Posts by JamilMaidan:
South China Sea Reclamation Is Wrecking the Future
October 9th, 2016By Jamil Maidan Flores.
Asean has merely said what’s necessary to say. In the Chairman’s Statement of the 26th Asean Summit late last month, it says, “We share the serious concerns expressed by some Leaders on the land reclamation being undertaken in the South China Sea, which has eroded trust and confidence and may undermine peace, security and stability in the South China Sea.”
These aren’t fighting words. They’re mild compared to the pugnacious rhetoric that comes out of the mouths of certain leaders. But they express a necessary consensus on an insidious danger.
The alternative is for Asean to roll over and play dead while China carries out plastic surgery on the marine features of the South China Sea.
As expected, China takes umbrage. Its foreign ministry spokesperson says Asean summits have no business discussing the South China Sea, since only four of the group’s members are involved in disputes over islets in the area.
But Asean has said nothing about territorial and sovereignty disputes. It has merely voiced concern at the impact of reclamation activities on the peace, security and stability of the South China Sea.
That, too, argues China, is none of Asean’s business because China can do anything it wants within its own territory. Maybe, if it’s really doing it within its own territory.
But reclamation is being carried out in disputed waters. This is therefore behavior that should be covered by the Code of Conduct of parties in the South China Sea that Asean and China are listlessly negotiating. Thus Asean has every right to discuss it and to reach a common position on the matter.
What the Asean statement fails to mention is an even more urgent concern: the environmental impact of the reclamation.
The China spokesperson insists that “relevant construction is lawful, justified and reasonable and thus beyond reproach.”
I’ll put my money on an article written for the Rajaratnam School of International Studies by researchers Youna Lyons and Wong Hiu Fung that says “large scale reclamation work in the South China Sea using living coral reefs as building material is causing severe environmental damage. It is also against international law.”
The researchers cite high resolution commercial satellite imaging that exposes China’s mechanical dredgers breaking up and raising hard materials from the sea, including coral reefs and all living organisms clinging to them, and then compacting them to create new land territory. Thus coral reefs in the Spratlys are being destroyed on a massive scale.
That is hardly “reasonable and beyond reproach.” Those coral reefs survived the millenniums while nurturing a wealth of biodiversity that has served humankind in good stead. But recently seized from their beds and wrecked by machines, some of them are lost forever. Lose them all and their biodiversity and you’ve lost much of the future.
Lyons and Wong point out that the coastal waters of the littoral states of the South China Sea are stressed and overfished. That there’s still a large fish catch in those waters may be due to larvae and juvenile fish drifting from the South China Sea reefs.
If those reefs were all converted into real estate, there would be much less fish to feed the people of eastern Asean and China itself.
International law obliges China not only to use sustainable management practices but also to consult with other affected states so that the transboundary impact of its reclamation could be prevented or managed. China hasn’t consulted anybody.
The China reclamation and its impact on the environment must therefore be addressed in the Asean-China talks toward a Code of Conduct in the South China Sea.
It should also be taken up in all forums that care about biodiversity as a common heritage and as a large piece of the future of humankind.
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Ukraine and Indonesia: a Productive Partnership Despite the Distance
July 2nd, 2016
By Jamil Maidan.
On 28 June 1996, after five years of independence, Ukraine adopted its Constitution. The twentieth anniversary of this milestone is, for Ukraine, an opportunity to assess the country’s place within the international community and the development of mutually beneficial relations with our partner countries, among which Indonesia, as a regional leader, has a prominent place.
Relations between Ukraine and Indonesia are developing in the spirit of mutual respect and cooperation. Despite the great distance between the two countries, bilateral cooperation has always been productive. Over twenty-five years of diplomatic ties almost two dozen agreements were signed. Bilateral trade at one point reached $1 billion, and we believe that is not the limit.
The two countries have a history of mutual support. When Indonesia needed the United Nations Security Council to recognize its independence, it was Ukraine’s delegation to the United Nations that supported Indonesia and put the issue on the agenda.
Decades later, the partner countries continued helping each other in times of need. When the deadly 2006 earthquake struck Yogyakarta, Ukraine dispatched humanitarian aid. In 2014 Indonesian pharmaceutical corporations responded to Ukraine’s plea for medicines for the victims of the Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine.
2014 was of course the year that Ukraine became the target of an armed external aggression that challenged the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our state. Indonesia was one of the first countries in South-East Asia to declare its firm support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity and to refuse to acknowledge any illegal border-shifting. For this we are extremely grateful.
Celebrating the 20th anniversary of the adoption of our basic law, Ukrainians recall that our country played a key role in developing the concept of a constitution. Ukraine’s first such document, the Pylyp Orlyk Constitution of Rights and Freedoms, dates back to 1710, while the United States Constitution came much later, in 1787, the Constitutions of Poland and France — in 1791.
Today, Ukraine continues to be a leader of innovative thought.
The country has a very high scientific potential. With a 99.7 percent literacy rate, it is the fourth most educated nation in the world. Ukraine currently ranks number one in software engineering in Central-Eastern Europe, and top three for certified IT professionals globally. It has the world’s fourth airspace industry, and is the manufacturer of the world’s largest airplane, the cargo giant Mriya-225. Ukraine is equally advanced in the military engineering sector.
Another one of Ukraine’s key trades, known all around the world and for centuries, is agriculture. In the 19th century Europe nicknamed Ukraine its “breadbasket,” and no wonder! One-third of the world’s richest black soil is found within the borders of Ukraine.
Indonesia is well known to Ukrainians as a paradise travel destination. Around three thousand Ukrainian citizens visit Indonesia each year. As Indonesia recently introduced a visa-on-arrival regime for Ukrainian passports, we expect this number to grow closer to Thailand’s statistic, which is now up to forty thousand Ukrainian visitors annually.
Conversely, for Indonesians Ukraine can be a country of great tourism potential. Ukraine has a long and rich history, a vivid culture, and a four-season climate on a par with its European neighbors, but is a destination of significantly lower prices.
Like Indonesians, Ukrainians are generous and welcoming. Interestingly, there are many elements of similarity between the two countries. For example, Ukraine’s indigenous art of Pysanka (wax-resist dyeing of eggs) is very similar to the Indonesian Batik technique.
While the current external aggression in the east of Ukraine is affecting seven percent of the territory adversely, the rest of the country continues to develop and progress. The cooperation potential is immense, particularly in trade, investment, agriculture, education. I, as Ambassador, am committed to fulfilling this potential and further strengthening relations between Ukraine and Indonesia.
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A ‘Democratic’ Challenge to Democracy
June 25th, 2016
By Jamil Maidan.
In the United States, the reverberations are still being felt from the mass shooting of club goers in Orlando, Florida, by the American-born son of Afghan immigrants.
In the midst of the savagery, the shooter had apparently pledged allegiance to Islamic militants, raising the specter of home-grown US terrorists inspired by if not directly linked to others abroad. The two would be US leaders, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, quickly responded with rhetoric categorized by some as either naive or offensive, or both.
Trump, in part, doubled down on his call for a temporary pause on Muslim immigrants to the United States.
Meanwhile, across the Pacific, in the Philippines, the electorate in this one-time student of American democracy has voted in its own leader in political incorrectness.
Who would have thought a man who vowed to kill criminals and grant himself a presidential pardon, who boasts of being a womanizer and has joked about wanting to rape a missionary and talked of the killing of journalists, would win a popular election and become head of state. Such is the dramatic turn of events in the Philippines, a nation shaped by centuries of Spanish and then by decades of American colonial rule.
This July, Rodrigo Duterte, widely known as “Duterte Harry” for his no-holds-barred, crime-fighting reign as mayor of the Philippines city of Davao, will take over the reins of government as president from Benigno Aquino whose mother, ironically, restored democracy in the Philippines.
The Southeast Asian nation, however, is not alone in its seeming embrace of strong leaders. Witness the rise of Vladimir Putin in Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, Xi Jinping in China, Viktor Orban in Hungary and Narendra Modi in India. Somewhat late to the party but no less striking is the rising popularity of Trump.
With the gradual increase in prosperity after World War II and the end of the colonial era, there was a notion, perhaps misguided, that the demand for freedom and democratic rights would follow a linear path. Today it would appear that people are increasingly ready to relinquish their rights for a measure of security. Fear and uncertainty are gripping the world and guiding a course that could lead to closed borders and markets, clamp downs on basic human rights and an erosion of empathy for the huddled masses still yearning to be free.
Fear and insecurity are a lethal combination. Leaders and would-be presidents are capitalizing on the frustrations of ordinary people and their understandable and increasing disgust with inequality, corruption, the concentration of wealth, and, collectively, the feeling that citizens are not better off today and may well not be so either tomorrow.
In the West, economic prosperity and the certainty that hard work would be rewarded has fallen prey to globalization and digitalization. Manufacturing shifted from the West to countries that offered cheap labor. Technology further disrupted industries.
More disruption is inevitable. Self-driving cars, robotic service personnel, Artificial Intelligence systems that replace financial analysts, paralegals and copy editors — the list goes on. A 2013 report out of the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford estimated that up to 47 percent of jobs are under threat of displacement by technology in the next 20 years. Add to this the potential impact of climate change, terrorism, the refugee crisis, and pandemics, and the fear factor multiplies.
Across the world, political systems have performed poorly. In developing countries, governments are failing to provide jobs for growing populations. In developed countries, legions of underemployed face leaders who have not come up with a way to combat the displacement of the work force as a result of technology and globalization.
Broken promises and the failed policies on the part of the political actors have now led many citizens to reject the democratic political system altogether. Calls go out in the United States, in Asia and elsewhere for strong leaders to revive the old order and make once great nations “great again.”
Yet, no longer is the nation-state the only framework within which to work. Problems have to be solved in a global context. More than ever, our world needs bold leaders that also will double-down on multilateralism, strengthen regional alliances and global organizations to coordinate policy responses. We also need an inclusive global digital agenda that ensures a role for human labor that is economically and politically feasible.
The belief that interdependency can be defeated by isolationist politics is misleading. Building walls and imposing trade barriers will make the people they are meant to protect less adaptive and resilient than those outside them. They will weaken economies as they breed resentment and leave us ill-prepared for global threats that demand cooperation to solve.
In this time of fear, when people are willing to give up their power to the strongman — or strongwoman — democracy itself is under siege. But the forces they are seeking protection from are far beyond the abilities of one person to control. They will give up their freedom in exchange for security and they will end up with neither.
It is never too late for leaders or would-be leaders, and the people who support them, to change.
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Muhammad Ali rewrote the rule book for athletes as celebrities and activists
June 18th, 2016
By Jamil Maidan.
The descriptor “icon” is vastly overused in these celebrity-fixated times, but it could have been invented for Muhammad Ali, who died on Saturday aged 74. Thirty-five years after he threw his last punch in the ring, Ali is still front of mind in any discussion of the most-important sportsman ever.
He does not occupy this status because he is widely regarded as the best boxer there has ever been, who narcissistically called himself “The Greatest” and then forced a reluctant boxing world to agree. Ali was much bigger than boxing. He came, from the late 1960s onwards, to symbolize resistance to racism, militarism and inequality.
He embodied the intimate relationship between sport and politics that so troubles those, like nationalistic politicians, who deny its existence while ruthlessly exploiting it.
So how did Ali so consistently receive the kind of acclaim heaped on him by human rights activist and sports scholar Richard E. Lapchick, who describes Ali as “not a one-in-a million figure, but a once-in-a-lifetime person?”
Ali was a superlative boxer, but it was his great physical beauty and quick wit that made a major impression on those who knew little of boxing or were repelled by its brutality. Under his birth name, Cassius Clay, he forced himself into public consciousness by theatrically talking up his “prettiness,” athletic brilliance and verbal facility.
From early in his career he self-consciously played the role of anti-hero with a racial twist. Knowing the white-dominated boxing establishment and fan base were always searching, especially in the prestigious heavyweight division, for a “great white hope” to put African-American champions in their place, Ali goaded them to find him another fighter to beat.
Decades before sportspeople used social media to communicate directly with the world and polish their image, Ali bent the media of the day to his will through outrageous publicity stunts, quirky poems and memorable catchphrases. Another white-dominated institution, the mainstream media, had to deal with an unprecedented, freewheeling assault on its familiar control routines by a black athlete who refused to be deferent and grateful.
This boxing-related pantomime was entertaining. But it was when the brand new world heavyweight champion rejected his “slave name” in 1964, became Muhammad Ali and declared his allegiance to the black separatist Nation of Islam that he became a major political presence in popular culture.
His subsequent refusal — on religious and ethical grounds — to be conscripted to the US armed forces and to fight in the Vietnam War turned him into both a figure of hate and a symbol of hope in a bitterly divided America. The world beyond boxing and America now had even more reason to pay close attention to Muhammad Ali.
Once more, Ali was ahead of the game. Anticipating the deep political divisions over the two Gulf Wars and their disastrous outcomes, here was a vibrant celebrity around whom dissenters could rally.
Banned from boxing for three years because of his political stance, Ali acquired the status of a martyr to his convictions. He stood conspicuous among fellow sport stars who kept their heads down on matters of politics — whatever their private views.
In retrospect, it is remarkable that he was not assassinated like the Kennedys, Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X.
When he returned to the ring, Ali became the focus of spectacular media-sport events like “The Rumble in the Jungle” and “The Thrilla in Manila.” These boxing matches helped write the rule book of 21st-century “sportainment.”
Ali’s boxing career petered out, yet he remained an instantly recognisable global celebrity. But by 1984 the savage toll that boxing took on his body, especially his brain, became evident. It is believed to have exacerbated the Parkinson’s disease that progressively debilitated him.
Some of the most touching and heart-breaking moments in sport came when his shaking body performed ceremonial duties at the 1996 Atlanta and 2012 London Olympics. When Ali spoke in public, his rapid-fire repartee was reduced to a low, slow whisper.
Despite his failing health, Ali relentlessly pursued his humanistic activities. He supported charities and foundations such as Athletes for Hope, Unicef and his own Muhammad Ali Center.
Ali was no saint. His cruel mocking of rival Joe Frazier, which he later regretted, saw him treat a fellow African American as a “dumb,” “ugly,” racially complicit Uncle Tom in a manner that resonated with some of the worst racist stereotypes. His complicated history of intimate relationships with women and his many offspring is of soap-opera proportions.
But, in touching and enhancing the lives of so many people across the globe, here was a man much more sinned against than sinning.
Ali’s passing comes at a time of increasing concern about sport-induced traumatic brain injury. The near-fatal outcome of a recent bout in the UK between Nick Blackwell and Chris Eubank Jr has once again put boxing in an unfavorable spotlight.
Ali paid a ferocious price for his fame. Most leading medical associations would ban the sport that brought him to prominence.
Yet, paradoxically, it is boxing that we have to thank for somehow — out of the violence and pain of its self-proclaimed “sweet science” — delivering to the world Muhammad Ali, The People’s Champion.
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Medical Community Criticism Threatens to Sink Sex Crime Revision
June 11th, 2016
By Jamil Maidan.
Jakarta. Vocal criticism from doctors and promises to not perform chemical castration against convicts has provided a blow to government plans to revise the sexual crimes law, a legal rights group has said.
The Indonesian Doctors Association (IDI) issued a statement earlier this week objecting to castrations, allowed under a recently signed government regulation, citing concerns over the code of medical ethics.
According to IDI, the injection of synthetic female hormones for male offenders would not suppress perpetrators’ desire for sexual violence, suggesting that the government should look for other forms of punishment.
The Institute for Criminal Justice Reform (ICJR) said the government should have consulted with various related parties, including medical experts and psychologists, since the beginning of the regulation’s deliberation.
“The government’s option to make the decision without a thorough study was a fatal move,” ICJR executive director Supriyadi Eddyono said recently.
Meanwhile, the government has defended the additional penalty, saying doctors performing chemical castration under the court verdicts would not breach the code of medical ethics. They believe chemical castration would set a deterrent for perpetrators, as well as reducing the number of what they have declared an extraordinary crime.
“The government should publicize the analysis it has conducted for the issuance of the regulation,” Supriyadi said. “It should provide explanations related to the regulation to House of Representatives lawmakers.”
The regulation, which will soon be deliberated at the House to revise the 2002 child protection law, also seeks a maximum prison term of 20 years, life imprisonment and the death penalty for pedophiles, serial rapists and those committing gang rape.
This tougher punishment also applies to perpetrators whose offenses pose severe impacts, ranging from injuries to mental disorders and death.
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AGO Traces Suspicious Financial Transactions in Graft Suspect La Nyalla Probe
June 4th, 2016
By Jamil Maidan.
Jakarta. Investigators have been tracing suspicious transactions worth hundreds of billions of rupiah at more than 10 national bank accounts allegedly related to the recently arrested graft suspect La Nyalla Mattalitti, according to the Attorney General’s Office spokesman.
The AGO received data from the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center (PPATK), which shows that the transactions took place between 2010 and 2014 when La Nyalla was appointed as chairman of the East Java Chamber of Trade and Industry.
The current Indonesian Football Federation (PSSI) chairman, who was deported from Singapore on Tuesday for having overstayed his visa, was named a suspect in late March for allegedly misappropriating Rp 5.3 billion ($394,700) from the East Java administration paid in grants in 2012 to the chamber.
“Aside from probing the corruption allegations, we will likely develop this case by turning into alleged money laundering,” AGO spokesman Mohammad Rum said on Friday (03/06). “We are currently in the process of freezing the accounts.”
La Nyalla, who had fled for Malaysia when he was named a graft suspect, was questioned at the AGO’s office on Wednesday, upon his arrival in Jakarta. He is currently serving detention in Salemba prison in Jakarta.
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Commentary: Chasing the Possibility of 7% GDP Growth, Sustainably
May 28th, 2016By Jamil Maidan.
The demographic dividend is one of the key drivers for Indonesia’s well-known structural growth story. The basic thesis is that as Indonesia’s population enters a productive age, per-capita income should be on the uptrend and thus support consumption growth in the country. Of course, the demographic dividend is not everlasting and Indonesia is estimated to start losing its demographic dividend from 2025 onward.
A decade ago, the year 2025 would have felt an age away as most of us would consider 20 years sufficient in order to get the balancing act right between consumption and capacity. Unfortunately, we are at the point today where 2025 is already less than 10 years away, while our quest for increased capacity remains at best modest and still lags the targeted level.
Adding more concern is the fact that while Indonesia’s gross domestic product per capita has been on the rise in rupiah terms, its US dollar equivalent has been declining for the past four years given the depreciation of the rupiah. While we hope the trend of GDP per capita, in US dollar terms, starts to reverse in 2016, the fact remains that much must be done before Indonesia can fully achieve its potential.
For a long time, Indonesia has been hoping to reach its 7 percent GDP growth target. Is 7 percent simply an unreachable target? Not really. India and China have proven that such a level of growth is indeed possible, though caution should be warranted to avoid inflating a bubble. Below, we outline five key steps for Indonesia if it wants to attain its sought-after growth rate of 7 percent.
First, stable politics are paramount. This does not necessarily mean a majority or full parliamentary control (2009-2014 showed parliamentary dominance means nothing if the foundations are weak). For the government to be able to effectively manage a country’s economy, political stability is crucial and one can look towards Brazil as an example of how political instability can have a negative impact on the economy.
Second, balancing consumption with capacity. Consumption growth is the key driver for Indonesia’s economy on the back of its demographic dividend and emerging middle class. One of the necessary components of this is a stable rupiah, as a depreciating currency erodes purchasing power. Obviously, achieving this is much easier said than done and the challenge is to effectively manage hot money inflows.
With global interest rates currently at record lows, capital inflows can inflate the currency only for it to collapse when funds are withdrawn. Meanwhile, without growing capacity, the increase in consumption will translate to an increase in imports and higher inflation. India experienced this between 2007-2012 and the result was a surge in its current-account deficit and high inflation.
Third, improving cost efficiency. One of the biggest challenges for Indonesia is its high-cost economy. Without cost efficiency, it reduces the incentive for businesses to invest and now is an ideal time for Indonesian companies to leverage off global technological improvements. This could mean simple changes such as cost controls, such as e-commerce companies taking advantage of current industry trends to trim their marketing expenses.
In other arenas, social media can allow the public to participate in monitoring government, with notable example of corrupt government officials being brought to account after being exposed via social media. These can all play a part in lowering hidden costs for the Indonesia economy and help spur growth for companies
Fourth, liquidity and funding. In order to build capacity, Indonesia needs funding. While the country has one of the lowest loan-to-GDP ratios, implying that leverage remains low, Indonesia also has one of the lowest deposit-to-GDP ratios globally. The country’s limited excess banking liquidity is partly due to the fact that Indonesia has suffered from decades of capital leakages to offshore entities.
Indonesia is currently hopeful that the proposed tax amnesty may be the turning point and allow Indonesians to repatriate part of their offshore savings back to the domestic economy. In addition, the proposed tax amnesty is also expected to increase the country’s tax ratio, which will be crucial in enhancing the government’s budget revenues, allowing investment in much-needed public infrastructure, such as ports and roads.
Despite the obvious benefits of a tax amnesty, Indonesia’s financial industry may need to expand US dollar-based product options so that repatriated funds can avoid unnecessary strengthening of the rupiah.
Fifth, developing human capital. We often think of capacity as being brick-and-mortar factories, roads, ports, etc., but we often forget about human capital. After capacity has been added, we need someone to run it. For example, factories need a labor force to produce. Unfortunately, Indonesia’s quality of human capital still needs to improve. As economies grow, demand for quality human capital also increases and in this sense, the answer to Indonesia’s shortfall is simple; education.
Yet relying on formal education to enhance human capital quality usually requires a longer timeframe. But with the demographic dividend starting to be eroded in 2025, the country has less than nine years to meet its requirements. One potential solution for the country is vocational study.
Enhancement of human-capital quality is also required in order to prevent Indonesia falling prey to the middle-income trap, where a nation’s labor is too expensive for it to engage in labor-intensive, lower-end services but the quality of its labor is not yet sufficient to move up the value chain. That is, the nation is stuck in the middle-income phase with limited ability to grow its wealth.
In conclusion, it may sound like there is plenty of work to be done. That is true. However, at the same time, Indonesia has nearly all the necessary ingredients and it is just a matter of putting words into action. After all, nothing is free in this world and the only thing that is constant is change.
Teddy Oetomo is the head of intermediary business at Schroder Investment Management Indonesia
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Commentary: Universal Health, Universal Rights
May 27th, 2016By Jamil Maidan.
Good health is the mainstay of a good life. This may seem like a truism, but for too many people it does not reflect their lives and their children’s prospects.
Hundreds of millions of people are currently denied health services or are plunged into poverty because they are forced to pay unaffordable fees. In some situations, women and children are even detained in hospitals because they cannot pay their medical bills.
This flies in the face of human dignity, and is at odds with countries’ human rights obligations. Following the agreement on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) last September, all countries are now committed to achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC) by 2030. UHC means that everybody receives the health services they need without suffering financial hardship.
The World Bank, the World Health Organization and other international institutions all agree that UHC saves lives, boosts economies and stabilizes societies.
This is why The Elders have launched a new initiative to campaign for Universal Health Coverage.
We believe UHC makes political and economic sense. When people’s lives are stunted or end prematurely, this is not only a terrible tragedy for them and their families, it is a loss for the community at large. Unmet health needs also reduce economic productivity and stop children and adolescents from realizing their full potential in school, at home and later as adults.
Some will say that in a world plagued by conflict, terrorism and economic insecurity, UHC is a utopian dream. But we know this is not true. Before the Second World War, many countries even in prosperous Western Europe did not enjoy universal health coverage and there was a huge discrepancy between the health prospects of the rich and poor.
The post-war human rights revolution changed this forever. Initially across Europe, but then across Asia and the Pacific too, countries launched publicly financed health systems as the bedrock of a new social contract.
In Norway, one of the architects of the public health system, Karl Evang, pioneered this international approach by co-founding the World Health Organization in 1948. UHC reforms also extended to Latin America and are now spreading to Africa. Poor countries like Rwanda and Ethiopia lead the way.
If this has been achieved in 70 years, how can we possibly say it cannot be achieved in all nations by 2030?
UHC is critical for the SDGs to become a reality. Money should not be the deciding factor for access to healthcare. Heads of state, ministers of health and, crucially, finance ministers must show they have the political will to make UHC a reality. Tough decisions need to be taken and powerful vested interests faced down.
Universal coverage is the ultimate destination but we must get there equitably. Good quality health services should be provided free at the point of use for women, children and adolescents as a first step in a nation’s UHC strategy. To improve access to services and maximize efficiency, countries should focus their UHC packages on primary health care delivered close to where people live.
We firmly believe that only public financing can deliver universal health coverage. A free market where medical services are traded like a commodity will never deliver decent health care to the poor and vulnerable.
But UHC is about more than just financing. Countries will need to strengthen their health systems in areas such as human resources, medicines, infrastructure and information systems.
Nelson Mandela, founder of The Elders, once said that there were four basic and primary things people wish for: “to live in a safe environment, to be able to work and provide for themselves, to have access to good public health and to have sound educational opportunities for their children.”
We believe UHC is key to realizing this vision, and are encouraged by the growing international consensus that it is an “affordable dream.” That is why we urge the G7 nations to show leadership and to make political and financial commitments to UHC at their upcoming summit in Japan. This would be a clear signal from the most powerful economies that “business as usual” will not do if the world is serious about implementing the SDGs.
Access to health care is a fundamental human right. No mother should lose a child, or lose her own life, because she cannot afford health care. When ministers decide their actions and priorities, The Elders will act as a “voice for the voiceless” and campaign for truly universal health care as a human right for all.
Graca Machel, co-founder of The Elders, is an international advocate for women’s and children’s rights. A former freedom fighter, she was Mozambique’s first Education Minister.
Gro Harlem Brundtland, Deputy Chair of The Elders, was the first female Prime Minister of Norway and is a medical doctor. She previously served as Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) and continues to champion health as a human right worldwide.
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Jamil Maidan Flores: Philippine President-Elect Seeks Guidance From Parents’ Graves
May 21st, 2016By Jamil maidan.
We shed tears when we are gripped by thoughts and feelings for which we have no words. That is precisely what Rodrigo “Digong” Duterte did the morning after it became clear that he had won the presidency of the Republic of the Philippines.
At 3:00 a.m., he went to the graves of his parents in Davao City’s oldest cemetery and there, with clenched fists, he wept his heart out and begged them for help and guidance.
This is the real Duterte. Not the maverick who goes by such nicknames as “Dirty Harry” and “the Punisher,” who brags about his Viagra-driven romantic conquests, makes a sleazy joke about a missionary who has been gang-raped and murdered, flings an unprintable expletive at the Pope, promotes the hype that he has killed hundreds of criminals and swears to kill so many more that their corpses will fatten the fish in Manila Bay.
This is not the showboat who would test China’s pugnacity in the South China Sea by riding a jet ski to a disputed island to plant the Philippine flag there, daring the Chinese to shoot him dead and make him a national hero. And not the perpetual juvenile brimming with self-assurance who says outrageous things to make himself more interesting than he already is.
That is not the real Duterte. That is only the public persona.
Rodrigo “Digong” Duterte had been mayor of Davao City, one of the world’s largest cities, for seven terms when he won the 2016 Philippine presidential election by a landslide. At the moment of his greatest triumph you would expect to witness more of his braggadocio but no, instead you are treated to an epiphany: he is human after all.
It must have been an overwhelming moment when he realized his human limitations in the face of the awesome challenges of a Philippine presidency. So he sought help where help was sure to come without strings attached: from beyond the grave where his departed parents are presumably still watching over him. That is the real Digong.
Because he was extremely adventurous in his youth, his parents were hard-pressed to discipline him. For instance, he had been flying a small plane without his parents knowing it. During one flight, he dumped a rock on the roof of the building where he attended high school, an act of mischief for which he later apologized to the school authorities. Due to capers like that, he was branded the family black sheep at a time when ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) was not yet discovered as a common affliction of those who would otherwise be deemed brilliant.
The black sheep turned out to be an accomplished public servant. As mayor he is credited for turning Davao from a hub for homicide to one of the safest and coziest cities in the world. He cracks down on criminals in draconian ways that infuriate human rights advocates: it is even bruited that he has organized death squads, whose sole business is to polish off known drug dealers and other criminals.
These shadowy operators are reminiscent of Indonesia’s Petrus (penembak misterius) that knocked off with impunity hundreds of preman (thugs) during the Suharto era. Eventually Suharto himself claimed responsibility — credit, actually — for Petrus. Similarly, the buzz about the Davao death squads has not diminished Digong Duterte’s popularity and may have added to it. Nobody has managed, however, to prove that he was responsible for any extrajudicial killings.
Filipinos better pray there will be no attempts to extrapolate the death-squad gambit to the national level. At that level, it will boomerang. What Duterte can feasibly do is to keep his campaign promise to straighten out the national police and crack down on corruption in the military. Expect him also to deliver social justice to underpaid teachers, cops and enlisted men.
His vow to devolve more powers and resources to provincial governments is immediately doable and popular. Transforming the country from a unitary to a federal system through constitutional amendments demands a lot more time and careful study but it can be done within Duterte’s tenure.
He has not talked about it but he should institute reforms in national budget planning and execution — to prevent the rise of another corruption icon such as Janet Napoles. And if he is serious about eliminating corruption, he can take a page from the Indonesian example, set up a Philippine version of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), and then guard against reactionary moves to defang it.
Foreign policy may not be his strong point but the Philippines has a trove of diplomats who can do a great job if the government supports them. In spite of his boast that he will ride a jet ski to the Spratleys and plant the Philippine flag on a disputed island, he will not do any such stunt. He is not dumb. Nor is he dumb enough to send to China a foreign-policy ignoramus such as Senator Trillanes to play at backdoor diplomacy.
His recent call for a multilateral roundtable summit to address the South China Sea crisis is a perfectly rational move. The challenge will be in how to get China to participate. Wish him luck on that.
He is often compared to the American mogul Donald Trump, now the Republican presumptive presidential nominee. The comparison is unfair to Duterte and the Philippine electorate.
Trump’s insults to political opponents are tame compared to the filth of Duterte’s profanity. But unlike Duterte, Trump does not have a sliver of a record in elected office or public service. And he is a total palooka on policy.
In winning the Republican nomination, Trump has already divided and embarrassed the American people. In contrast, by electing Duterte to the highest position within their gift, the Filipino people made a good and intelligent bet.
A good bet, however, is not necessarily a sure bet. Duterte has six years to prove that the Filipinos did not blunder when they elected him to the presidency by a huge margin. As to his brag that he can solve the problems of crime and corruption in a period of between three to six months after he assumes office, I do not think even he believes that.
He knows how tough the challenges are before him. Just one of them, the kidnappings that have become an industry in southwestern Mindanao will keep him awake nights. That’s why he hied down to the graves of his parents in the wee hours of the morning to cry for help.
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Ali Alatas and the Alliance of Civilizations
May 14th, 2016By Jamil Maidan.
(1)
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, second from right, talks with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, right, Timor Leste Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao, third from right, Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa, second from left, at the opening of the Bali Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations in Nusa Dua, Bali, on Aug. 29, 2014. (Antara Photo/Nyoman Budhiana)
At the opening session of the Bali Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations (UNAoC) last week, both President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa paid tribute to the late Indonesian diplomat-statesman Ali Alatas.
It was only fitting. The Alliance is a UN-sponsored movement to find practical ways of bridging the divide between the world’s civilizations, cultures, faiths. During the last few years of his life, Alatas was seized with the idea and the auspicious realization of the movement.
He represented Southeast Asia in the High-level Group (HLG) of 20 world eminences tasked in 2005 with the writing of a report that would be the basis for the work and the workings of the Alliance.
Also in that group were South Africa’s Nobel laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu, religion historian Karen Armstrong, human rights activist Rabbi Arthur Schneier, and Mohammad Khatami, who had just completed his second term as president of Iran.
I remember Alatas expressing concern, as early as then, that the Alliance might be overly focused on the Muslim-Western fault line, to the neglect of other civilizations. “There are civilizations in Asia that are neither Muslim nor Western,” he said. “They shouldn’t be left out.
There was prescience in those words. Today there is a Muslim-Buddhist fault line disrupting harmony in South and Southeast Asian societies. And there persists a Muslim-Hindu fault line. Until the East Asian civilizations play a more robust role in the Alliance, it is an incomplete mix.
In its first report, the HLG stressed the Palestine-Israeli issue, because “it has taken on a symbolic value that colors cross-cultural and political relations … well beyond its limited geographical scope.” Alatas said something to the same effect in his first statement as HLG member.
Today the issue has a new overtone: Many people in Western societies have recoiled in horror at the indiscriminate bombardment carried out by the Israelis in Gaza, resulting in the mass killing of civilians. People are beginning to realize that there can be no peace, let alone an alliance, of civilizations unless both sides try to be just.
Alatas also insisted that freedom fighters shouldn’t be branded as terrorists. Nowhere is that distinction more important today than in Syria where genuine freedom fighters against the Assad regime are poorly equipped and poorly supported compared to jihadists with an imperial agenda.
Making that distinction is tricky, Alatas admitted. One man’s freedom fighter is some government’s terrorist. And your friendly neighborhood freedom fighter today may be radicalized tomorrow. But there must be an effort to make that distinction, he said.
I don’t remember him saying this, but I’m sure he would have approved of it: that the Alliance should invite even the radicals to join in the dialogue.
Otherwise you have a case of members of the choir preaching to one another. The idea is to ferret the radicals’ legitimate grievances, the root causes of their alienation and address these causes.
He did say that the root causes of terrorism, not just terrorism itself, must be vigorously dealt with.
Critics of the Alliance at that time were quick to claim that it wasn’t paying much attention to the faults of governments of Muslim countries. But this was belied by an op-ed piece in the Houston Chronicle co-authored by Alatas, Tutu, and Andri Azoulay, adviser to the king of Morocco. They decried, among other things, the political repression endemic in the Muslim world.
“Denying peaceful opposition movements the freedom to express their views and jailing their supporters generate anger and resentment, encouraging some to join violent groups,” they wrote.
That sentiment was anticipated by at least a good seven years the Arab Spring and the general regression into which the Middle East has subsequently fallen.
Jamil Maidan Flores is a Jakarta-based literary writer whose interests include philosophy and foreign policy. The views expressed here are his own.
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China’s Divide-and-Rule Tactics in South China Sea Will Backfire
May 7th, 2016
By Jamil Flores Maidan.
China recently announced that it had reached a consensus on the South China Sea with three members of Asean. What could be wrong with that? That would be fine, actually, if Asean had only three members. But Asean has ten full-fledged members and seven weren’t consulted on that consensus. What gives?
Take a look at the substance of that consensus. First, it says that there’s no dispute between Asean and China on the South China Sea and that disagreements between individual Asean members and China should not affect Asean-China relations. That’s correct.
Second, according to the consensus, countries have the right to choose how to resolve their disputes according to international law. That, too, is correct. But then it adds that the “imposition of a unilateral approach” would be wrong. Does that refer to the Philippines going before the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) to seek clarification on the merits of China’s claim to virtually all of the South China Sea?
If so, the consensus misses the point. For the Philippine case before the PCA isn’t intended to resolve any territorial or sovereignty dispute between the Philippines and China. Since it is all about the validity of the nine-dash line and the nature of the geographic features enclosed by that line, the case is a matter of interest to all nations that subscribe to and would make use of freedom of navigation. Just because China refuses to take part in the PCA legal proceedings does not make the Philippine suit an “imposition of a unilateral approach.”
Third, the consensus says that according to Article IV of the DOC, parties in the South China Sea should resolve their territorial and sovereignty disputes through dialogue and consultation. That’s right on the money. The devil is in how China behaves when a party attempts to engage it in bilateral negotiation. As I remember, the Philippines tried to engage China in such a dialogue but nothing much happened because China treated the Philippines as a supplicant and not as an equal negotiating partner.
It’s not yet too late. Davao City mayor Rodrigo Duterte, front-runner in the current Philippine presidential elections, has broadly hinted that he’s willing to renew bilateral talks with China when he gets to be president. If China is itself willing to negotiate as an equal toward a win-win solution, no Philippine president will pass up the chance to peacefully resolve his country’s territorial dispute with China.
And fourth, the consensus says that Asean and China are capable enough of jointly safeguarding peace and stability in the South China Sea. Well said. And China can substantiate this assertion by promptly concluding with Asean a Code of Conduct (COC) on parties in the South China Sea.
Then the consensus hastens to add that external parties should play a constructive role, instead of the reverse. What does that mean? Does that mean that the navies of the US, Japan, India and Australia should stay away from the disputed waters of the South China Sea? If so, it’s an unrealistic expectation. So long as China keeps reclaiming geographic features and militarizing them, then so long will external powers feel called upon to carry out “freedom of navigation operations” and to show China that it isn’t the only boy in the playground that has military muscle.
What’s China up to anyway? Soon after the announcement of the consensus, Bilahari Kausikan of the Singapore ministry of foreign affairs commented that this could be seen as China’s way of dividing Asean before the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) could rule on the merits of China’s nine-dash line and its claim to virtually all of the South China Sea. Former Asean secretary-general Ong Keng Yong, now Singapore’s ambassador-at-large, added that the consensus was tantamount to China meddling in Asean internal affairs.
That raised China’s hackles. Vice-Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin asked Singapore to explain the statements of its two senior diplomats. In fact it’s China that has some explaining to do.
For starters, why is it only China that’s announcing the consensus? Why is it doing all the talking for all four states involved? And if the consensus were as non-controversial and well intentioned as China claims it to be, why didn’t China go for a full Asean-China consensus? Instead, it roped in just three, two of which are seen by many as its clients.
One of them, Laos, happens to be the current chair of Asean. If the maelstrom of controversy surrounding the consensus gained velocity, then the credibility of Laos as chair of Asean would be severely compromised. So would be the credibility of Asean centrality.
An Asean diminished by dissensions, including one fostered by China, will not stay relevant for long. In that event, everybody will lose, including China, which would be bereft of a robust and credible partner in the South China Sea. Instead it will have several individual claimants forever diplomatically swarming like a bunch of wasps against its position on the South China Sea.
It won’t enjoy the kind of peace possible only with a strong and united Asean partner in the region. And worse, the external powers that China wishes would stay away from the South China Sea would have all the more reason to carry out freedom of navigation operations (fonops) on a perennial basis.
The smart thing for China to do right now is to speedily conclude a COC with Asean and thus prove for good that it can deal constructively with an Asean that’s united like a true community. An early COC would restore some of the credibility that Asean lost as a result of the unfortunate consensus and to some extent refurbish China’s fading claim to a peaceful rise.
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SE Asia’s Big Stake in the US Presidential Election
April 29th, 2016By Jamil Maidan.
If you are a Southeast Asian with any appreciation of the impact of US domestic and foreign policy on your life, you may wish to closely observe the strange goings-on in the current US presidential campaign.
It will strike you at once that the race for nomination in the Republican Party (also called GOP for Grand Old Party) has totally degenerated into low entertainment. That became obvious when the front-runner, the billionaire real estate developer Donald Trump, steered an impertinent discussion on the length of his fingers to the size of his private parts. That is the measure of the Republican campaign, pun intended.
Except for Ohio governor John Kasich, who owns the only adult voice in the group, all the Republican presidential candidates have pursued a campaign based on hatred, anger, fear and grievance. In this toxic game, Trump has emerged as wizard: from his foul mouth flows an endless stream of cruel insults, baseless demonization, inflated boasts and brazen lies. There is a racist streak in his rhetoric.
The Republican faithful should have dumped him long ago as a malignant party crasher. Instead, his pursuit of the nomination has not only prospered, it has macerated the bids of all his rivals. The only strong challenge to Trump’s campaign so far is that of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas who himself is as bigoted as Trump and as shrill to minorities and immigrants, although much less vulgar in language.
This is a sad reflection on the intelligence, emotional stability and sanity of a large part of the American population. Let’s hope this part isn’t large enough to elect a president. It is also a sad reflection on the Republican Party, which has defined itself in recent decades as dismissive of minorities and worshipful of wealth and has thereby raised a batch of presidential candidates that are both clowns and Frankenstein’s monsters.
While the Republicans are falling apart in chaos, the Democrats are in a battle between blind idealism and a pragmatism struggling to inspire trust.
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a self-described democratic socialist, would lead a revolution in governance that has no clear and convincing idea of how its programs would be carried out.
Former State Secretary Hillary Clinton has the experience and the skill to sustain President Obama’s healthcare reform and to build on his foreign policy, which she once co-authored. In spite of her recent surprise loss to Sanders in the Michigan primary, and the enthusiasm of his youthful supporters, she retains a commanding lead in the number of delegates won through primaries and caucuses, and super delegates.
Now why should we in this neck of the global woods care if Trump or Hillary Clinton, or Bernie Sanders, or any of the thread-hanging Republican candidates becomes the 45th president of the United States? We should—because the policies of No. 45 could spell the difference between conflagration and relative peace in the South China Sea. And between the US remaining a reliable trading partner for East Asian countries and its becoming rigidly protectionist.
Throughout this campaign Donald Trump has been demonizing China at the drop of a hat. He has threatened to engage China in a devastating trade war. The pugnacity of his rhetoric gives the impression that he doesn’t mind going to war with any country that crosses the US. He probably won’t do that if and when he becomes president but it is fair to say that he is more likely to do it than all the others.
It is safe to say that none of the Republican candidates can manage the US presence in East Asia as keenly and as carefully as President Obama does today. Nor do they appear to have the same interest in dealing with China with firmness and prudence. It was the Republicans’ obsession with a war in the Middle East and another in South Asia that lured them into neglecting East Asia during the George W. Bush years.
And all of them have a populist, protectionist streak in their genes, which is hostile to the trading aspirations of East Asian economies. Even the Democrat Bernie Sanders rails that free trade agreements have robbed American workers of countless jobs. He’s an unrepentant populist protectionist.
Hillary Clinton is no protectionist but you can tell from her statements that she isn’t for just any free trade deal. It has also got to be a fair trade deal. Her only complaint against some trade pacts is that they’re weak on labor standards. That means that besides being a fair trader she could also be a trade-reforming US president.
On the South China Sea, she is the heir to Obama’s mantle of self-restraint. Yet she has proven in a good number of Asean-led forums that diplomatically she can deal firmly with China on the issue of freedom of navigation and over-flight. Observers cite her immense faith in the virtue of diplomacy; if she were president that faith should save her from involving the US in new wars of choice — including in the South China Sea.
No doubt, if she returns to the White House, this time as president, it will be good for East Asia. But though she leads Sanders by a wide margin, and though she consistently beats Trump in voter surveys, there’s no guarantee she’ll be holding office in the West Wing next January. The advocates of populist protectionism, the haters of political correctness and the racists just might produce the number of votes to bar her way to the presidency.
That would bode ill not only for the US but also for the world at large, including Southeast Asia
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Jamil Maidan Flores: The Indian Ocean Idea
August 2nd, 2015
By Jamil Maidan Flores.
This photograph taken on Sept. 9, 2013, shows an aerial view of one of the many luxurious resorts that dot the many islands that comprise the Maldives in the Indian Ocean. (AFP Photo/ Roberto Schmidt)
Writing in 2009 for Foreign Affairs, political scientist Robert D. Kaplan said that the Indian Ocean is not just a geographic feature. “The Indian Ocean,” he said, “is also an idea. It combines the centrality of Islam with global energy politics and the rise of India and China to reveal a multilayered multipolar world.”
He was referring to the “arc of Islam” that swings from the Sahara Desert through the great bays of the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal to peninsular Malaysia and archipelagic Indonesia. That arc has a venerable history — of a faith that spread on the trade winds. But not even Kaplan could foresee that in less than half a decade a self-anointed “caliphate” would brashly claim the arc as its constituency. A claim that is an existential threat to many nations.
Kaplan did refer to “the strategic nightmare of the greater Middle East.” But he was writing before the Arab Spring, when Hosni Mubarak was still entrenched in Egypt and Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi still seemed immortal, and he didn’t imagine the fiery chaos that today engulfs the region. The terrorist attacks of November 2012 on Mumbai was still fresh on his mind and he seemed to anticipate that the two main sources of instability on the Indian Ocean rim would be Pakistan and Myanmar. Today the biggest headaches on the Indian Ocean rim actually lie farther to the west.
But he had a good idea of the exponential growth of demand for energy in India and China. Global energy needs, he said, would rise by 45 percent between 2006 and 2030, almost half of that growth in demand will be coming from India and China alone. And the whole Indian Ocean seaboard, including the eastern coast of Africa, will be an immense network of energy trade. By then, India will be the world’s biggest energy consumer and home to the world’s largest population.
Today, the Indian Ocean seaboard is already in a complex state of flux. A civil war is raging in Yemen, in which neighboring countries are involved. The military implications of the economic rise of India and China are already playing out in the Indian Ocean, with China building a “string of pearls” and India matching it pearl by pearl, port by port.
The situation calls for a hefty dose of regionalism. In fact, it calls for a regional architecture, the kind that Asean and partners are attempting to build on the Pacific Ocean side. OK, the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) is already there but it has a narrow project-oriented agenda and doesn’t have the vision and mission of a regional architecture builder.
Still IORA is the Indian Ocean region’s best hope for a body that could manage potential conflict and also devise a strategic approach to the region’s politico-security, economic and socio-cultural aspirations. It won’t be easy for IORA to become such a body. Its 20 members are extremely diversified in terms of size and stages of political, economic and social development. But the attempt must be made. The alternative is to let events in the Indian Ocean hurtle forward unmanaged, with probably disastrous results.
On this Indonesia, which will lead IORA starting later this year, and Australia, the current chair, as well as South Africa and India and even Iran will have much to say. China and the US, as IORA dialogue partners, should be supportive should IORA go into architecture building. Care should also be taken that the smaller members aren’t made to feel they’re being dictated upon.
The Indian Ocean is indeed an idea. A great idea. But whether it’s an idea whose time has come will depend on how it’s managed for the 21st century.
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Europe Agonistes: A Divided Continent Plays Out a Greek Drama
July 4th, 2015
By Jamil Maidan Flores.
Prof. Anis H. Bajrektarevic recently launched a book titled, “Europe of Sarajevo 100 Years Later: From WWI to www.” Only Prof. Anis, I think, can write a book of that title, just as he’s the only intellectual I know who argues passionately that Google is the Gulag of our time, the prison of the free mind.
His editor tells us that in the book, Prof. Anis makes the case that the history of Europe, perhaps of the world, since World War I has been a history of geopolitical imperative. And that, in the face of climate change, the crisis that grips all of us is not really ecological, as it never was financial, but moral.
Prof. Anis is chairperson for international law and global political studies at the University IMC-Krems, Austria. I’ve been reading some of his recent writings. A native Sarajevan who now lives in Vienna, he doesn’t see one seamless Europe but several.
There’s Atlantic Europe, a political powerhouse that boasts two nuclear states. There’s Central Europe, an economic powerhouse. Scandinavian Europe is a little of both. And Eastern Europe that’s none of either. And beyond Eastern Europe, is a Europe-stalking Russia.
“Although seemingly unified,” he writes, “Europe is essentially composed of several segments, each of them with its own dynamics, legacies and political culture… Atlantic and Central Europe are confident and secure at one end, while Eastern Europe as well as Russia on the other end, (are) insecure and neuralgic, therefore in a permanent quest for additional security guarantees.”
The underachiever of the lot is Eastern Europe, and often the victim of Europe’s turmoil. It bore the brunt of World War II in the 1940s, suffered even more during the Yugoslav implosion of the 1990s, and again today in the Ukrainian civil war.
A fascinating part of Eastern Europe is its southern flank, the Balkans, where the US-led West and Russia are today engaged in a tug of war for influence. In here is the cradle of Western civilization, Greece, which is now in deep financial and economic trouble. If it’s not bailed out of its misery, it just might leave the euro-zone.
I haven’t come across Prof. Anis’s views on the consequences of a Grexit, or a Greek exit from the euro-zone and possibly also from the European Union, but many other thoughtful people have said a lot on this topic. Their views range from, “Oh, nothing much,” to, “This will be Armageddon.”
I side with those who say that if Europe doesn’t save Greece, it will itself be in need of saving. A Greek fall from the euro-zone will have a domino effect, which can happen in slow motion, over the years, but in the end will leave the EU a mere ghost of what it is today. Meanwhile, in its agony Greece could become Russia’s Orthodox altar boy, which would be anathema to the West.
And then there’s the Asian connection: China is already heavily invested in the port of Piraeus in Athens, the hub of Greek shipping and the gateway to Europe for China’s ambitious Maritime Silk Road project. Asean nations are stakeholders in that endeavor.
Meanwhile negotiations between Greece and its European creditors for a 7.2-billion-euro ($8-billion) bailout hang in the balance. Creditors and financial institutions demand fiscal reform measures that are bitter to Greece. We’ll know within days if there’s a deal or not.
Indonesia went through a similar ordeal in 1998 and has since recovered very nicely. So it’s too early to write off the Greek drama as unmitigated tragedy. And, in spite of Pope Francis, Europe isn’t an old woman who has fallen and cannot rise.
It’s a grand old man walking a tightrope between “cosmos” and “chaos,” two favorite Greek words of Prof. Anis.
Jamil Maidan Flores is a Jakarta-based literary writer whose interests include philosophy and foreign policy. The views expressed here are his own.
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Afghanistan: No End to War and to Asylum-seeking
January 15th, 2015
By Jamil Maidan Flores.
Days ago the United States and the NATO officially brought down the curtains on the 13 year old war in Afghanistan. Officially. Actually, nothing’s over till the fat lady sings. And there’s no script that says when she’ll sing in Afghanistan.
But there were speeches in muted rites of closure. US Gen. John Campbell, commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the UN-authorized coalition to help Afghanistan, said: “We have lifted the people out of the darkness of despair and given them hope for the future… You have made Afghanistan stronger and our countries safer.”
Great speech. But he knows too well that the Taliban is alive and killing. Always on the lookout for targets of opportunity, it can inflict massive carnage. It can still host operatives of foreign terrorist organizations.
And if the new government in Kabul commits the mistakes that the erstwhile Maliki government made in Iraq, the Taliban can, with the help of powerful allies, sweep across the country a la ISIS and knock at the gates of the capital.
To be sure, hardly anybody wins this kind of war any more. It’s too asymmetrical for the stronger side to score an absolute victory. All the other side needs to do is survive and threaten.
Even if you wipe out the Taliban, you don’t necessarily erase the possibility of a future incarnation. Or ensure against the rise of new players who will more fiercely take up the battle.
The US invaded Afghanistan to get Osama bin Laden. US Navy Seals killed him in May 2012—in Pakistan. But Al Qaida didn’t die with him. It metastasized, grew new tentacles, and multiplied.
On the positive side, the US and the new Afghan government may have learned the hard lessons of Iraq. Thus the Kabul government promptly signed security deals with the US and NATO, so that the drawdown of their troops won’t create a vacuum. The 12,500 military advisers and trainors who stay to train and support the Afghan army can make a difference if and when the Taliban attempts a blitz.
If the Afghan national army becomes an effective fighting force that’s inoculated against the infections of politics, nepotism and corruption, it should hold its ground and take over the brunt of fighting the Taliban from the scattered, poorly supplied police force.
But much depends on the performance of the new Afghan government under President Ashraf Ghani: will it deliver good governance? Will it improve on the lackluster performance of its predecessor administration?
Or will it be like the quondam Maliki government in Iraq: ethnically divisive, politically inept, reputedly corrupt and obviously incompetent? In that case no amount of foreign military advice and aid will prevent the Afghan national army from collapsing at the feet of a charging Taliban.
If the new Afghan administration makes good, Indonesia should be cheering. For more than three decades now, embattled Afghanistan has been the world’s biggest producer of asylum seekers. While most of them find their way to Pakistan and Iran, still a great many aim for Australia and make use of Indonesia as country of transit.
This creates social problems for both Indonesia and Australia, and sometimes wounds their bilateral relations.
Last November, Indonesia’s minister for law and human rights, Yasonna Laoly, lamented that by cutting its intake of refugees, Australia had burdened Indonesia with the problem of looking after thousands of asylum seekers—many of them Afghans.
Meanwhile the war in Afghanistan hasn’t ended. It has only evolved. The Afghans haven’t been lifted “from the darkness of despair.” Especially if the new government doesn’t do well, asylum seekers will keep pouring out of the country—into a new life elsewhere or into another darkness.
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