, like they wanted to jump off the vehicle and go home. Today in Ukraine, some young Russian conscripts have been doing just that refusing to use force to overcome the Ukrainians whove stood in their path. Not enough of them have yet decided to defy their leaders to turn the tide, but the war is still young.

Through three days of heartache, confusion, mayhem, destruction, defiance, resilience and hope, Russians and the world were united the GKChP must fail. Little did anyone know that its resolve to turn back the tide would be eroded by internal disorder. Defence minister Dmitry Yazov and KGB chief Kryuchkov were at odds while the other committee members, overwhelmed by their own anxieties, drank themselves into a stupor. They had all failed to understand how perestroika and glasnost had changed their own people.

By day three, their efforts to end the Gorbachev era looked shambolic. Their so-called constitutional transfer of power was over before it had begun. The grave errors the putschists had committed were evident Yeltsin, the leader of the defiant, had not been arrested, the TV tower had not been captured, allowing media to broadcast the truth, mass arrests had not taken place.

Putin, a student of history, has no doubt studied the dying moments of the August 1991 putsch. He has not committed the same mistakes in Ukraine.

This is an edited extract of Monica Attards essay in Through Her Eyes: Australias Women Correspondents from Hiroshima to Ukraine by Trevor Watson and Melissa Roberts (Hardie Grant), published 6 September 2022.

Excerpt from:

Protests, 'biznez' and a failed coup: journalist Monica Attard on covering the empire Gorbachev allowed to collapse - The Conversation

In an unwitting manifestation of what Gramsci called trasformismo, former leaders from the Italian left have joined forces to form a centrist coalition.

Italy is the country where, as Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa famously put it in The Leopard, everything must change so that everything can remain the same. He was hinting at the smokescreen of reform which hides the stability of Italian power relationships. As elections loom later this month, once again some political leaders are trying to fill the space between the two main coalitions.

Ever since the introduction of a semi-majoritarian electoral system in the early 1990s, which promoted blocs on the right and left of the spectrum, individual leaders have tried to attract the moderate electorate (allegedly) uncomfortable with the platforms on offer. These attempts have invariably failed to achieve critical mass, leading to fragmentation and in many cases dissolution into the two main poles, right after the electoral contest.

The novelty this time is that the two leaders behind the terzo polo were formerly in the Democratic Party (PD) and occupied important positions: Matteo Renzi, secretary of the party and prime minister between 2014 and 2016, and Carlo Calenda, minister of development in two consecutive governments. Both subsequently created new parties around their uncontested leadershipanother distinguishing feature of Italian politics since Silvio Berlusconis Forza Italiaand, along with the PD, supported Mario Draghis government.

With almost 40 per cent of parliamentary seats assigned to first-past-the-post, single-member constituencies, the lack of an agreement on the centre left of the political spectrum and the creation of this third pole is giving further advantage to the right-wing parties, traditionally more able to form electoral coalitions. During the last legislature, the main parties from the right took different sides when it came to crucial decisions on the three governments which took turns in poweryet they reached an electoral agreement no more than a week after the fall of the Draghi cabinet in July.

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Given the strong lead of the right-wing parties in the polls, the maximum ambition the new centrist pole can credibly entertain is to become indispensable to the formation of a government whose main shareholder will be Giorgia Melonis Fratelli dItalia. This would probably guarantee a seat in the government to the leaders but would certainly not shape its political orientation.

Beyond the aspirations for the next legislature, the glue that keeps Italian centrist parties together is a technocratic approach to politics. The system is not regarded as potentially broken or flawed and so small tweaks will suffice. There is no recognition of moral or political conflicts to be disentangled or traded off but merely of technical problems for which the right technical solution has to be found.

In the complex world we inhabit, this is profoundly wrong: any fiscal-, trade-, industrial- or energy-policy decision bears important distributional consequences, across social groups, regions, states and even generations. Ranking outcomes and identifying correct answers relies on welfare assumptions and value judgements, which remain veiled in the technocratic discourse.

The main tenet informing this discourse, its hidden ideological foundation, is a strong pro-market visionand it is not by chance that important leaders from the left of the spectrum, such as Renzi and Calenda, are among its principal sponsors. An economic paradigm becomes fully established when even its opponents start looking at the world through its hegemonic lens.

At its peak, the Keynesian welfare state received as much support from conservatives as it did from progressives, while progressive leaders such as Tony Blair in the United Kingdom and Bill Clinton in the United States completed the neoliberal reforms initiated by their conservative predecessors after the sunset of Keynesianism. In the case of Italy, having been formally Communist for over four decades, the main party of the left was pushed to embrace pro-market positions after the collapse of the iron curtainincluding to gain credibility vis-a-vis foreign partnersand presents itself, internally and externally, as a credible option for governing the country.

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Over the years, through its multiple mutations, the Italian left lost contact with its traditional function of promoting social equality and defending vulnerable groupsalso because the nature of socio-economic conflicts profoundly changed and this was not fully appreciated by its leaders. Transformations induced by globalisation and technical progress produced winners and losers and affected different social groups differently, depending on the individuals ability to adjust and take advantage.

The winners were educated individuals, urban populations, those working in dynamic and innovative sectors and the shareholders of companies operating in increasingly concentrated markets. The losers were by and large poorly-educated individuals, small entrepreneurs, self-employed professionals who lived in the less dynamic areas of the country and/or operated in sectors more exposed to external competition. These individuals are now attracted by the nationalist and conservative proposals of right-wing partiestheir radical alternatives resonating with citizens fears and concerns, recast as immigration or other purported threats to the national body politic.

To go on to the front foot again, the Italian left needs to recover its original function and give answers to this (vast) part of the population. It needs to propose to the country a new narrative, an animating vision to guide policy decisions, an alternative to both the populist right-wing rhetoric and the technocratic discourse which is slowing the transition from neoliberalism in Italy (and in Europe more generally). Social policy and fiscal redistribution are no longer enough in a world of increasing concentration of income and wealth and asymmetry in labour markets.

As recently emphasised by Dani Rodrik, we need policy designed to disseminate productive economic opportunities throughout all regions and all segments of the labour force. Supply-side measures to create new jobs are of paramount importance, along with specific interventions aimed at marginalised groups to facilitate access to fairly remunerated posts, with place-based policies favouring local development in remote areas. These measures should be accompanied by important public investments to foster the green transition and by a renewed commitment in international arenas to trade rules empowering states and labour vis--vis multinational corporations.

Otherwise, the far right in Italy will get away with continuing to promise changeso everything stays the same.

Piergiuseppe Fortunato is an economist at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, where he leads projects on global value chains and economic integration, and an external professor of political economics at the Universit de Neuchtel.

More:

The life and death of Italian centrism - Social Europe

Aided by Chinese investment, Laos is rapidly expanding its hydropower production on the Mekong River, but both countries need to tread carefully, Phillip Guerreiro writes.

Over the last 15 years, Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have ramped up their involvement international hydropower development, particularly in the Mekong River basin, which flows south from China through Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam.

The Mekong River is crucial to the livelihood of those living near its banks, providing fresh water for irrigation, aquaculture, transportation, and fishing. While experts continue to analyse Chinas development of dams on its portion of the Mekong, Chinese dam funding and construction in neighbouring countries in the lower Mekong basin (LMB) remain understudied.

The LMB encompasses five countries, but Laos contains over 80 per cent of the dams constructed by Chinese companies in the area.

Contrary to debt trap arguments, Laos seems to be pursing these agreements with China with agency and freedom. While China is providing funding and know-how, these dam projects are being pursued of Laos own accord.

After all, these projects provide some big benefits. Between 2010 and 2011 alone, the total hydroelectric capacity in Laos from Chinese investments jumped from 200 megawatts (MW) to around 1,900 MW. As of 2019, it was estimated that Laotian hydroelectric capacity from dams with known Chinese involvement had reached 5,000 MW enough electricity to power millions of homes.

However, these developments also have their have negative impacts. Officials view dams as a means of generating economic development, but many locals, experts, and non-government organisations contend that they are detrimental to the environment, especially fishing stocks, and that they exacerbate socio-economic issues.

Broadly, hydropower is viewed as a green technology, but this is a reductive view. Researchers have shown that artificial bodies of water often contribute to decomposition in an area, accelerating the release of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide from organic matter.

In all, greenhouse gases from dams and reservoirs account for between one and two per cent of global emissions caused by humans, and this should factor into the calculations of decision-makers developing hydropower policies.

Further, the upfront cost of dams are deceptive, since dams regularly experience cost blowouts, and engineering difficulties in dam development often require costly adjustments to construction.

Finally, sometimes dams break including while they are being built.

In 2018, Laos suffered a catastrophic dam collapse in the southern province of Attepeu. The collapse resulted in 71 confirmed deaths, at least 1,000 people missing, and tens of thousands impacted by the floodwaters, which reached as far south as Cambodia.

This collapse was of a relatively small dam, and it must serve as a warning to the Laotian government, which is supporting the construction of much larger dams.

Moreover, environmental assessments are not optimistic about the health of the Mekong basin in Laos.

The Xayaburi dam on the main stem of the Mekong has already affected the quality of sediment for agriculture, access to migratory fish, and water levels. Further construction along the tributaries in the basin has only added to the pain.

Yet Laos isnt slowing down. Its now entering phase two of the Nam Ou River Cascade Hydropower Project in northern Laos, which consists of seven dams with a combined hydroelectric capacity of 1,270 MW. Although the development predates the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), it has since been brought under the BRI umbrella.

This presents significant challenges to northern Laos, a region with low population density and high poverty levels. The dams will worsen water quality issues, disrupt transportation, impact agricultural production, and could reduce fish biodiversity by more than two thirds.

Laos also faces significant financial commitments on these projects. The country has a foreign debt crisis, and its difficulty paying down this debt has resulted in concessions to China for the use of its projects.

In September 2020, the state-owned China Southern Power Grid Company obtained majority control of Electricite du Laos, the Laotian SOE which maintains its electrical grid.

Then, in March 2021, the terms of this concession were finalised, with a 25-year agreement allowing China Southern Power Grid Company to build and manage its power grid, including electricity exports to neighboring countries forming part of the deal.

Effectively, Laos handed over its control of its power to a Chinese SOE. This alarmed skeptics of Chinas infrastructure investments and means Laos cant challenge China if their electricity interests diverge.

From the Laotian governments perspective, the opportunity to expand on its energy generation is seen as an avenue to generate economic productivity. Its objective is to become the centre of electrical generation and a major exporter of electricity to the region or the battery of Southeast Asia.

This is also why Laos is upgrading its domestic grid to handle larger loads for export, which also aligns with regional ambitions for an upgraded Southeast Asian grid.

To understand Chinas motivations, it is important to examine the role Yunnan province plays.

Bordering Laos and containing the Chinese portion of the Mekong, Chinas Yunnan province has been a key advocate of downstream investment. China has constructed dams on its portion of the Mekong, but the availability of space in the province is limited for future dams.

To accelerate the development of Chinas inner provinces, there have been calls to use infrastructure in Yunnan to connect Chinese firms to Southeast Asian markets and resources via a bridgehead strategy.

It would include projects such as roads, railways, and dams, which would in turn see electricity demand grow. With pre-existing ambitions for a regionally connected grid and Laos willing to host more dams, there is massive scope for Chinese enterprises to construct more dams. They could then use Laos grid concessions to import energy generated from these projects into China. Energy shortages in China make this a near certainty.

While these projects have potential and align with the regions energy ambitions, policymakers in China need to carefully consider the environmental and social impacts of their dams. In Laos, leaders must ensure projects dont develop beyond their means.

Ultimately, both countries must remember that the Mekong River continues to flow beyond their borders if their projects arent carefully and responsibly executed, the whole of Southeast Asia will feel the pain.

Here is the original post:

Giving a dam in the Mekong basin - Policy Forum

All hazards are natural and all disasters a result of unjust anthropogenic interactions with nature.

It is now common wisdom that all hazards are natural and all disasters a result of unjust anthropogenic interactions with nature.

Though the most recent flooding is different in nature compared to the one in 2010 the latter was a flash flood while the current is a riverine flood in both cases, it can be argued that the damage caused by both disasters is the outcome of changes in demography as well as ill-advised development policies across Pakistan.

Some of the more immediate outcomes of the latest disaster will be felt in the form of displacement, rise in illiteracy, unemployment, health crises, water and food scarcity, infrastructure damages, loss of human lives, destruction of crops, livestock losses, water-borne diseases, outward migration to cities and loss of social capital.

Faced with these multi-faceted challenges in such a short period of time, humanitarian and relief agencies must act and adapt rapidly to mitigate the problems faced by the millions of people who have been impacted in recent weeks. But are we ready to do so? Have we learnt any lessons from our long history of disasters?

Pakistan is vulnerable to most natural hazards. It is prone to floods, earthquakes, droughts and cyclone storms. It is prone to famines and heavy monsoons. And lets not forget the other kinds of disasters that its inhabitants inflict upon each other the scourge of terrorism.

Over the past 17 years, Pakistan has witnessed three major crises before the current one that have cumulatively impacted almost 28 million residents. While the nature and scale of these crises were different, two of them were caused by natural hazards the 2005 earthquake, which impacted 3.5 million people and the 2010 floods that affected more than 20 million people.

A third disaster, born out of the evil machinations of the humankind, was the 2008-2010 Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) crisis. This was triggered by an internal conflict and displaced almost 4.2 million people from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and what were then known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata).

As per media reports, 89 per cent of the people who were displaced chose not to stay in refugee camps arranged by the government. The remaining were housed in camps located in Swabi, Mardan Charsadda, Nowshera, Kohat and Peshawar. Almost 50pc of the IDPs were children and 90pc had lost all their assets (including livestock, crops etc).

But for the sake of brevity and the constraints of space on this platform, let us focus our thoughts on natural hazards that may not have turned into disasters. Both the super floods the one is 2010 in general and the most recent one in particular did not strike Pakistan in a single day; rather, they built up over several weeks.

For instance, in 2010, the flood started from Balochistan from July 22, 2010, and then within a span of one and half months, the gushing waters had inundated several towns and villages of Sindh. This provided ample time to the Sindh and Punjab governments to ready themselves for the impending disaster and ensure they had enough resources to mitigate any crisis.

It was almost dj vu in 2022 and yet, no lessons had been learnt. After all, disaster management is more about preparedness than response.

A similar script was witnessed in the aftermath of the 2005 earthquake when the falling debris, unauthorised construction, change of land use and dwellings in the hazardous zone converted the hazard into a disaster of biblical proportions.

Media reports following the earthquake put the death toll anywhere between 87,000 and over 100,000. Another 138,000 were injured and over 3.5 million rendered homeless.

According to official statistics, the deceased included over 19,000 children the majority due to collapse of school buildings. The quake itself damaged over 780,000 buildings, including 17,000 schools and several hospitals. Around 250,000 livestock also perished.

According to the Federal Flood Commission, Pakistan has witnessed 28 super riverine floods in its 75-year history. The first recorded super flood was witnessed in 1950, followed by 1955, 1956, 1957, 1959, 1973, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1981, 1983, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1994, 1995 and then every year since 2010 which also saw the worst flood in the countrys history. These floods collectively affected 616,558 square kilometres of land, snatched 13,262 precious human lives and caused losses worth over Rs39 billion to the national economy.

The area compromising modern day Sindh, in particular, has a long history of recurring riverine floods. In the 19th and 20th centuries, floods hit the provinces geographical territory at least18 times.

Data is not available for the years of 1882, 1887, 1903, 1914, 1917, 1921, 1930 and 1948. In 1973 alone, however, 259,586 acres of crops were affected in eight districts Jacobabad, Sukkar, Nawabshah, Khairpur Mirs, Larkana, Hyderabad, Dadu and Thatta.

Two years later, another super flood impacted 1.13 million people. The next year, heavy rains caused yet another flood and around 28,260 villages were affected, 3,276 people displaced, 9,087 cattle were lost and 99 people lost their lives. Similar stories of damages have been reported in 1978, 1992, 1994 and 1995.

What is particularly interesting to note is that though the province has a centuries-old history of natural disasters, successive post-independence governments have largely have been less responsive to this reoccurring phenomenon and failed to act in a proactive manner.

Flash floods which are quite sudden and are often caused by a cloud burst in the mountains are also not new to the country.

On July 23, 2001, for example, record monsoon rains lashed Islamabad, as well as the districts of Mansehra, Rawalpindi and other towns and cities across Pakistan. The resultant flooding killed at least 350 people and injured another 150.

Some 125 people remain missing to this day and at least 1,500 families were rendered homeless. The most seriously affected area was the Mansehra district, where more than 200 people were killed and around 1,000 houses destroyed. A large number of cattle in this largely rural area also perished, and parts of the roadway also collapsed, making it difficult to reach those in dire need of assistance.

Apart from Mansehra, the other affected areas were Dader (Shinkiari) and Buner districts, which were struck by flood waters and landslides. At Dadar Qadeem, at least 200 homes collapsed or were completely washed away.

Narrated below are the some of the reasons only tip of the iceberg that transform a traditional hazard of floods into a horrendous disaster as seen in recent times.

In 1981, the country had a population of 84.25 million, which jumped to 207.7 million within a span of 36 years an addition of 127.2m (or 3.53m per annum). The country is passing through the third stage of demographic transitions, where both the birth and death rates are declining.

There is also a gender component associated to demography, particularly in Pakistan, where the female population growth rate is higher than males.

The total population of women in 1951 stood at 15.5 million (46.22pc), whereas in 1998 it had moved up to 47.1m (48pc). The intercensal increase in 47 years, meanwhile, stood at a whopping 302.36pc.

The 2017 census recorded a female population of 101.3 million 48.7pc of the total population. Notwithstanding the gendered aspect of this population growth which we will pick up on a little later this phenomenal rise is compelled to utilise the natural resources beyond their carrying capacity, thus challenging the notion of sustainability.

In his seminal work that correlates Pakistans development policies and its environmental issues, The Environmental Repercussions of Development in Pakistan, Arif Hasan along with the late journalist Amenah Azam Ali, states that development brought about by the colonial regime in India had four main objectives:

After independence, the Government of Pakistan continued most of these policies as a result of which a large percentage of natural resources, such as forests, lakes and mines, were taken over from the old feudal order and local communities and became the property of the state, thus making their large-scale commercial exploitation possible.

One example of deforestation would substantiate this argument. Around 4.91pc of Pakistans land is covered in forest among the lowest in the region.

The percentage of Pakistans forest area is, however, not without contestation, with the figure varying between 2.2pc and 5.1pc. What is important to remember is that trees along the land-water borders serve as the first line of defence against any incoming water streams.

Besides deforestation, another major cause of flooding is the lack of regular maintenance of canals and bunds, which in turn reduces their carrying capacity and causes water spills onto the adjourning lands.

Recent media reports and video footages from across the country have highlighted the instability of various bunds. A similar situation was witnessed in the 2010 floods, where in Sindh alone, there were several breaches due to the enormous pressure of gushing waters.

In many cases, the roads and commercial infrastructure developed over the last 30 years is less sensitive to the traditional pathways of water flow blocking it and devising alternative flows creates a back pressure effect resulting in flooding of the adjoining settlements. Similarly, encroachments on the mouth of the river outlets in the southern parts of the country has reduced the water flow which again results in flooding.

The colonial masters never allowed human settlements on katcha lands [riverbeds] as these are primarily meant for the overflow and residual water by the Indus during the monsoon floods. The post-flood alluvial soil, being rich in nutrients, acts as a natural fertiliser for the crops, so the use of katcha land was primarily related to agricultural purposes. The land is now dotted with commercial establishments and hamlets, which are the first to be inundated every time it floods.

Based on 13 years of experience on disaster management and its related issues, here are some of my observations on the current scenario for a comparative outlook with the previous calamities:

Countries in the subcontinent show wide disparities in terms of how the issues of disasters are addressed, though the impact of any disaster does not respect the political boundaries the smog in eastern and western Punjab is a case in point.

The current disaster management regime in Pakistan has its roots in the response to the 2005 earthquake which involved the private sector, civil society and government institutions. In the aftermath of the earthquake, the Pakistani government created institutions responsible for disaster preparedness and response at the national, provincial, and local levels.

The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) was meant to be responsible for policy-making and coordination at the national level. At the provincial level, the respective Provincial Disaster Management Authorities (PDMAs) were mandated to set up a system that would immediately spring into action in the aftermath of disasters and calamities whether natural, man-induced, or accidents.

The current thinking on disasters and their management skills falls into two main paradigms the conventional and the alternative.

The former is in turn influenced by natural science and applied sciences approaches. The natural science approach equates hazards and hazardous events and also perceives disasters as synonymous with hazards. It emphasises research into geophysical and hydro-meteorological processes. Disaster management activities focus on monitoring of hazards and prediction of hazardous events.

The applied science approach emphasises documenting and analysing losses and damages associated with hazardous events. It determines the magnitude of a disaster in relation to the magnitude of the losses incurred. Initiatives influenced by this approach focus on research into the exposure and resistance of physical structures.

In contrast, the alternative paradigm is based on a combination of social science and the holistic approach. The social science approach brings vulnerability into the disaster management discourse.

It links disaster to vulnerability, which is a degree of the lack of capacity of households, communities and societies to absorb the impact of hazardous events and recover from them. This approach maintains clearly that hazards are natural but disasters are not. It also shows that the magnitude of a disaster is related to differential vulnerability between and within communities. Differences in age, gender, caste and class are among the factors making different groups of people more or less vulnerable to disasters.

The holistic approach is an important constituent of the alternative paradigm. It maintains that disasters are closely related to unsustainable development. It maintains that risk scenarios are combinations of capacities, vulnerabilities, losses and hazards. The holistic approach regards disasters as socio-economic hazards.

Experience shows that the media has a very important role to play not only during, but also in the pre- and post- phases of disasters. It is also a well-established fact that mass communication systems organise themselves under the disciplines of the market.

They produce and manufacture news items, articles, editorials, features and so on and package them in a way that it creates a sustainable market among a large and growing audience. The masses for the mass media are a market. Information becomes a commodity and readers or viewers become information consumers.

From the normative perspectives, it can be argued that the media has to act as a public interest institution by putting forward public concerns and interest. The medias convergence with disaster management efforts needs to be grounded in initiatives to inform educate and empower communities with the relevant knowledge for influencing public action and policy towards disaster preparedness and mitigation.

Various studies have found that women account for more than half of the 200 million people annually affected by disasters across the globe annually. The degree of vulnerability to disasters varies according to socio-economic influences.

Gender is a significant factor among these, with the majority of the gender-related disparity in the experience of disasters arising from the different roles and responsibilities men and women undertake in their day-to-day lives. In most South Asian societies, women have almost the entire responsibilities for maintaining the household they are responsible for providing food and water as well as taking care of the sick and the old.

In the case of a disaster, irrespective of the losses and trauma, women still have this responsibility. Disaster managers lack of awareness of gender differences has resulted in insensitive and ineffective relief operations that largely bypass womens needs and their potential to assist in mitigation and relief work.

The most important issue deserving emphasis is that contrary to popular perception, women are not helpless victims but display great strength in extreme situations. They possess skills, resilience and extensive knowledge about appropriate coping strategies, but their capacity remains largely invisible.

Infrastructure destruction figures provide a good sense of the long-term consequences of a catastrophe as we have seen in events as varied as the Sumatra floods, the Indian floods, Haiti earthquake and the Iran (Bam) Earthquake.

To mitigate the ongoing disaster of floods in Pakistan, the following steps must be taken on a war footing, as disaster response is all about timely action:

If history can be a guide here, the relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction will take a minimum period of three years. A lot of civil society veterans are of the opinion that if the Economic Affairs Division and other administrative setups can ease their procedural requirements from the civil society organisations, it would accrue to the benefit of the people of Pakistan.

The high population growth has put tremendous pressure on the resources of the region. The 90s were characterised, in particular, by declining public expenditures on the provision of social services, such as health and education, due to the increasing number of people in South Asia. This phenomenon of population growth has taken its toll on natural resources as well, which is now working against intergenerational justice and is bound to invite the wrath of nature.

The development mindset of the planners is, at best, insensitive towards their environmental obligations and treats the ecology as a mere commodity. The market-based economy does not account for the cost of ecological destruction and the natural habitats are taken for granted.

On the other hand, a shift in paradigm is needed from a reactive to a proactive mode of disaster management to alleviate the sufferings of the community. The dominant approach to dealing with disasters, which offers no space for community-based initiatives since it sees communities/victims, as part of the problem for which solutions need to be worked out is not very appealing.

There is, therefore, an urgent need for a marked shift in this paradigm. A middle- and long term community-based disaster preparation enterprise is the best response. This is what history teaches us. This is what we must heed, lest history continues to repeat itself.

Header video: An aerial view of flood affected areas in DI Khan in August 2022. Video courtesy: KP CM House

Excerpt from:

Pakistan's history of disasters and the lessons we fail to learn - DAWN.com

When a masked man with a sword killed a teaching assistant and a pupil at a school in Sweden several years ago in a racially motivated attack, the whole world was shocked that this could happen in a country known for its welcoming attitude toward immigrants.

This years election, however, is painting a different picture, as all political parties during their campaigning are using a "racist, anti-immigrant narrative in a country where, according to recent polls, the right-wing populist Sweden Democrats are set to become the second largest party in the Swedish parliament or Riksdag.

Since the 1990s, racism and discrimination have been institutionalized in the country and are being reinforced in this years election as "almost all parties in Sweden, in one way or another, have racist propaganda about migrants and marginalized people being the problem for Sweden, said Masoud Kamali, an author and one of the worlds leading sociologists who is professor of sociology and social work at Mid Sweden University.

Former Prime Minister Olof Palme, who led the expansion of Swedens welfare state, was assassinated in 1986, and since then, the country has shifted toward the U.S. model and American "policy of neoliberalism, Kamali said.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Sweden started adjusting itself to neoliberal politics and neoliberal ideology, which were dominant in other countries in Europe.

Around this time, the Stockholm-based far-right racist organization, Keep Sweden Swedish formed a political party now known as the Sweden Democrats.

The establishment of the Sweden Democrats, who were once banned from politics due to their neo-Nazi ties and are now poised to become the countrys second-largest party, led to "increasing gaps and neoliberal politics in Sweden, said Kamali.

The neoliberal policies and politics resulted in increasing inequalities and the marginalization of migrants and people with immigrant backgrounds, and "at the same time, racism increased, he added.

Kamali, who was put in charge by the Swedish government to lead a project on racism, said the ruling Social Democrats did not take warnings by experts like him seriously when they tried to warn them that "there is going to be conflict, there are going to be gangs and murders because of the increased racism and marginalization.

"I can say that all parties have accepted or adjusted themselves to these racist policies and propaganda that you can see in all election officials election propaganda in this country today, said Kamali.

For the last 40 years, "I never experienced such racist propaganda in an election that we are seeing today, he noted.

"You can just see this electoral or election propaganda everywhere on TV, everywhere on the radio, in public services. You can see that everything is about a restrictive migration policy; migration should be restricted, criminals, of course, with immigrant backgrounds should be deported from Sweden and Sweden must be tougher on migration, Kamali added.

He pointed out that immigrants are discriminated against and are not given equal opportunities, and "when you have a system that makes them unemployed and poor and then put the blame for the problems that come with poverty on them too, this falls under the individualization of criminality, or singling out and labeling immigrants as criminals, and lack of integration.

"I think this is a huge problem that we are now facing in this country, he added.

Kamali believes that Sweden is a country where racism has become deeply rooted and institutionalized but that this is also felt in everyday life "because the authorities and the government institutions are nurturing racism and discrimination.

In the last 10 years, the country has seen the socio-economic gaps increase by 35%, which means that "Sweden today is the most marginalized country in Europe, he said. "This means that the neoliberal system has already destroyed the country.

Fereshteh Ahmadi, a professor of sociology at the University of Gvle, said one of the biggest factors that contributed to the rise of racism in the country is due to the neoliberal policy, which created an "enormous gap between the poor and rich.

The country adopted the kind of capitalism that "we see maybe in the United States or some of the other European countries, but joining the European Union also affected Sweden, according to her.

"People became poorer and angrier at all these changes, and (they) see immigrants (as) the root of their problems, she said.

According to Kamali, "we are witnessing people, many people with immigrant backgrounds, almost talking about the impossibility of living in this country, as there isnt even a single party that wants to have "an integrated equal society.

He predicts that Sweden will see "more conflicts, more criminality. We are going to have a divided country.

Teysir Subhi, leader of the Swedish political party Feminist Initiative, said racism is one of the biggest security problems in Sweden.

"On a daily basis, non-white Swedes are exposed to racism and Islamophobia in the labor market, in the housing market, in the school system and in health care, said Subhi.

However, she said that racism can also have even worse consequences than that, as "racism is violence, racism kills.

According to Kamali, sociology teaches us that if we want to see whether the society is sick or not, then we should go to prisons and see which groups are there, and "in Sweden, you have about 70% of the people sitting in jails with immigrant backgrounds.

"So it's a question of structural discrimination, historic discrimination, which now shows itself in criminal records, he added.

Kamali advised that structural changes and long-term government intervention are highly needed for the country to move forward.

"But as I said, I can't see now a single party which is there to take those questions up in a situation where racism is increasing. But suggestions are there.

Sweden, however, is not alone when it comes to the rise of racism, as Europe as a whole "has a huge issue when it comes racism, said Kamali.

In 2001, he conducted research sponsored by the European Union called "The European Dilemma, in which he showed how racism in Europe is institutionalized in the labor market, education system, politics and housing market.

The research also showed that racism would increase with time if no action is taken by European governments.

As a response to Swedish researcher and author Gunnar Myrdal and his book "An American Dilemma, Kamali wanted to show that even Europe has a dilemma and that the continent is always "hiding behind American racism and American societys racism and colonialism, he said.

Ahmadi said the future is not so bright if Sweden keeps moving in one direction, as many people "may leave the country, people maybe which have immigrant backgrounds will not see this country as their own country.

This, she said, will have a very negative effect on work life, social life, and cultural life, and "I think there will be an augmentation of the polarization of people against each other, but I hope that this will not happen.

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Elections shed light on rise of racism, discrimination in Sweden | Daily Sabah - Daily Sabah

To call Dr. Bruce Moses first two months at Allen Community College a blur would be an understatement.

On top of getting to know the faculty, staff, and now students at ACC, the college president has jumped headfirst into reaching out to the community.

Were in full engagement mode, Moses said this week, during an all-too-brief lull in his schedule.

Hes reached out to business and industry leaders throughout Allen County, made multiple trips to Topeka to get to know higher education officials there and reached out to administrators at other colleges in the area, including Emporia State and Pittsburg State universities.

On top of that, Moses has begun talking with school administrators at Iola USD 257 and others in the county to discuss how to strengthen Allens relationship with those districts.

This is my eighth week, and it feels like its been six months, he laughed.

Truth be told, Moses wouldnt want it any other way.

This is what we expected when we got here, Moses said. This is a big transition. I wanted to hit the ground running.

As part of the transition, Moses et al have begun the first steps in developing the colleges next strategic plan, which theyll hammer out over the coming months.

That began with an internal SCOT exercise at the start of the school year, in which ACC staffers were invited to share their opinions on Allens strengths, challenges, opportunities and threats.

The next step will be a similar exercise with members of the community this fall, in order to gain an outsiders perspective of the college, Moses said.

Allen already has a great brand, he said. We want to enhance it.

Hes already learned much, noting industries throughout Allen County are largely facing the same dilemma: trying to find quality employees.

That meshes with one of Moses passions: building career and technical education opportunities.

They need workers, skilled employees, he said. I know the traditional student population is very much interested in getting short-term training for a livable wage job without having to go two, three or four years of college. We have a window of opportunity where we can make this happen.

Moving forward, we will be a key player in the career and technology education phase, he continued. We have a lot of opportunities here, and ideal partners in the community. What Ive said to everyone is, we want Allen to be your go-to institution. We want them to pick up the phone and call Allen first.

MOSES, 54, grew up in Detroit, where his father worked in the automotive industry, and his mother worked at a state psychiatric hospital.

Young Bruce, meanwhile, saw himself going to college, the first in his family to do so.

I was trying to follow my moms brother, Moses recalled. He worked in the banking industry, and it always impressed me how he always wore suits and ties. Thats what I wanted to do. He was my role model.

Moses followed in his uncles footsteps, earning a football scholarship to Tennessee State in Nashville in his pursuit of a finance degree. A knee injury, however, curtailed his playing days after two years.

Then one day my uncle told me he was afraid the banking industry was about to collapse, and I might want to consider another occupation.

Moses took heed, and landed a job at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti initially as a physical plant foreman for the EMU campus.

His work there allowed Moses to stay with Eastern Michigan, both as an employee and as a student. Moses eventually went on to earn three college degrees there, while working his way up the college administrative ladder. He worked as a special assistant to the chief technology officer, then in accounts payable and finally as an executive director of planning.

Moses has bachelors degrees in finance and administrative management, a masters degree in educational leadership from Eastern Michigan, and a doctorate in community college leadership from Ferris State University.

Eastern Michigan is where I grew up as a professional, he said.

After 17 years at EMU, Moses went to Northwest Arkansas Community College as an executive director of planning and institutional effectiveness, then to Pima County Community College in Tucson, Arizona.

His stint at Pima was cut short after his father was stricken with prostate cancer.

Moses moved back to the upper Midwest, getting a job as a consultant at Northwestern University before subsequently returning to Pima.

The experience at Northwestern, one of the elite universities in the world, while valuable, nevertheless convinced Moses his talents were better suited for community colleges.

One of the things I felt as a first-generation college student was that I could see some of myself in community college students. Some of these students were coming from low socio-economic backgrounds, a more diverse population. This was an opportunity for them to change their trajectory, their families, their lives.

I knew when I was at Northwestern that I couldnt do anything for those kids, he continued. They were already driving better cars than I was. Their parents went to college, they were expected to go to college.

And I also wanted to get back to warmer weather, he laughed.

Kansas winters can get pretty cold as well, a Register reporter reminds him.

I grew up in Michigan, he replied, where it would snow 10 or 12 inches, then it would get cold, and then it would snow 10 or 12 inches again. I can deal with it.

My wife is the one who may be in for a rude awakening, he laughed. Shes never lived anywhere but Arizona until now.

His wife, Celina, works in the financial aid department at Fort Scott Community College.

MOSES was working as vice chancellor for educational services and institutional integrity when he was hired last fall to replace the outgoing John Masterson as Allens president.

Mastersons tenure at Allen stretched nearly 50 years, first as a student, then as an instructor and finally the last 30 years as college president.

Moses compared the experience to an NFL quarterback replacing the legendary Tom Brady.

John left a very healthy institution, financially and culturally, Moses said. Now its my chance to build on it, put my own fingerprints on it.

Hence the breakneck pace since arriving in Iola, a schedule he doesnt expect to relax anytime soon.

Ive got a great team here, he said. Im excited because theyre excited. These folks have strapped on their running shoes, too. Theyre right there with me. Theyre guiding me.

And occasionally pulling back on the reins.

Im tapping into all the resources I can, he said.

Moses relies heavily on input from Allen officers like Tosca Harris, Rebecca Bilderback, Cynthia Jacobson, Lauren Maisberger and especially chief financial officer Roberta Nickell.

Robertas been my rock, he said. She brings me back down to earth. Ill say, Heres what I want to do. And shell never tell me no. Shell say, weve got to think about it.

MOSES envisions Allen as a major player for both traditional and non-traditional students.

The education marketplace has changed, he notes. Now, you can get an education without leaving your office, or leaving your bedroom. You can get an education from multiple institutions at the same time.

While Allen traditionally has centered on a strong core of on-campus, traditional students, future growth will rely on tapping into the growing demographic of those ages 25-40 in need of new job skills.

Our community is too small to have employees uproot and leave, he said. Thats a challenge all these employers are facing. We want to shift our focus to make sure were embracing that adult learner.

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Moses parts the Red Devil sea - Iola Register