By  Saad Hafiz:

As the opposition gears up to challenge the incumbent government, it is worth examining the challenges any future Pakistani government will face at the helm of affairs.  It may become clear that a fundamental change in national priorities and not just a simple shuffling of deckchairs is required for a ship one feels is headed for disaster.

To put matters in context and not intended as a deep dive into statistics, Pakistan annually spends around 1.7% and 3.2 % of its GDP on education and health respectively and public sector development expenditure is about $8 billion. The debt to GDP ratio has climbed to 55% due to increased borrowing to finance the annual budget deficits.  Pakistan has been the third largest contributor to world population growth since 1950 and its population is set to increase from the present 180 million to 318 million people by 2050.  Pakistan is currently ranked 107 out of 110 countries on the Prosperity Index, with select sub-rankings for the economy – 96, education –105 and  health – 96.

In sharp contrast to poor human development indexes, Pakistan is ranked 33 out of 153 countries in terms of global military spending.  Official annual defense spending is 2.8% of GDP or $6 billion, with some unofficial estimates which place it as high as $8 billion.  Pakistan’s military is ranked as the 15th most powerful in the world with over 600,000 active troops, complemented by a significant nuclear weapons capability, a capable air force and a small but potent navy.

It would be a bit harsh but not unreasonable to suggest that a formidable Pakistani military machine is on an unsustainable path of protecting a bankrupt nation with a growing population of poorer, hungrier, sicker and barely educated people.  One also feels that mere electoral sloganeering and political posturing will not bring Pakistan’s deeply misguided militarist priorities back in order.  Pakistan’s voters must influence the country’s decision makers to refocus national priorities away from defense to human development to avoid the present suicidal course to self destruction. “Civilizations,” argued historian Arnold Toynbee, “die from suicide, not by murder.” That is, our future is dependent on the choices we make and the things we decide to value.”

We do not need a tsunami or cyclone to understand that the overall investment in human capital, such as improved health, education and living standards, will raise the productivity or output potential of a state, while simultaneously fostering stability. Political democracy must ensure that the government and military remains accountable to the society and that the government delivers equitable progress across the nation.  Civil society needs to push its leaders to expand their political horizons, and work with others towards agreements to redirect military spending to fund development so the rest of the country can partake in, and benefit from a fairer economic system.

The standard pushback when one questions military spending is that our enemies are spending more so we have to keep pace.  Among questions to ask in response are whether our enemies are financing their defense buildup by mortgaging their future generations which Pakistan clearly is or if our enemies have misplaced priorities should we follow suit?  As eloquently stated by Costa Rican Foreign Minister Bruno Stagno, “Security does not come from multiplying weapons; history has already proven this too many times. Security comes from remedying injustice, easing shortages and creating opportunities so that we can have collective prosperity on a par with collective security.”

We also have to remember that the justification given to demand a separate homeland was to ensure the physical security and economic progress for the Muslims of India.  It seems that fortress of Pakistan has succeeded in providing external security but has sadly failed in ensuring economic and social progress for its citizens, which may yet prove to be its undoing.

This is the first in a 3-part year in review series on war crimes around the world in 2011.

 

Ratko Mladic – Europe’s Most Wanted War Criminal

In early April Bosiljka Mladic, Ratko Mladic’s wife told the media that her husband was dead. Less than two months later he was arrested in Lazarevo in northern Serbia, ending a 16 year manhunt bringing Europe’s most wanted war criminal to trial. Mladic was the military commander responsible for the Srebrenica massacre in 1995 where 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were killed, and oversaw the years long siege of Sarajevo in which 10,000 civilians were killed. Mladic is currently on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia in The Hague. The number of charges against Mladic was reduced from 196 to 106 this month in order to expedite justice in light of Mladic’s deteriorating physical condition.

 

Goran Hadzic – The Last Of The Big Three Falls

Goran Hadzic was also captured in northern Serbia this summer where he was rumored to have had sanctuary in an Orthodox monastery. Hadzic was president of the self-proclaimed Serbian Republic of Krajina, located in Croatia mostly along the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina, from 1992-93. He was a political leader of the Serbian rebellion in Croatia beginning in 1991 that lead to the creation of Krajina. Hadzic was indicted by the ICTY for 14 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes. Hadzic is allegedly responsible for ethnic pogroms in Zagreb and the notorious Ovcara massacre where 250 hospital patients were rounded up from a hospital in Vukovar and mass executed at a local pig farm.  Hadzic was the last of the three war criminals (along with Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic) that the E.U. demanded be brought to justice before considering Serbian assention to the Union.

 

Radovan Karadzic – Building A Case Against Himself

Radovan Karadzic’s trial continued this year as the Bosnian Serb president got the chance to directly address witnesses against him. Karadzic, the political mastermind of the Srebrenica massacre, seemed to implicate bizarre alternative hypotheses concerning events he is being held responsible for – that at the Keraterm concentration camp instead of the hundreds reported to have been massacred, it was only one mentally deranged person that was killed presumably in self-defence; and that the emaciated Fikret Alic pictured in the iconic photograph from Keraterm was just a very skinny man. Karadzic’s former Chief of Crisis Staff, Milan Tupajic was arrested this month and charged with contempt of court for refusing to testify against his former boss.

 

Fatmir Limaj – A Second Chance For Justice

Kosovar MP Fatmir Limaj was arrested following charges by the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo that he was responsible for torture and execution of civilians in the Kleçkë detention camp, and took part in a human organs trafficking ring. He was initially released invoking immunity granted to Kosovar MPs, but a ruling by the Constitutional Court in Kosovo held that the immunity did not extend to acts taken outside of the scope of their official responsibilities and was subsequently placed under house arrest. A previously unnamed key witness against him, Agim Zogaj, was found dead in protective custody in Germany a week after the Constitutional Court’s decision. Zogaj’s death was ruled a suicide. Limaj was acquitted of war crimes charges in 1995 at the ICTY in The Hague.

 

Elderly Nazis – It’s Never Too Late To End Impunity

Former Nazis John Demjanjuk and Heinrich Boere were convicted in Germany for Holocaust related crimes. Demjanjuk served as a prison guard at Sorbibor the Polish concentration camp where 29,000 people were murdered. Heinrich Boere was a part of an assassination squad that murdered Dutch resistance figures.

 

Venezuelan Terrorist Praises Gadhafi At Sentencing Hearing

Carlos ‘The Jackal’ Sanchez was sentenced to a second life sentence in France for bombings there in the early eighties which killed 11. Sanchez has been serving a previous life sentence since 1997, and claims to be responsible for the deaths of 2,000 people in various terrorist attacks throughout the world. Sanchez offered praise of deceased Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi at his sentencing. Gadhafi sponsored much of Sanchez’s terrorist efforts.

 

Former U.S. President Under Increasing International Pressure

Former U.S. President George W. Bush canceled a visit to Switzerland amidst threats of legal action possibly being taken against him for violating the Geneva Conventions by condoning the use of torture by the U.S. military in its ‘War on Terror’. He and Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair were convicted in abenstia for the war crime of aggression at the symbolic Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal in Malaysia in November for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The tribunal has no enforcement power and the U.S. has not ratified the Rome Statute defining the crime of aggression as a war crime. The Rome Statute went into effect in 2002, and the U.K. ratified the Statute in 2001.

 

Zelaya Ouster ‘A Coup’ – H.T.R.C.

The Honduras Truth and Reconciliation Commission ruled that the 2009 ousting of president Manuel Zelaya was an illegal coup. The Commission was established under the auspices of the Organization of American States. Mr. Zelaya returned in May to Honduras from exile in Costa Rica. He is expected to run for president again in 2013.

Next up: War Crimes Year in Review – Asia & Oceania

“In much of the World, and especially in our region, the military has been the source of the most thankless collective memories,” read a letter former Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sánchez addressed to Haitian President Michel Martelly, advising his Excellency to reevaluate his military plans through historical lenses. “In the best case scenario, the Latin American armies have been prohibitively expensive for our economies and at worse, have meant a permanent source of instability for our democracies,” explained the letter.

President Martelly does not even have to look beyond Haiti’s borders to learn about the destructive effects of militarization. Malignant scars from Duvalier’s merciless army are fresh on the population’s skin, hunting the dreams of its countless victims as do vivid imagery seared into memories over more than a generation. Nevertheless, the president perceived a Haitian army as the bridge to sovereignty, signaling his resolve to fulfill his campaign promise: reconstitute the Armed Forces of Haiti.

In fact, a series of interviews Martelly granted to the press following his first official trip to Venezuela seemed to indicate a president willing to circumvent the Northern powers to pursue his highest ideals. “ Now, if nobody wants to help, then we have to think of a way to get that money to reestablish the army,” the AP quoted Martelly saying in response to the U.S. and Canada’s reluctance to fund his military initiatives. However, the president later admitted to a journalist of El Universal  ,a major Venezuelan daily with an estimated circulation of 150,000 readers, “I found a way to finance this force the same way I’ve found money for the education initiative,” mindful of the global attention he has generated. “I understand that many people are watching what we do carefully,” he added, “But we are open to working with the civil society.” Recently, President Martelly created a commission to study and evaluate the return of his army.

But “Haiti does not need to recreate the army,” countered Nobel laureate Sánchez in his letter published in its entirety on Defend Haiti, an online news organization. Echoing the opponents of militarization, the former leader felt a resourceful, professional and well-trained police force ensuring effective law enforcement and national security would be more beneficial to the country that military aircrafts he said would “never be more powerful than their neighbors’. Sánchez wrote it was no coincidence that Haiti, Guatemala and Nicaragua shared a common history with strong armies and reduced social investments in education and health and occupied the region’s bottom three places in the Human Development Index (HDI) prepared by the UN Development Programme. Reorienting the armies projected budget to social development programs for Haitians and their children, in his views, could be used “To strengthen democratic institutions to ensure minimum political stability in order to restore the confidence of Haitians and the international cooperation, whose help is essential and will remain so for a while longer.”

To his credit however, President Martelly is not the only one with military aspirations; many Haitians strongly support the return of a professional armed forces, especially with anti-UN protests erupting like volcanoes around the country and even the Continent. For many Haitians the army is not a matter of misplaced nostalgia, rather the fabric of the republic. The revolution, Liberation or abolitionist movements and freedom’s ideals were lost, absent the brave indigenous army defeating Napoleon’s forces; hence, the birth of the republic.  In fact, “There is no sovereignty without an army,” proclaimed one Senator conceptualizing the Haitian military roots. Such historical and sentimental contexts often eluded affluent journalists’ reports and editorials that primarily focused on Haiti’s epic poverty and misery, points driven home by the ex-Costa Rican President’s letter.

“The difference between the population of a country and another is in education, years of schooling, teaching, diversified and full access to information technology and communication,” wrote Sanchez. His parallel drawn between the two countries’ global ranking provided ample evidence supporting his argument; Costa Rica’s HDI ranking was 69 with life expectancy of 79.1 years as opposed to Haiti’s 145-place ranking with a 17.4-year average life expectancy for its children. Nevertheless, President Martelly’s economic and patriotic framing presented equally compelling arguments in the eyes of many Haitian nationals. “But at the same time, why do we need a foreign army to help us? A foreign army that’s costing us much more money,” he told the AP, asking reporters, “Why not hire young Haitians? Why not regain our sovereignty?” UN parades his peacekeeping boots in Haiti on an $800 million annual budget, comparing to the projected $25 million to $30 million annual budget Martelly said it would cost to create and maintain the Haitian pride and self-esteem.

As some political analysts pointed out, President Martelly seemed determined on making the Haitian army the central theme of his presidency, looking South of the Continent as North America and Europe barricaded his ambitions. Therefore, a failed army could highlight his 5-year tenure, as they inferred. For Sanchez however, “Reinstalling the army would be an error,” and that is why he said indifference was not an option. “Haiti can recover its dignity,” concluded his letter, “When all children and young people can see the future with hope and the Caribbean winds blow equally fortunate for everyone,” it insisted. “That’s what the people deserve, Mr. President.”

On November 22 Mexico signed a free trade agreement with the Central American states of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. At the signing ceremony in San Salvador, El Salvador, Mexican foreign secretary Patricia Espinosa said: “This new agreement is very innovative because it fosters dialogue among companies, private investors and governments. I cannot stress enough that this is very good news for Mexico and the many Central American countries that are signing.”

Espinosa’s enthusiasm notwithstanding, the immediate effects of the pact will be small: Mexico already has bilateral free trade agreements with each of the Central American nations. Moreover, the Central American states already have privileged access to the United States, the chief destination of their exports, through a trade bloc known as DR-CAFTA that came into effect in 2009. Still, the Mexico-Central America deal is more ‘comprehensive’ than the pre-existing bilateral treaties Mexico signed, meaning it covers more areas of trade and reduces existing trade barriers within Central America.

Earlier this year, Mexico also announced its willingness to launch a trade agreement with Colombia, Chile and Peru. Two weeks ago, Mexico—along with Canada—formally expressed interest in joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a nascent trade bloc that cobbles together Asian and American Pacific nations. The United States is a TPP member but China is not, so the far-flung grouping may enable its smaller members to boost manufactured exports by skirting the headwind of Beijing’s trade agenda. In this light, the pact with Central America can be seen as part of a Mexican attempt to revive free trade across Latin America.

Disclaimer: This article is part of my contribution to Mexico Today, which compensates me. I conduct my own research, and the views expressed here are entirely my own.