Can democracy be sustained ?

By DR GANGA THAPA

While assessing democratic governance across the world, UN Human Development Report of 2002 stated, "when a small elite dominates economic and political decisions, the link between democracy and equity can be broken." The report also says despite the wave of democracy it has proved a slippery road, just 47 of those 81 authoritarian regimes received a democratic system. Others slid back to its authoritarian rule or the system called presidency. Pakistan is an example of the first, and Zambia, the second. There is undeniably a growing number of democracies in the world, which are now not so stable. Nepal’s ironic outcome is that money, muscle, violence, and threats that developed over the years and influenced elections are not only the indicators of democratic performance, but have to be also taken into account while assessing the democratic quality of a regime. It can be argued further that the Nepal’s current politics represents a restructuring of the political marketplace, mainly among politicians rather than significant voters’ realignment on the part of the general electorate. Disappointingly, in Nepal, from planners to financiers, from cadres to foot soldiers, from ideologists to cheerleaders, their positions keep changing on a regular basis and no one knows for sure what they will say and do tomorrow.

The task of democratization is usually long, painful and fraught with dangers. It takes a lot of understanding and tenacity. But much depends on leadership. The important thing to remember about democracy is that it must grow from the people. One premise of representative democracy is that the informed citizens elect their representatives based on rationality. The way British conceived it, parliament was to be the prime mechanism through which the national interests would be protected. It is well known that elections are also held under authoritarian regimes, usually with an impressive voters’ turnout. And a country that is regarded as one of the most stable and mature democracies of the world, the US has a record low rate of participation in elections. Deutsch points out that power does not reside in an individual but in the relationship of a person to his environment. Thus, the power of an actor in a given situation is determined by the characteristics of the situation as well as by his or her own characteristics. It can be argued further that the power is both a relative concept and a contextual one. In this vein, if the rulers of the state are former autocrats, it is not surprising that some of their long-term authoritarian habits persist. Ben Franklin said in 1755, "Those who give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Changes do take place, but experience has shown that we have never heard of the rulers of Nepal doing a bang-up job with best political minds that will be established when history is written. Where the weakness is related to skills and/or resources, then even the best conditions will not automatically do good.

Who is guilty? The people who carry out governance or those who are fighting for a change. This is obviously a complex question for which there are no straightforward answers and easy solutions. Since winning independence from absolute monarchy twelve years ago, democracy has been a mixed blessing for Nepal, permitting extremists on both left and right. There is no space here for a full account of the debate. There is however widespread agreement, at least in the scholarly circle that the Royal coup of October 2002 that brought to an end one of the most open political systems in South Asia is a reversion of competitive politics. Although we speak of democratization in general terms, it is important to understand that the current political move is uncivil and undemocratic. If this is not changed in time, it may lead to an uncontrollable situation. Admittedly, authoritarianism distorts political representation, renders parties incoherent, elevates levels of cynicism and hinders effective and responsible economic and social policymaking.

My claim is not that the others would have to come to similar conclusions. If democracy is the rule of the people, then the assumption is made that there is a consensus about who the people are. That is, there is agreement on nationhood within the state boundaries and a sense of shared concern for that single community. More to the point, if the crown is a symbol of the authority, the state has vested in the King to take an appropriate action, citizens must not be confused about their rights and responsibilities. People can hope the king recognizes the current political road is flawed and that puts both democracy and his own reputation for political shrewdness at risk. Democracy is not so much about winning battles as about delimiting the legitimate space within which those battles may take place. If democracy is to be sustained, people must continue to identify with the chosen unit of democratic decision-making. There is no escaping the reality that the people cannot decide until somebody decides who are the people. Rustow argues that national unity is the single background condition for democratization to start.

Democratization under the auspices of international donors pressing for bullets, open economic markets and under the constraints of globalization can only promote a formal, non-participatory democracy. Deservedly, political institutions can be imposed but the same is not true of social transformation. True also, given the contemporary complexity of national and international linkages, it is harder to single out external factors in the polity. Nevertheless, for those who believe that democracy can manage a national identity problem, a national identity issue should not constitute a sufficient excuse for delaying democratization. The truth is: There is a clear demand in people’s voices that they should be treated neither as beneficiaries of government programmes and schemes, nor as voters who elect their representatives occasionally, but as active citizens who participate in both public arenas and their own associations and communities.

Citizens in Nepal are becoming distrustful of public institutions and government agencies. It is revealed that the majority of the citizens do not perceive themselves as citizens in a normal political sense. For example, state-citizen relationship. The growing alienation from the state has resulted in increasing marginalisation of a large section of people who have been denied access to political institutions. Part of the reason is, perhaps, that the level of political culture and understanding of democracy is very low here. We have to overcome fear, and we must know that we can break the fear when everybody gets involved.

A conflict is essentially a group phenomenon. It arises when social collectiveness explores fundamental differences over the authoritative allocation of values. Some commentators have described Nepali insurgency as the ‘new barbarian’ or ‘a kind of Hobession anarchy’ or ‘reversion to some imagined state of nature’. While the Maoists cannot be taken as a burden, it cannot also be resolved without dealing with those issues that gave rise to them. A central conceptual issue here is how should we understand the insurgency: ‘civil war’ or ‘resource war’ or ‘ethnic war’ or ‘ideological civil war’ or ‘communal war’ or ‘internal war’, and so on. While some of these terms are interchangeable, others are not. More to the point, these types of conflicts have different dynamic but not necessarily different causes. Many persuasively argue that economy is a matter of insurgency but we can refer to it as disagreement among socially and even politically conscious groups over the allocation of societal resources such as lack of power and self-esteem, ethnic discrimination, socioeconomic deprivation, disenfrenchisation, legacy of slavery and universal hierarchy.

(To be concluded)

Two New Years

By HITESH KARKI

Preparations for New Year celebration are in full swing. One wonders whether the celebrations are to breathe a sigh of relief, "Ah, the year is finally over" where things seem to be have gotten from bad to worse, or in a genuine hope that the New Year will literally bring in a new beginning. A new beginning that will force all of us to realize that we have hit the rock bottom. Perhaps, in the years to come, history books (since our existence won’t be there anymore then probably in the book of world history) might read "there was a Shangri-La and it perished on its own. The nation, that committed suicide."

If you think I am trying to paint a very bleak picture, my answer would be a big "NO." I am just echoing what I have been hearing every other day where the bottom line is nothing but "it’s time to be on the move because it’s useless to stay in this country!" However, I have this conviction that sooner or later we will certainly bounce back with a bang, provided the brain cells of the leaders start generating the right kind of thoughts and emitting the right signals to their heads, not forgetting their tongues!

Well, there is a group which does not see why there is so much hullabaloo over the New Year. For them there is almost at least four months left before the arrival of "their" Nepali New year. I guess there is no denying that apart from an insignificant population (numberwise that is!), others still follow the Bikram Sambat calendar. And that is the truth, which cannot be denied, leaving aside the privileged lot within the confines of Kathmandu Valley.

At the same time for most of us, if not all, while the first of Baishakh is nothing but a mere holiday, a day to unwind and sleep late, whereas Jan 1 and the eve prior to the day happen to be the event on a par with our Tihar festival. While on the one hand, our nationalist sentiments are running high and some of us have even begun to carry the so far neglected triangular flag to every place where there is an assemblage of people (even if it’s a rock concert!), but still the 1st Baishakh and the 1st Jan continue to remain two completely different propositions. The latter completely outweighing the former.

All these thoughts came to my mind when Aakash asked me the very question that I have been discussing so far. "I want to invite my friends home and throw a party. So far, I have always been attending theirs. I think it’s about time I invited them." I am pretty sure you all know how hard it is to say ‘NO’ straight in a kid’s face and try to explain him that your dad and dads of your friends have hardly anything in common, except for the fact that their sons go to the same school. But still the difficulties in explaining to a little kid is not an excuse enough for not celebrating because we all have hardly had a moment— a moment to celebrate in 2002. Let’s just hope that we do the same on 31st of Chaitra!

The cent per cent solution

By JUG SURAIYA

Seventeen-year-old Radhika has a problem. No, she doesn’t want to be a Miss India World; she wants to be just a vet. And that’s the problem. Because Radhika is a mere 65 per center. And she has discovered that in order to get into any good college offering a course in veterinary science you have to be either an SC/ST/OBC or at least an 80 per center. Being neither, Radhika at 17 is beginning to wonder what she should do with the rest of her life. Should she accept being a 65 per center, and be content with doing whatever it is that 65 per centers are meant to do? Or should she go back to the academic treadmill, and have a bash at changing her 65 per cent status to, say, an 80 per cent one? But what if, having done this, she finds that next year the 80 per cent cut-off has become 90 per cent, or even more?

Shrenik, also 17, is a 92 per center. But he’s discovered that 92 per cent isn’t good enough to get him into the IIT. So he has had to settle for admission into his second choice of engineering institute. Does this mean that for all his working life he will be a second choice engineer, thanks to the imprint of that fateful 92 per cent? Hopefully not. Shrenik is a highly intelligent and resilient young man and in time he will certainly break out of the confines into which right now he feels that his 92 per cent definition has put him.

I’m sure Shrenik will get over the percentage barrier, and so will Radhika, in her own way. But I wonder about the generations after Radhika and Shrenik. Going by currently prevailing trends, the percentage sensex is likely to inch upwards inexorably. What will happen when it hits 100 per cent, as it seems it inevitably must, and there is still an upward push factor operating in the marks market? Will they have to reinvent percentage? Or will they find it easier to re-invent humans?

Of all the many things that have been subject to inflationary pressures in the past few decades — the economy, the population, the credibility gap in public life between the electors and the elected — one of the most susceptible areas has concerned what might be called the percentalisation of young lives. When I came of school-leaving age, admission to St. Xavier’s College, Calcutta, was available to any male student who’d managed to get 50 per cent or more in the Senior Cambridge examinations. Having just made the grade, I entered the portals of St Xavier’s and was introduced by Mr Pinto to the 40 per cent principle. Mr Pinto, who taught us Eng Lit, was a small man with a large voice and a bald head which gleamed even more than his spectacles did. Forty per cent! he boomed. That’s all I expect of you chaps. Forty is the pass mark, and you should get it unless you are even bigger duffers than I think you are. Study the text, take notes, and read, Read, READ the critics — and with luck you should make it to 40. So we studied the text, sort of, and took notes, generally off the chap sitting next to us, and read, Read, READ the critics, and when we didn’t we made them up, and became 40 per cent Eng Litters, class of ’66. And when Dubby and I brought out a self-published book of poems, we sent a copy to Mr Pinto with the inscription: 40 per cent, sir?

We didn’t receive a reply, but taking silence to mean consent, we swaggered about the campus in our dual role as 40 per cent self-published poets, besides being which Dubby was also a 40 per cent director of college plays, I was a 40 per cent arm-wrestling champion of the campus, and both of us were more than 40 per cent smitten by two absolutely marvellous Loreto girls. That was the great thing about the 40 per cent lark; you could be a 40 per cent something and still have scads of space inside to fit in a lot more other 40 per cents, with a little bit of juggling. For 40 per cent of the time I wanted to be a Nobel-prize winning novelist, and for another 40 per cent I wanted to go into the tendu leaf business and live in the jungle with only my rifle and jeep for company, and for a third 40 per cent I wanted to be a retired millionaire. That I became not even 40 per cent of any of these is, of course, only 40 per cent of the story.

Today, as we race to the horizon of 100 per cent. I wonder how we’re going to hack it. So far, popular lore admits of only one thing which is 100 per cent, namely a popular brand of ice-cream. Even the metal of our national emblem, the Ashok pillar, is said to be only 99.999 per cent pure. Gender might be destiny, but not 100 per cent, for as Havelock Ellis told us no individual is 100 per cent male or 100 per cent female, but an androgynous amalgam of the two with one set of characteristics predominating. Life is not 100 per cent, because biologists tell us that we begin to die the moment we are born, and death is not 100 per cent because the demise of an organism is merely a translation into other life forms. Post-Einsteinian time is not 100 per cent but has a Big Bang beginning, and space — which is only time in masquerade — is not 100 per cent but must end somewhere, or somewhen.

The only thing that just might be 100 per cent, or so said Blaise Pascal, is the object of faith. This was the basis of the famous Pascalian Wager: The philosopher suggested that we could fairly safely gamble on the existence of God because if we lost, we lost nothing — man without God being nothing, according to Pascal — and if we won we won an infinitude of riches. So the philosopher tossed up the coin of faith, watching it tumble down, heads over tails, between the notional antipodes of zero and infinity.

And a passing cent per center plucked the coin out of the air and walked away, absolute in the certainty that in his 100 per cent world there was no need for such small change.

Starting new trade friendship

Nishchal Nath Pandey

If one would draw a horoscope of the new sub-regional grouping- BIMST-EC, teething problems apart, it would be full of good prospects. Too often, sound beginnings gradually lose their focus and get bogged down with a lack of energy, vision and political will but BIMST-EC has had a steady pace which if sustained will reap benefits for the teeming millions of the member countries. With its launching on 6 June 1997 in Bangkok it was initially given the name of BIST-EC (Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand Economic Cooperation). Myanmar attended the inaugural June Meeting as an observer and joined the organization as a full member at a special ministerial meeting held in Bangkok on 22 December 1997, upon which the name of the grouping was changed to BIMST-EC. Nepal was granted observer status by the second Ministerial Meeting in Dhaka in December 1998.

Foreign Minister Narendra Bikram Shah has just returned after attending the 5th ministerial meet held in Colombo where he made an earnest request to the member countries to grant full-fledged membership to Nepal as early as possible.

According to the Bangkok Declaration on the Establishment of BIST-EC, the aims and purposes of the grouping are to create an enabling environment for rapid economic development, accelerate social progress in the sub-region, promote active collaboration and mutual assistance on matters of common interest, provide assistance to each other in the form of training and research facilities, cooperate more effectively in joint efforts that are supportive of and complementary to national development plans of member states, maintain close and beneficial cooperation with existing international and regional organizations, and cooperate in projects that can be dealt with most productively on a sub-regional basis and which make best use of available synergies.

To move cooperative endeavors forward in a more focused and specific manner, the member countries agreed to concentrate on Trade and Investment led by Bangladesh, Technology led by India, Transportation and Communication led by led by Bangladesh, Energy led by Myanmar, Tourism led by Sri Lanka and Fisheries led by Thailand. The first formal Senior Economic Officials and Trade/Economic Ministerial meeting was held in India in April 2000. Numerous expert group meetings in various sectors and sub-sectors have been held since. Other related meetings have also been held. The WIPO Sub-regional Forum on Intellectual Property was held in Phuket, in November 1998, and its follow-up meeting was held in India in November 1999. The BIMST-EC Private Sector Meeting and BIMST-EC Academic Roundtable were held in Cooperation with ESCAP in Thailand in June and September 1999 respectively. The first BIMST-EC Economic Forum comprising representatives from the public and privates sectors of the member states was held in India on July 2000.

 Having failed to cash in on the historical and political ties with the Mekong delta, and with the East Asian countries the grouping at least attached Myanmar and Thailand with a few of the countries of South Asia to build on the past and create a niche in the region. The choice of tourism, trade and investment and transportation may be significant in building on the commonalities and complementarities that the members have with one another. Buddhism is the natural connection between almost all the BIMST-EC countries. The cultural links too hardly need to be stressed. Apart from trade and Buddhism, many of the cultural art forms - from music and dance to architecture and customs - share a common history. But these historical links has to be converted into a new partnership by making its foundation solid and sturdy. Minister Shah’s watchful opinion was true when he remarked, "Over the last few years, this forum has prepared the necessary foundation for collaborative arrangements in a number of areas and initiated some important activities in the agreed areas."

Developing road and rail links will definitely have to be the top priority. The Bangkok-based ESCAP has already carried out the basic study for these transport links. The trans-Asian railway could be the ultimate link to China, Russia and Central Asia, while the highway will bring immense benefits.

Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe called for the establishment of free trade among member countries of a regional economic grouping. "By opening up trade and strengthening economic cooperation, we can increase productivity at home and improve our ability to compete effectively with the rest of the world," he told the inauguration ceremony of the 5th ministerial meeting. He added, "While there are a number of important ways in which BIMST-EC members can cooperate, the most important economically will be the establishment of a free trade area".

It is not that members of the SAARC, frustrated with the pace and progress of the grouping are now vying for a new arrangement away from the region. Rather it is a trial to increase vistas of cooperation and collaboration with like-minded countries that have a large repository of natural and human capital for their own good and for the benefit of the whole of South Asia. They could learn from the expertise of one another. If this succeeds, it is only going to augment and facilitate SAARC and channelize efforts for the achievement in certain core areas directly related with our common future. As a birthplace of Gautam Buddha, an apostle of peace and with the very close affinity with all the members of the grouping, Nepal’s membership is not only a felt need but would also prove to be an added advantage to the grouping itself.

Make terrorism a universal taboo

Nicholas D Kristof

In the next step in the war on terrorism, the United States is likely in the coming months to invade Iraq in ways that will terrorize civilians there. So this holy season is a useful moment to step back and critically examine moral clarity, President George W. Bush’s byword, a concept that tends to stiffen the backbone of conservatives but make liberals fidget.

Is it fair to present the war on terrorism as a parable of good vs evil? Grenville Byford reflected the skeptics’ view in an essay in the magazine Foreign Affairs, arguing that moral clarity is more apparent than real and that "the sooner the rhetoric is retired the better." Highly nuanced intellectuals tend to poke three kinds of holes in moral clarity:

1. Terrorism is in the eyes of the beholder. President Ronald Reagan declared the African National Congress a terrorist group not long before its leader, Nelson Mandela, won the Nobel Peace Prize. Meanwhile he described Jonas Savimbi, who everybody else thought of as a terrorist, as Angola’s Abraham Lincoln. Oops. And speaking of national heroes, what about the radicals in the American Revolution who burned the homes of British loyalists? Were they terrorists?

2. Wiping out terrorists is sometimes unhelpful. Even if we could agree on what constitutes terrorism, it’s often not obvious what we should do about it. Pakistan has done more than Iraq to support terrorism (in Kashmir), but instead of invading Pakistan, Bush has quite sensibly sent aid - for bolstering President Pervez Musharraf is the best hope for ending the violence. Circumstances vary, so sometimes we kill those engaged in terrorism, and sometimes we invite them for state visits.

3. In crude military terms, terrorism often works. New methods of killing people initially provoke outrage but eventually are often accepted. Henry V used longbows at Agincourt, outraging the French. British red coats marching in neat columns were appalled by sneaky Yankees hiding behind trees. After Guernica, aerial bombing was condemned as barbaric, and in World War II the West condemned Germany’s V-1 and V-2 missiles as terror weapons.

Likewise, in pessimistic moments I fear that Qaeda-style terrorism could become another terrible "advance" in military history. Other radical groups are no doubt enormously impressed that for only about $400,000, Al Qaeda inflicted hundreds of billions of dollars’ damage to the United States. Vietcong military theorists predicted something like Qaeda-style urban guerrilla warfare, and there’s a risk that it is what the future looks like.

All these problems reflect what the British scholar Adam Roberts refers to as "genuine doubts" about the term terrorism. The Reuters news service normally refuses to describe people as terrorists - outraging those all over the globe who are sure that’s what their enemies are.

The objections leave moral clarity somewhat tattered. But ultimately terror’s potential for becoming the methodology of every desperate organization makes it doubly important that we do all we can to delegitimize it - which is why I ultimately come down strongly in favor of President George W. Bush’s campaign for moral clarity. At a Harvard conference early this year, one of the few ideas to combat terrorism that seemed vaguely practical was this notion of mobilizing public opinion worldwide to stigmatize terrorism. Ideally, any private group should know that if it kills civilians, it will become a pariah and discredit its own cause. The next Savimbi, Begin or Arafat should know that violence against civilians will not propel him into a presidential mansion, but into infamy.

Perhaps it is hopelessly naive to seek to make terrorism a universal taboo; perhaps a nuanced moral clarity is a contradiction in terms. Yet there is a precedent: After World War I, the use of poison gas was delegitimized. Attacking attitudes isn’t as dramatic as blowing up terror camps, but ultimately could be more effective. Even an incomplete campaign against terror may foster enough public revulsion that frustrated Basques, Tamils, Palestinians or Americans will think twice before they seek redress with bombs.

At this time of year, historically an opportunity for ethical reflection, it’s time to raise a toast to moral clarity, however scarred it may often be by nebulousness, inconsistency and even hypocrisy, as still preferable to moral opacity.

International Herald Tribune

An exemplary initiative

Bhumika Bhutia

Women, often treated as second class citizens by society and law also have a contribution to social change and national development. Though most of them still have a long way to go when it comes to literacy. Under such circumstances the responsibility and duty to take initiation from the home to the society falls upon the privileged educated women. An example has been set by a group of women working silently under the banner of WEPCO (Women Environment Preservation Committee) in Kupondole, Lalitpur. These women say that household waste comprises mainly the kitchen waste so no other than them can manage the household garbage efficiently.

Though the initiative of these women may seem a drop in the ocean, their contribution would be helpful to manage household wastes, reduce environment pollution and most of all generate small-scale employment.

About ten years ago a few women of Kupondole set up WEPCO. Over the last few years Kathmanduites have realized that the valley has become more polluted. The growing volume of waste is produced by the excessive consumption of the ever-increasing population. Since the efforts of the Kathmandu Metropolitan City alone would not be enough, these women have made an effort to work towards these problems. Their main focus is ‘disorganized garbage’ and their dream is a clean and healthy Kathmandu.

"When we started this project we were not sure whether it becomes successful but now after 10 years we have seen others working on similar lines, may be they are inspired by our work," says Sudha Poudel, vice chairwoman of the NGO.

In this context WECPO has undertaken various activities such as conducting awareness trainings for local women, motivating and encouraging people to manage solid wastes properly, holding interaction programmes with national and international institutions for sharing experiences and ideas and providing technical support to women groups from other localities.

Now they collect and manage garbage from more than 1,000 households from Lalitpur Sub-Metropolitan City ward No. 1,2 and 10.

Their ongoing activities are solid waste management, awareness training, door to door waste collection, recycling of organic waste to compost manure, sewing, knitting and handicrafts training for poor and destitute women and micro -credit project for rural women.

Though they have been functioning smoothly all these years there are problems that this organisation has been facing. According to Sudha Poudel when the waste matter is converted into hand made paper it is difficult to dispose them because hand made paper is not durable and it is difficult to find a market for them.

WEPCO produces compost manure from organic waste. Paper wastes are recycled and used in making record files, invitation cards, envelopes visiting cards, greeting cards, paper bags, pen holders and other similar items. Cloth wastes produced from garment industries are collected and made into items for decoration pieces.

Vishnu Thakali coordinator of paper recycling branch informs as to how waste in turned into hand made paper. Everyday around 60 kg of waste paper is collected from different homes and offices, out of which 60 per cent of the waste paper is used for recycling and made into around 300-450 sheets of hand made paper. There is difficulty in collecting waste paper and their they have to operate below capacity. They have capacity to recycle more than 100 kg of waste paper and produce more than 1000 sheets per day.

Muna Devi Shrestha, a member of the community says, "Organic compost is very advantageous for the soil and makes it very fertile for cultivation. It makes the soil penetrable and sand is also made firm by the use of organic compost".

The initiation of these women is praiseworthy. If people in different areas of the city learn from these women this city will reflect a better and cleaner picture.

Iraq’s displaced : Test for democracy

Roberta Cohen and John Fawcett

At Washington’s initiative, delegates from Iraqi opposition groups worked out a plan in London in December for governing Iraq should Saddam Hussein’s regime collapse. Their declared aims are democratic, but one sure way to find out is to ask how they will deal with more than a million people who have already been forcibly displaced inside the country.

For 30 years Iraq has used expulsion as an instrument of state policy to take over oil-rich and fertile land, punish and subdue recalcitrant populations, and stamp out political opposition. The main victims were the Kurds and members of the Shiite majority, including the Marsh Arabs, but the regime also targeted the smaller Turkmen and Assyrian minorities.

Beginning in the late 1970s, Saddam’s government forcibly displaced hundreds of thousands of Kurds, Iraq’s largest minority, destroyed 4,000 of their villages, and sprayed more than 200 of these with chemical weapons. Most of the nearly 800,000 Kurds displaced in the north cannot return to their homes because of the widespread destruction of their villages, the planting of landmines and continued occupation of their lands by Iraqi security forces.

A responsible new government will have to work with the Kurdish authorities to remove mines and rebuild the countryside and enable Kurds to reclaim their lands. It will have to reverse Saddam’s discriminatory "Arabization" policy, which has ousted more than 100,000 Kurds, Turkmen and Assyrians from the oil-rich and fertile region of Kirkuk and replaced them with Arabs. Kurdish leaders have vowed to reestablish their control there, while Turkmen look to Turkey to reinstate their interests. Arabs now established there will seek to retain their monopoly.

To manage such explosive claims, a representative ethnic and religious body will have to be set up to help the displaced regain their land and property. The returns will have to be coordinated to prevent a rush on the area, with legal procedures set up to adjudicate property disputes and oil revenues set aside to compensate those who were expelled or arbitrarily dismissed from the oil industry.

Similarly, the return of thousands of Shiite Arabs, expelled from their homes in Baghdad, Basra and other areas on political grounds, will have to be addressed. And efforts will have to be made to repair at least part of the damage done to Iraq’s Marsh Arabs. Baghdad brutally destroyed their habitat along the lower Tigris and Euphrates rivers, forcibly uprooting at least 200,000 people. It coupled massive engineering projects to drain water from the oil-rich marshes with the shelling and burning of villages, the poisoning of fishing grounds, and the assassination and abduction of local leaders.

Although it would be difficult to recreate the marshes, consultations should be held with the former inhabitants and a feasibility study done to see whether at least some of the marshes could be reflooded. For those who cannot return, compensation should be paid from oil revenues.

Even before a change of regime, Iraq’s opposition should be pressing the United Nations to devote more aid to the displaced. The UN Oil for Food Program, the largest humanitarian assistance program in the world, generates $6 billion a year for civilian goods. Isn’t it time for the United Nations used its leverage to extract a price for the benefits the Iraqi government receives? When the United Nations kowtows to Baghdad’s threats and intimidation, it is the displaced who suffer. UN officials should protest all new displacement, insist upon unrestricted access to those uprooted, publish data on their conditions and assure them better shelter and health care.

Iraq’s internally displaced constitute too large a group to be ignored. Their problems touch upon the central issues of water, land, oil, minority and majority rights, ethnicity and religion, citizenship and national allegiance, and systems of justice. If their plight is not addressed fairly, there will be little prospect for a stable and democratic Iraq. Too little has been said about them by Iraq’s democratic opposition.

International Herald Tribune