Enjoy today as the world
could end tomorrow
We all have bumps on the road, that's reality in America as well as in Bangladesh. In Bangladesh there is a natural propensity for us to save and spend as much as we can afford. We save money and build a home so our children, when they grow up, may encash our savings left out and find a home ready to live in when we would pass away. But, in America people believe in living today as best as one can manage by taking everything on credit, because they don't bother about what would happen tomorrow to themselves or to their children,
writes Maswood Alam Khan from Washington
THERE are shops in America that won't accept cash for anything you buy as handling cash invites complications as to handing back changes to a buyer and verifying genuineness of currencies on the part of a seller. The salesman will ask for your credit card.
Credit cards are smart to rid both the buyers and the sellers of the jingles and hassles of cash in coins and notes. The validity of a credit card is smartly verified in a matter of few seconds by an 'electronic verification system' that reads the card's magnetic chip to crosscheck everything as to credit limit or balance availability, etc against the card and gives the green signal to the seller to go ahead with the sale. Living in America without a credit card is, allegorically speaking, like moving on a rainy day without an umbrella.
Credit cards are cool as issuers of credit cards usually waive interest charges if the outstanding balance is paid in full each month. If, for example, you had a $1,000 transaction and repaid it in full within the grace period of one month, there would be no interest charged for all the goods and services you have enjoyed without having any money in your pocket or in your bank. You may have enjoyed even some discounts on your purchases for your using credit cards instead of cash. It seems you were all too gainer and had squarely cheated both the credit card issuing bank and the seller.
But the story is not so simple and the bankers not so naive! Behind your back the bankers and the traders are in discreet pacts to make money out of all your small and big purchases. Further, they eagerly wait for the moment when you, unmindful of the financial burden you have ultimately to bear, step into their traps - when you fail to resist your temptation to buy a necklace or a pair of cufflinks made of artificial gold dazzling inside a glasshouse-like showcase as you stroll in a posh shopping mall.
If, even $1.00 of the total amount of your previous month's transaction of $1,000 remained unpaid, interest would be charged on the whole of $1,000 from the date of all your purchases until the payment is received. That is the price of your credit card you have to pay and the banker waits in all eagerness to collect from your wallet.
In the last week of every month a great majority of Americans who depend on their monthly pay checks find their cards are all maxed out, meaning the limit up to which the credit card could be charged is over. At such a time, an American spends pitiable days when if you buy him a simple soft drink it would mean to him a bonanza showered directly from heaven.
I was surprised as I was talking to a black American in Berkeley who was narrating the story of his painful living. He was enamoured as I offered to buy him a mug of coffee in a Starbucks coffee parlour. To reciprocate my hospitality he offered me a free ride in his car from the California University campus to my brother's house nearby, a ten minutes drive. While talking to him on my way to my brother's place I appreciated his new Volvo car and asked for its price. '$1,300', he quickly replied. 'Are you kidding?' I exclaimed, 'Such a car for only $1,300?' 'How much is it in Bangladesh?' he enquired. 'Not less than $500,000,' I made a guess. He couldn't believe me. After conversing on the issue for about two minutes I could realise at last that $1,300 is the monthly instalment he has to pay to his bank, it wasn't the price of the car!
In America buyers don't much bother about the price of a product or service. Because, to their opinion, paying for something is none of their business, it is the bank's headache. The buyers only consider whether they can pay the monthly instalments out of their present income.
And the banker knows his client has no savings, nor any tangible property; so a bank keenly observes a prospective client's track records as to his/her present income, age, health, and knowledge to foresee how much s/he would be earning. Accordingly, in the absence of any collateral security the bank offers loan to a client mortgaging his future ability only and extracts from his/her weekly or monthly pay checks their investments along with interests accrued - thus making the client the bank's cash cow.
We all have bumps on the road, that's reality in America as well as in Bangladesh. In Bangladesh there is a natural propensity for us to save and spend as much as we can afford. We save money and build a home so our children, when they grow up, may encash our savings left out and find a home ready to live in when we would pass away.
But, in America people believe in living today as best as one can manage by taking everything on credit, because they don't bother about what would happen tomorrow to themselves or to their children. Tomorrow, to them, is not there. The Americans are typically wired to pay home mortgage and the car payments as long as they can; but, they rarely invest cash in a bank's savings account. Their houses and their cars are taken away by the banks as soon as they stop paying their monthly instalments.
The old in America are neglected not only by their banks as they have lost their income-generating capacity, their children as well shiver at the thought of bearing a part of their parents' burden, a situation unthinkable in our country, however poor we are in Bangladesh. Retired life in America is 100 times worse than that in Bangladesh.
Of course, intelligent Americans start investing in different modes from their young age with a view to balancing his/her today's life with the life in future. The most common investment is in homes they buy with their little savings as their own equity asking a bank to bear the major part of the price assuming that the realty price would ultimately go up, which actually does go up, and the home owner would get at their twilight years a nice nest egg in the form of appreciated value of the home thus purchased. But, with recession looming large over the whole world the possibility of hatching such a nest egg now seems uncertain.
That the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence is our belief and I thought 'the American grass is the greenest in the whole world' before I had embarked upon America as a visitor. True. Everything American is impeccable. Every home is picturesque. Public amenities are neat and clean - a situation not quite imaginable in Bangladesh.
But the more I dug deep into the living patterns of the Americans, the more I discovered to my dismay that beneath the well-manicured green grass of America are laid the greyest realities of living a life in the Western world.
Apparently, Americans are happy and content when you look at their houses, their cars, their roads and highways, their chic shopping malls, their trendy dresses, and their foods. But, if you spend a little bit of time with anyone of them and ask him/her to honestly answer 'how is life?' s/he will keep mum; his/her silence speaks a volume about the haplessness in the West.
Peace in the truest sense of the term is a rarity in America. Because, almost everybody has to pay back debts and there is hardly anyone I have come across who has savings in a bank to repose on. So, as they start feeling the weight of age, a gloomy phase looms up ahead of them.
There is a wonderful Jewish teaching that I came to learn from a novel many years back. The Jewish teaching tells us that before a child is born, god infuses that child with all of the knowledge and wisdom he or she needs in life. Then God puts his finger on the child's lips and says, 'shh', making at that moment a secret pact between the child and god. As the story goes, that's why every one of us has that indentation on the upper lip; it is god's fingerprint, according to Jewish teaching.
But as time passes by, that purity and wisdom god infused into unborn babies get eroded. Children become socialised and shaped by experience. Life changes them into something different.
A few days back, I visited the famous Empire State Building on the 34th Street of the 5th Avenue, New York. As I was enjoying the beauty of nocturnal New York silhouetted against a dazzling skyline someone at my back in a low tone uttered: 'You are Bangladeshi, sir?' 'Yes, I am,' I answered politely. I was delighted to meet a Bangladeshi at the Observation Deck above the 86th floor when a chilly wind was lashing at my face and ballooning up my half-sleeved Hawaii shirt as I was shivering in cold. Suddenly, I felt warm talking to someone in my mother tongue.
He was an elderly man neatly shaved with a butterfly moustache like Hitler's. Nicely attired in his official uniform and a cap adorned with a badge saying 'Security'; he introduced himself as one from Netrakona. We talked for a while, and he seemed unusually bright and insightful. I wanted to get to know him a little better. When he told me he served in Bangladesh Navy and when he could recollect some of my friends who held high ranks in Bangladesh Navy, I got more interested.
As it turned out, he had left Bangladesh Navy about fifteen years back to settle in the US. When he was a young cadet, he wanted to become an admiral. As he told this, he turned reflective. 'It's a funny thing about life,' he said, gazing skyward. 'I thought I would be an admiral and instead, here I am guarding a gate of Empire State Building in New York.'
Birds fly hundreds of miles in quest for warmer climate; grazing animals migrate from dry to wet areas for greener plants. As the waters of life wash over us, we humans too migrate from one continent to another in quest for havens. During our voyages we often lose our sense of directions as we lose some innate insights a wise man should have; we lose some of our sharp corners and turn roundish. We forget what god whispered to us about wisdom when we were waiting to be born. But the evidence of that wisdom stays with us - right under our noses!
Maswood Alam Khan is general manager, Bangladesh Krishi Bank
Pakistan: the new frontline
Washington's military strategy in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region is expanding its range of enemies, writes Paul Rogers
BY THE end of August 2008 it was clear that Afghanistan was becoming the principal focus of the George W Bush administration's war on terror. Iraq was believed to be making a transition to some sort of peace after more than five years of war; but as the violence there at last showed some signs of diminishing, so the problems in Afghanistan were escalating.
They still are: almost three weeks later it is clear that much of Afghanistan has become steadily more violent, continuing a trend that has marked the year as whole. The United Nations reports that in January-August 2008, 1,445 civilians were killed - an increase of 39 per cent on the same period in 2007. In addition, a Human Rights Watch report highlights a substantial increase in civilian casualties caused by NATO air strikes.
Moreover, insurgent attacks continue on a daily basis. For example, the governor of Logar province was assassinated on September 13 in an explosion near his home outside Kabul.
To add to the country's problems, food shortages affecting 9 million people are likely during the coming winter. A combination of harsh weather in winter 2007-08, a subsequent drought, deteriorating security and world food-price increases guarantee that much of central and northern Afghanistan will be deeply affected.
Meanwhile, there are concerns that the situation in Iraq is far less peaceful than many around the Bush administration have claimed. A rash of suicide-bomb attacks, a resurgence of paramilitary power in Mosul, continuing US casualties (including seven American soldiers killed in a helicopter crash near Basra on September 18), and political difficulties (especially with the Kurds in the northeast) all mean that US military commanders are notably reluctant to talk about substantial troop withdrawals - notwithstanding that the George W Bush administration's narrative of victory demands just this. There will be some modest reductions, in part because made necessary to allow an increase in forces in Afghanistan, but many circles in the Pentagon regard even these as risky.
A new adversary
In Afghanistan itself, what has become even more evident than just a few weeks ago is that much of the focus of attention has shifted strongly towards Pakistan. This now extends to Washington's direct military engagement in Pakistan - which pays little heed to the wishes of or the response from the Islamabad government, the Pakistani army and, above all, the Pakistani people. More and more evidence is emerging that United States operations across the border have escalated rapidly, and that this may well become the dominant theme of the coming months.
A single incident on the night of September 14-15 provides a marker for what might be the outcome of that major shift in policy. A BBC news item reports that two Chinook troop-carrying helicopters landed on the Afghan side of the border, supported by seven helicopter-gunships. As the US troops moved to cross the border into Pakistan they were met with gunfire aimed over their heads from Pakistani troops; in response they withdrew to the Afghan side.
The Reuters and McClatchy news agencies carried broadly similar reports (although there were variations in the suggested length of the engagement, between a few minutes and several hours). It was suggested that a Pakistani army unit even fired warning artillery-shots, but army sources denied any involvement and claimed that it was local paramilitaries that were responsible for the gunfire. Wherever the truth lies, it seems highly likely that a US cross-border operation was attempted but was subsequently abandoned.
This is the latest of several US attacks within Pakistan, all of them allowable following a confidential order from President Bush in July 2008. In early September, one of the first attacks permitted by the new policy evidently went badly wrong when fifteen people - mostly women and children were killed. This caused anger across Pakistan and may do much to explain the actions of Pakistani soldiers in firing at US troops this week.
A nerve-end deployment
This will have little effect on US military planning and it is clear that a wide range of operations is under consideration. The use of Predator armed drones has already increased substantially, with many of the planes being brought from other regions to patrol key districts of western Pakistan. The intention is also to increase intelligence activities, undertake special-forces raids to kill or capture al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects and even use the massively powerful AC-130 gunships inside Pakistani territory.
There is currently a specific hope that these increased activities will lead to the death or capture of al-Qaeda's chief strategist Ayman al-Zawahiri, or even Osama bin Laden himself; preferably just before the US presidential election on November 4, so that the candidacy of John McCain will be given a late boost.
The problem is that all of the operations face the same difficulty. If the 'safe havens' in Pakistan took the form of static training-camps, arms-dumps, barracks, motor-pools and other obvious targets - as would be the case with conventional armies - then the massive firepower available to the US military would make it a relatively straightforward task to disrupt or even destroy them. The Pakistani government might protest loudly but the demonstrable military results of such attacks would outweigh this.
The reality is very different. For an entire generation, since the early 1980s, the Taliban and other paramilitary groups have become deeply embedded in the communities of western Pakistan. This is also true of many of the foreign fighters - from Chechnya, Algeria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere - who have often married into these local communities.
The consequence, for a US special-forces raid for example, is complication. An operation aimed at a small town where al-Qaeda or Taliban operatives are known to be based faces the task not of attacking a specific compound but of becoming involved in house-to-house searches of fifty or more buildings - where paramilitaries, adult villagers and children are all integrated into a single community. A careful and effective search may take hours, and be conducted in the knowledge that at any moment the searchers may be attacked. In such circumstances, they may be quick to use force and civilian casualties are almost unavoidable.
If armed drones are used, then 'collateral damage' is well-nigh certain. The Taliban, al-Qaeda and other militias are not structured as freestanding units in their own narrowly defined localities - they form part of much larger affective networks. It might have been possible to use hundreds of troops to 'take apart' a village in Iraq - even if the results there were frequently to increase an anti-American mood - but in Pakistan this is simply impossible without a major and permanent US military presence within the country.
This is politically impracticable at present and for the foreseeable future, yet the Pentagon sees no option but to acquire the means to pursue the paramilitary groups. The visit of the US defence secretary Robert M Gates to Kabul and Jalalabad on September 17 featured an expression of regret for the many civilian casualties inflicted by coalition air-raids, but no shift in policy: the pledge of 'additional forces' in 2009 was repeated, amid caution among military commanders about the progress of the US strategy. The likely order of the day is extensive special-forces operations, the widespread use of Predator drones and even conventional air-power.
A deeper engagement
The US military intends to increase operations on both sides of the Pakistan/Afghanistan border during the normally quiet winter months. It expects to be able to do this with the acquiescence of the government in Islamabad. The George W Bush administration believes this is possible because the dire state of the Pakistani economy is such that the government is increasingly relying on US financial assistance.
But this makes no allowance for Pakistani public opinion, nor for the views of the army. Indeed, it may be that the reaction of the Pakistani army will prove pivotal in all this. It is relevant here that many officers and troops engaged in the border areas are Pashtuns who have close affinities with their fellow Pashtuns in Afghanistan; and that elements in the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency have long had close connections with the Taliban.
Moreover, the Pakistani army as a whole may be deeply antagonistic to the United States extending its war into Pakistan and affronted by what is seen as an assault on its position within Pakistani society. That is a recipe for disaster, yet it appears beyond the understanding of the Pentagon and even much of the US state department. The consequences could be both violent and unpredictable.
openDemocracy, September 18. Paul Rogers is professor of peace studies at Bradford University, northern England.
Ban on cricketers
Bangladesh cricket control board has banned the rebel cricketers for 10 years. Some of the ex-players have accused the rebels of not having patriotism.
I am interested in knowing whether these people believe in market economy or not.
Waheed Nabi
England
As expected
The BNP has urged the government and the Election Commission to hold dialogue not only with the BNP, but also with the component parties of the alliance to hold a meaningful and proper election. That was very much expected. That was part of the dictates the BNP agreed to follow. Some quarters are desperately trying to rehabilitate the defeated forces of 1971 by riding the BNP.
MH Khan
Via e-mail
Price list
The price list of essentials will be displayed at the kitchen markets only in the month of Ramadan. Why only for a single month and not throughout the entire year?
Saiif Tinku
Via SMS
Release of high-profile
corruption suspects
The Fakhruddin government, immediately after its takeover, determined its goal and mission to make a corruption-free ideal Bangladesh and, as a part of implementing the goal, detained the high-profile politicians and businessmen on the grounds of suspected involvement in corruption. The government, after keeping the corruption-suspects detained for a long time and without subjecting them to judicial proceedings and trials, is releasing them by granting bails. Why is the government retreating from its goal and mission of a corruption-free society?
Alamin Al Azad
Zahurul Haque Hall, DU, Via SMS
Musharraf's exit and
Zardari's entry
With Musharraf's exit, 'democracy' probably has won. However, Pakistan is ever closer to destruction, as in Afghanistan, at the hands of the US.
Waris
Via SMS
* * *
Zardari sweeps into power- a bad day for Pakistan.
M Ahmed
Via e-mail
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