Gaza Update: It's the Economy, Stupid....

For me, the second most important story on Thursday about Gaza was the breakdown of the truce between Hamas and the Israeli military.

The most important --- although I suspect you may not have seen it --- was this: "UN agency suspends Gaza food aid". The combination of the Israeli blockade and rocket fire meant that stocks of wheat flour ran out, cutting off assistance to the 20,000 people per day who rely on the agency. (A total of 750,000 in Gaza are dependent on food aid.)

Dig a bit deeper, and the following hard-core facts --- which of course are all too evident to those in Gaza --- emerge. Unemployment is now at 49 percent, up from 32 percent a year ago. Most people are without power for up to 16 hours a day, Many residents of Gaza City are without power for up to 16 hours a day, and half receive water (80 percent of which is substandard) only once a week for a few hours, the report said. A UN report calls the situation "a human dignity crisis".

A couple of British and American newspapers, after their eye-catching headlines on the truce breakdown and "rocket attacks" did deign to report that economic and social news. The New York Times, for example, wrote:

Hamas officials say it was their understanding at the time that two weeks after the June 19 accord took effect Israel would open the crossings and allow the transfer of goods that had been banned or restricted after June 2007.

However, deliveries increased only from 70 to 90 truckloads a day, compared with 500 to 600 before June 2007. The outcome? Ameera Ahmed, a Gaza resident who struggles to find even the formula needed for her six-month-old daughter, writes in The Observer:

During the months of the blockade, everything in my life has changed. Before, I would wake up and hope that tomorrow would be better than today. But it never happened. The reason is simple. It is because I live in Gaza, where all dreams and hope vanish because of the situation we live in.

Of course, you can make the snap response that Ahmed and all the other Gazans struggling to make it day-to-day are victims of both the Israeli blockade and the rocket fire from Gaza that is cited as justification for the restrictions. But doing so, you are into a circular argument that cannot be broken, ensuring that this dance of destruction and deprivation is perpetual.

It might be more instructive to ask: will the Israeli blockade really turn the population against Hamas, leading to an effective coup d'etat? Even if that occurred, would it produce the pliant Gazan public that will accept Tel Aviv's conditions for a political settlement? Or is it more likely that a citizenry subjected to this punishment will see its oppressor as Israel, thus stocking up more anger and more resentment for yet more conflict?

There is a way out, in other words, but no one seems willing to put forth the notion of talks between Hamas and the Israeli Government. Instead, we can settle for the farce of an American President reducing Gaza to invisibility as he meets the head of the Palestinian (West Bank) Authority and declares, "People must recognise that we have made a good deal of progress."

Showdown for the al-Maliki Government? The Stakes are Raised

The manoeuvring inside the Iraqi Government just got very interesting:

Iraq’s interior minister said all 24 of his officers who had been arrested in a security crackdown this week would be released. And in a bold gesture of defiance, he publicly condemned his own government’s investigation, calling the accusations false and motivated purely by politics.

Beyond that information, all is muddle. The New York Times, for example, starts its analysis with the assertion that the Ministry of the Interior is "affiliated with members of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a powerful Shiite party that is a rival to Dawa [the party of Prime Minister al-Maliki]". Hmm, given that ISCI is also part of the al-Maliki coalition, that far from clarifies matters.

Nor does the next sentence: "Some [Ministry of Interior] officers were members of the Baath Party before the American invasion." Hmm, again. The Baath Party of Saddam Hussein was Sunni, and since I don't think you can that ISCI is too well-disposed to the Baathists who jailed and killed its members.

So what do we have here? My snap reading was that the arrest of the 24 was a move to block a prominent Sunni role in the security services. However, it is significant that the Minister of the Interior who revoked the arrests, Jawad al-Bulani, is a Shi'a without affiliation to either Dawa or ISCI.

Soon after he became Minister in 2006, al-Bulani pledged to clean up the higher ranks of the Ministry, accused by many of supporting Shi'a sectarian killings of Sunnis: "Western officials and some Iraqi officials have said that he has lacked the political support to conduct the necessary purges, particularly at the upper levels of the ministry."

This time, however, it is al-Maliki's inner circle who have moved to purge, not al-Bulani. Does that mean --- as al-Bulani claims and as al-Maliki's American allies are privately saying --- that the motivation has little to do with corruption and sectarian violence and far more to do with manoeuvring before Iraqi elections in 2009?

I don't know. But I do know that al-Bolani's step is a major slap in the face to al-Maliki. If the 24 are reinstated in their posts next week, this Iraqi Government --- whatever its reasons for moving against the "early coup" --- will have been significantly weakened.

The Power of the Poppy: A Radical Solution for Afghanistan?

Writing for The Daily Beast, Reza Aslan, a fellow at the Center for Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California, suggests:

The opium crisis in Afghanistan is not a drug enforcement problem, it is a national security issue: Licensing and regulating poppy cultivation would not only create stability and economic development, it could sap support for the Taliban and help win the war in Afghanistan.

How Opium Can Save Afghanistan
Afghanistan may be one the poorest countries in the world, but by legalizing and licensing opium production it could conceivably become the Saudi Arabia of morphine.

It is a measure of just how great a failure the counter-narcotics strategy in Afghanistan has been that, after six consecutive years of record growth in poppy production, including a staggering 20 percent increase last year alone, American and U.N. officials are actually patting themselves on the back over a 6 percent decline in 2008. “We are finally seeing the results of years of effort,” said Antonio Maria Costa, who heads the United Nations’ Office on Drugs and Crime.

Yet this meager decline has almost nothing to do with international eradication efforts and everything to do with the law of supply and demand. As The New York Times reported in November, the Taliban have begun forcibly curbing poppy production and stockpiling opium in order to boost prices, which had fallen sharply due to a glut in the market. Indeed, Afghanistan has produced so much opium—between 90 to 95 percent of the world’s supply—that prices have dropped nearly 20 percent.

The truth is that the poppy eradication effort in Afghanistan, which consists mostly of hacking away at poppy fields with sticks and sickles, or spraying them from above with deadly herbicides, has been nothing short of a disaster. All this policy has managed to achieve (excluding that vaunted 6 percent decrease) is to alienate the Afghan people, fuel support for the Taliban, and further weaken the government of president Hamid Karzai, whose own brother has been linked to the illegal opium trade. Meanwhile, poppy cultivation is now such an entrenched part of Afghanistan's economy that in some parts of the country, opium is considered legal tender, replacing cash in day-to-day transactions.

In spite of all this, the U.S. State Department is planning to expand its crop eradication campaign. Last year, President Bush tapped the former ambassador to Columbia, William Wood, to become U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan. Wood, whose nickname in Columbia was “Chemical Bill,” because of his enthusiasm for aerial fumigation, has been charged with implementing in Afghanistan the same crop eradication program that—despite five billion dollars and hundreds of tons of chemicals—has had little effect on Colombia's coca production.

It is time to admit that the struggle to end poppy cultivation in Afghanistan is a losing battle. The fact is that opium has long been Afghanistan’s sole successful export. Poppy seeds cost little to buy, can grow pretty much anywhere, and offer a huge return on a farmer’s investment. Only the Taliban has ever managed to significantly reduce opium production in the country (as it did during its late-1990s rule)—a feat managed by executing anyone caught growing poppies. It is no exaggeration to say that we have a better chance of defeating the Taliban than putting a dent in Afghanistan’s opium trade. So then, as the saying goes: if you can’t beat them, join them.

The International Council on Security and Development (ICOS), a policy think-tank with offices in London and Kabul, has proposed abandoning the futile eradication efforts in Afghanistan and instead licensing farmers to legally grow poppies for the production of medical morphine. This so-called “Poppy for Medicine” program is not as crazy as it may sound. Similar programs have already proven successful in Turkey and India, both of which were able to bring the illegal production of opium in their countries under control by licensing, regulating, and taxing poppy cultivation. And there is every reason to believe that the program could work even in a fractured country like Afghanistan. This is because the entire production process—from poppies to pills—would occur inside the village under strict control of village authorities, which, in Afghanistan, often trump the authority of the federal government. Licensed farmers would legally plant and cultivate poppy seeds. Factories built in the villages would transform the poppies into morphine tablets. The tablets would then be shipped off to Kabul, where they would be exported to the rest of the world. These rural village communities would experience significant economic development, and tax revenues would stream into Kabul. (The Taliban, which taxes poppy cultivation under their control at 10 percent, made $300 million dollars last year.)

The global demand for poppy-based medicine is as great as it is for oil. According to the International Narcotics Control Board, 80 percent of the world’s population currently faces a shortage of morphine; morphine prices have skyrocketed as a result. The ICOS estimates that Afghanistan could supply this market with all the morphine it needs, and at a price at least 55 percent lower than the current market average.

Thus far, the Bush Administration has balked at this idea, despite a warm reception from the Afghan government and some NATO allies. There is a fear in Washington that such a proposal would contradict America’s avowed “war on drugs.” But the opium crisis in Afghanistan is not a drug enforcement problem, it is a national security issue: Licensing and regulating poppy cultivation would not only create stability and economic development, it could sap support for the Taliban and help win the war in Afghanistan.

So which will it be? The War on Drugs? Or the War on Terror? When it comes to Afghanistan, we can only choose one.

Pakistan: You May Want to Notice This

The story only gets one paragraph in The New York Times, and I haven't seen it elsewhere in US and British newspapers:

Thousands of antigovernment protesters demanded Thursday that Pakistan shut the route along which supplies are ferried to American and NATO forces in Afghanistan. The demonstration, staged by more than 10,000 people in the city of Peshawar, also focused on a recent series of American missile strikes against targets suspected of belonging to Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan’s tribal areas. Leaders of the demonstration drew links between the missile attacks and the supply line, saying the equipment was being used for attacks on Pakistani soil and vowing to shut down the convoys.

So now it's not just "Taliban", attacking NATO warehouses and destroying hundreds of trucks, who are threatening the US-led supply operation for the forthcoming "surge" in Afghanistan. (Take note, Washington Post, which is still catching up with that story.)

And why might thousands of demonstrators in Pakistan take to the streets against the US/NATO campaign in Afghanistan? Before you say "extremism", "Taliban sympathiser", etc., consider:

A deadly United States military raid on a house near Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan became a new source of tension on Thursday, with the Americans calling it a successful counterterrorism strike and the Afghans saying it left three innocent civilians dead and two wounded.

Tragic Comedy of Iraqi Shoes: Update on Muntazar al-Zaidi

These may be the most horribly comic sentences I have read in 2008. From The Times of London yesterday:

All those in the Arab world who hailed al-Zaidi's actions should ask themselves what would happen in their own countries if a local journalist tried to hurl insults at President Mubarak of Egypt or President Assad of Syria....Iraq is far from perfect, but at least its people have learnt to enjoy freedom of expression.

Muntazar al-Zaidi enjoyed his freedom of expression by taking a beating from Iraqi security men. He may have broken ribs, a broken arm, and/or a broken hand. He has appeared in court to plead guilty to "aggression against a president". According to a spokesman for the Iraqi Judicial Council, he could be sentenced to up to 15 years in jail.

This, however, can be celebrated as an American- and British-bequeathed freedom to Iraq. After all, as Christopher Howse of The Daily Telegraph assures, "Though I do not envy [al-Zaidi] his time in an Iraqi jail, at least he has not been despatched as he would have been under Saddam."

Thank goodness for Patrick Cockburn of The Independent, who is almost the only American or British journalist I read this morning to set out the full story. The Times does have a follow-up story on its "freedom of expression", although somewhat bizarrely its reporter assures that al-Zaidi was "carried away by prime ministerial guards [with] no sign of excessive violence". (The Guardian has an opinion piece by Samir Ramadani praising al-Zaidi but otherwise ignores the story today.)

In the US, The New York Times has a lengthy article, but it plays down the possible jail time --- no more than seven years and as little as 12 months --- and the possibility of al-Zaidi's injuries. And in The Washington Post?

Nothing. Not a word.