We have conceded everything that India wanted but we have not managed to receive anything in return except the warmth of India’s friendship. One wonders whether this friendship is between the peoples of two neighbouring countries or between the two parties that have come to power here and in India,
writes Professor M Maniruzzaman Miah

THE prime minister Sheikh Hasina was in the Indian capital on a four-day state visit, from January 10 to 13. She was invited to visit India by Manmohan Singh, the prime minister of India. For quite sometime before her visit began, media propaganda in respect of the success she would attain there reached its crescendo. It appeared as though all the outstanding problems between Bangladesh and India would be settled during her visit because of the personal ‘chemistry’ between her and the Indian policymakers, as one minister remarked. Those who have been keeping track of the Indo-Bangladesh relation since 1972 know it very well what a tortuous course it has gone through. However, three days before the prime minister’s visit began, Ashraful Islam, the Awami League general secretary and a minister, and the day before Dipu Moni, the foreign minister at a Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies discussion meet, threw cold water on people’s high expectations. By that time one would hazard the guess that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs got to know from the visit here of Nirupama Rao, the Indian foreign secretary, how things were going to shape up in the Indian capital. Anyway, it was Bangladesh prime minister’s maiden visit to Delhi after her assumption of office as prime minister for the second time. It was expected, therefore, that she would be given a very warm welcome. And so was it. At the Rashtrapati Bhaban she was accorded a ceremonial red carpet reception. The Indian president awarded her the prestigious Indira Gandhi Prize for peace, disarmament and development.
   Besides, she met quite a few influential ministers and high-profile personalities including Sonia Gandhi and former prime minister IK Gujral. On the face of it, she was treated very warmly and well. What Bangladeshis would like to know, however, is the outcome of it all. To be more precise, if a balance sheet of our gains and losses from the visit are made what it would look like. All the events that took place during the prime minister’s visit have been listed and covered in the joint communiqué that was released to the press on the conclusion of the
   visit. What does the joint communiqué say?
   The 51-paragraph communiqué does not perhaps warrant the finesse of a seasoned diplomat to make out what actually it is. Summarily speaking, as one can see, it has two major parts, the accords signed in Delhi, and the main body of the communiqué itself. The accords signed comprise three agreements, one memorandum of understanding and a cultural exchange programme. The agreements include one on ‘mutual legal assistance’ another on ‘transfer of sentenced persons’ and the third one on ‘combating international terrorism, organised crime, and illicit drug trafficking’.
   Interestingly enough, the full text of none of these has been released to the press till now, although more than three weeks have passed by since the return of the prime minister to Dhaka. In the absence of such a text, it is not very clear as to what type of criminal matters for legal assistance or transfer (not mutual, why?) of sentenced persons or organised crimes are meant in these accords. May we be permitted to note here that before the Chittagong Hill Tracts agreement was signed in 1997 several thousand rebels of Chittagong origin were engaged in organised crimes of looting, arson, killing, extortion, etc from Indian soil assisted by whom, one wonders! Even now on our south-western border, groups of large number of people under the banner of ‘Bangasena’ or ‘Bangabhumi Andolon’ whose avowed purpose is to slice away a chunk of Bangladesh territory are active. Then, there are a large number of Bangladeshis who fled and reportedly have found shelter in Kolkata from where they still continue extortion threatening over telephone to pay a handsome amount of money to their agents here. Will they come under the agreement of transfer? Perhaps not, for the simple reason that they have not been proceeded against or sentenced.
   Our Indian friends want, as it appears, one or two rebels belonging to the United Liberation Front of Asom, who might have been interned somewhere in this country to be handed over to them. Reportedly, one Rajkhowa, an ULFA leader, is in Indian hands under very mysterious circumstances. Another, one Anup Chetia, according to newspaper reports, is perhaps the other person to be handed over to the Indian authorities.
   There is nothing wrong in mutual exchange of rebellious people rising against the country’s integrity. But in all fairness, it should have been a two-way traffic. One wonders whether those Bangabhumi-wallahs and the extortionists or terrorists operating from Kolkata or somewhere in West Bengal would be brought to justice and those among them who are Bangladeshis will be handed over to the government of Bangladesh. Also whether or not the commitment made that they won’t allow their respective territory for training, sanctuary and other operations by domestic or foreign terrorist organisations will be fulfilled in letter and spirit.
   As mentioned above, one agreement relates to ‘combating international terrorism’. That the presence of international terrorist outfits in Bangladesh may be there cannot perhaps be gainsaid. However, their operational strength is so weak that they have been and they can still be, we believe, controlled by the Bangladesh government itself. Internationalising the issue may pose security problem for us, as some would look at it. We think we need extreme caution to handle
   the matter.
   It is not unexpected that the two prime ministers ‘underscored the need for both countries to actively cooperate on security issues.’ And both leaders reiterated the assurance that the territory of either would not be allowed for activities inimical to the other and resolved not to allow their respective territory to be used for training, sanctuary and operations by domestic or foreign terrorists. This is no doubt a welcome assertion. Let us hope that this would be followed in letter and spirit by both and some of the issues referred to above will not recur anymore and people involved in anti-Bangladesh terrorist activities in India will be handed over to Bangladesh.
   ‘It has been agreed’ that India will be allowed the ‘use of Mongla and Chittagong seaports for movement of goods to and from India through road and rail.’
   It has been ‘agreed’ that Ashuganj in Bangladesh and Silghat in India will be ports of call for inland water traffic.
   It has also been ‘agreed’ that Agartala will be linked with Akhaura by rail line which will be laid out
   by Indian finance to be received
   as grant.
   Thus, India will have through passage from any point in that country to Chittagong port and onward to Akhaura by railway up to Agartala in Tripura, that is, transit route from any point in India to another point of the same country, a facility which she has been asking for since quite sometime past. During the earlier period of Awami Rule, transit facility to India could not be granted because of fierce opposition from the people here. Incidentally, to facilitate rail link to Agartala which could have been otherwise cut off from India, Radcliffe in 1947 awarded the Muslim majority areas like Badarpur, Karimganj and Baroigram junctions in the district of Karimganj albeit people of these areas voted massively in favour of Pakistan in the plebiscite prior to Redcliffe award. Thus, what India got as a narrow passage 63 years ago has now got a wide area as transit route to the same place.
   But what does the communiqué tell us about some of the burning issues bedevilling our relationship like the Border Security Force of India killing innocent Bangladeshis along the border, sometimes mutilating their body before returning and at others not returning at all, or the yawning trade gap between the two countries or the issue of water-sharing and a host of others. On border killing by India’s BSF, the phraseology used is ‘check cross-border
   crime’ and ‘both prime ministers have agreed that the respective border guarding forces exercise restraint.’
   By the above not only shooting down Bangladeshis like game birds day in and day out (818 over last 10 years, 94 last year), the Bangladesh Rifles has been bracketed with the BSF. One wonders whether this is just and fair because there is no record of the BDR killing innocent Indians at normal times.
   As to the trade gap, India has agreed to reduce the negative list of items to be exported from Bangladesh and also to remove the tariff and non-tariff barriers. Those items have not been listed though in the communiqué but as to the removal of non-tariff barrier, lo and behold, some businesspeople have already been denied visa to visit India. On top of that ‘haats’ have been agreed to be set up on the border, although the modalities are yet to be put in place. It may be recalled that border haats were established after liberation but later on were closed as they became uneconomic.
   On Teesta water sharing, it has been proposed that a meeting of the Joint River Commission would be held soon to come to an agreement on the issue. One may recall that a memorandum of understanding was agreed upon between the two governments in 1983 but was never translated into a full-fledged agreement understandably because of non-cooperation from the upper riparian. The memo, as it appears, agreed to allocate 36 per cent to Bangladesh, 39 per cent to India and 25 per cent as environmental flow down the river.
   Before any agreement is reached, the two sides must reach unanimity on the flow upstream, an allocation of a minimum of 25 per cent of flow as environmental flow for the sustenance of the river itself and an agreement for joint monitoring of the river flows along its course upstream of the Indian barrage. Unless this is done it will have the same fate of the 1996 Ganges Treaty due to which a large number of distributaries have gone dry and are still drying up
   gradually in spite of the fact that
   70 per cent of the dry season flow
   of the Ganges is contributed by Nepal.
   As to the Tipaimukh dam, our prime minister says that her counterpart has assured her that India won’t take any measure that would put Bangladesh in any difficulty. Madam prime minister, may I be permitted to say that the same assurance was given to Khaleda Zia on the Farakka issue when she met the Indian prime minister PV Narsimha Rao in 1992. Such assurances have never been actually followed by action.
   India has agreed to give dredger to us for dredging our rivers. Do people know that dredging has been necessitated by sedimentation on the river beds in turn, resulting from low flow from upstream?
   We have also assured India of our support to her seeking a permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council.
   There are many things more which space does not permit us to go for. Summarily speaking, we have conceded everything that India wanted without getting practically anything in return except the warmth of relationship and friendship of India.
   However, one wonders whether this friendship is between the peoples of two neighbouring countries or between the two parties that have come to power here and in India. We say so because the communiqué notes that ‘… Recent elections in both countries presented them with a historic opportunity to write a new chapter in their relationship.’
   Everyone in this country with minimum common sense will look for friendship between two countries based on sovereign equality and mutual respect for each other’s needs for development and general welfare and perhaps not between two political parties that may come to power fortuitously at the same time.
   Professor M Maniruzzaman Miah is a former vice-chancellor of Dhaka University. modzaman@gmail.com

An interview with John Bellamy Foster
by Farooque Chowdhury

THE degree to which imperialist views are openly paraded in the United States should not be underestimated. One prominent US writer, a regular contributor to the Atlantic, Robert Kaplan, glorifies US militarism and imperialism in the following way in his book Imperial Grunts: ‘By the turn of the twenty-first century the United States military had already appropriated the entire earth, and was ready to flood the most obscure areas of it with troops at a moment’s notice.’ Such ‘appropriation of the earth’ is indeed what it is all about. In this respect, though the United States is not all alone, it also has the support of its junior allies with NATO. There is little doubt at this point that the world is controlled by the ‘triad’ (sometimes called ‘the international community’) of the United States/Canada, Europe, and Japan. In this, Richard Haass, formerly of the Bush administration, now head of the Council of Foreign Advisers, tells us, the United States plays the role of the sheriff, Britain is its deputy, and the rest of the triad makes up the posse. At times, of course, the posse would like to depose the sheriff, and they object when the sheriff and the deputy ride off without their prior consent to lynch populations, as with the George W Bush administration and Tony Blair’s Labour Party. But mostly they work together, giving an air of unity. There is no doubt that this system of imperial control is becoming tighter, that the triad is becoming more unified, as a result of the rise of competing powers elsewhere, particularly China. Inter-imperialist rivalries exist within the triad, but they are largely in abeyance, and they together control financial, technological, and military power—and, primarily as a result of the US empire, world resource flows. It is hegemony over the triad that has become the main means through which the United States seeks today to maintain its larger global hegemony despite its stagnant economic growth and waning status. One recent development was France’s giving up of the Gaulist strategy of a separate military. This meant tighter welding together of NATO, which under US leadership is expanding its global role and directly challenging the United Nations’ peacekeeping role.
   Peak oil, which no one in positions of economic, political, and military power now doubts (the debate is about whether it is coming soon or sooner), has tended to drive these points home, making it clear to both the sheriff and the posse how important it is to control the major world, geographical centre of crude oil reserves. The financial crisis has placed a strain on the structure of US world power, visible for example in signs of Japanese ruling class rapprochement with China, and the lowered voice in international affairs of the greatly weakened US ‘deputy’ Britain.
   
   In the wake of the Great Financial Crisis, is the United States still in a position to unilaterally decide global economic, environmental, political, and geopolitical issues? And, is the world still US-centric? What about the dream of a ‘New American Century’ now?
   I was interested in an article, ‘An Empire at Risk’, that Niall Ferguson, a professor of history at Harvard, wrote for Newsweek (December 7, 2009). Ferguson is a British historian of imperialism and finance who moved to the United States. He has specialised in rehabilitating (and promoting) British and US imperialism. Ferguson trades on his British perspective and takes as a basis for all of his writings on imperialism that the British were a lot better at running their world capitalist empire than the United States is at running its. He claims that the United States is Janus-faced, confused and generally inept on the subject of empire. As a result of its own origins as a colony, it has never been entirely comfortable with imperialism and thus does it, but does it badly. There is no imperial educated elite trained specifically to run the empire. The British, in comparison, were true imperial masters. Ferguson has made a whole career of this, which sells well in elite circles in the United States, and has contributed to his being one of the highest-priced, most vocal US-based historians. He was a particularly strong proponent of the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (see my Naked Imperialism). He is also a financial historian, author of The Ascent of Money, and trades on the glories of financial capitalism.
   In his piece ‘Empire at Risk’ in Newsweek, Ferguson argues that the US financial crisis is generating a US fiscal crisis, as the government seeks to bail out Wall Street, and that this fiscal crisis is endangering the long-term future of the US empire. Ferguson says, comparing the fiscal situation today to 1942, that ‘We are, it seems, having the fiscal policy of a world war, without the [world] war.’ (He notes that the United States is at war in Afghanistan and Iraq but claims this is of relatively little fiscal significance.) He worried that Obama’s decision over whether to send tens of thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan (which Ferguson strongly supported) was being affected by this fiscal crisis, thereby threatening the US empire.
   He shouldn’t have worried too much. Obama sent the additional soldiers to war and accepted the Nobel Peace Prize at the same time. And US imperialism seems more aggressive than ever, threatening Iran.
   Still, Ferguson says that the empire is being jeopardised as a result of the fiscal effects of the Wall Street bailout, which he also supports. What does he think should be done? He suggests that the main targets should be Medicaid and Social Security, which he claims are increasingly ‘unfunded liabilities’. The implication is that these social programmes need to be cut back for the sake of the US empire. Americans, he implies, should be willing to sacrifice for the greater good of the empire.
   There is no doubt that Ferguson is right in some regards. The US empire is unstable and at risk. The long-term threat to the hegemony of the dollar represented by growing financial instability is real. Empire angst is one of the dominant issues in the centres of power in the United States today. The United States is more and more in the position of a wounded elephant—wounded but more dangerous as a result. The ‘New American Century’ is uncertain. But this is given as the reason for a more, not less, active imperialist stance. This hasn’t changed under Obama, who is expanding the war in Afghanistan while not withdrawing from Iraq; building seven new military bases in Columbia, next door to Venezuela and Ecuador; supporting the coup plotters in Honduras; and squeezing Iran.
   
   What are the reasons behind the disputes/disagreements in the climate crisis diplomacy? What role should the people-oriented ecological movements play in the post-Copenhagen chapter in climate crisis diplomacy? Is there a possibility that the climate crisis will lead organisations related to people, including peasants and fishermen, to take a stronger anti-imperialist position? Do the people-oriented ecological movements carry seeds that ultimately turn into movements against elites whose lifestyle thrives on squandering public resources?
   That the Copenhagen climate negotiations would be a failure was well known in advance of the summit. Washington set the stage for failure by producing legislation in the House that was ‘worse than nothing’—as James Hansen, the leading US climatologist, put it—and then with the Senate refusing to go forward with even that. Washington’s position internationally on climate change has been to do little, to reject legally-binding agreements on emissions reductions, and to promote almost total reliance on cap and trade (i.e. carbon emissions trading). The advanced capitalist states, even Europe which has gone the furthest, have not managed to reduce emissions in the almost twenty years since the Kyoto process began. Indeed, emissions in the rich countries taken as a whole have continued to rise rapidly, particularly in the United States and Japan. The emerging economies, such as China and India, are also not taking the problem seriously enough, although it is easy to see why these states think leadership should come from the advanced capitalist countries, with their historic responsibility and their much higher per capita emissions. Contraction and convergence based on equal per capital emissions globally, which is the only rational international response, is not even on the table, due to what we could call the whole structure of ecological imperialism. Meanwhile, the climate problem (and the environmental problem as a whole) is getting far worse. In terms of climate diplomacy the one bright spot right now is Evo Morales’ call for climate talks in Bolivia, which is an attempt to promote a world ecological solution starting from a global South (and indigenous) perspective.
   As always, the problem with radical change leads to the question of agency. In Monthly Review we have long argued that the most revolutionary forces in the world emanate from the third world—and that in a sense this is where Marx’s ‘proletariat’ in its most alienated sense is now to be found. In my January 2010 article in MR entitled ‘Why Ecological Revolution?’ I floated the idea of an ‘environmental proletariat’. To repeat what I said there:
   Looking at this today, I think it is conceivable that the main historic agent and initiator of a new epoch of ecological revolution is to be found in the third world masses most directly in line to be hit first by the impending disasters. Today the ecological frontline is to be found in the inhabitants of the Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta and of the low-lying fertile coast area of the Indian Ocean and China Sea—the state of Kerala in India, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia. They, too, as in the case of Marx’s proletariat, have nothing to lose from the radical changes necessary to avert (or adapt to) disaster. In fact, with the universal spread of capitalist social relations and the commodity form, the world proletariat and the masses most exposed to sea level rise—for example, the low-lying delta of the Pearl River and the Guangdong industrial region from Shenzhen to Guangzhou—sometimes overlap. This, then, potentially constitutes the global epicentre of a new environmental proletariat.
   In Bolivia we see the rise of an indigenous-based environmental and socialist movement, which has responded to growing environmental conflicts: water conflicts, coca conflicts, hydrocarbon conflicts. The fact that Bolivia’s socialist president Evo Morales is now perhaps the strongest international voice for world climate stabilisation is a product of new material conditions and relations. It seems possible that such an environmental proletariat (which I would argue is not antagonistic to Marx and Engels’s classic notion of the proletariat—but that is a different story for a different time) could emerge as a major revolutionary force. This would not exclude, as you say, the role of peasants and fishing communities in such change.
   To be concluded tomorrow

Hamim

Little Hamim bridged us together in a ocean of sadness at this time when the society is shattered and distorted by political mud throwing and by hollow and meaningless talks of high hopes. The expectation of the people of this country is not sky high. We just want to live a safe and peaceful life. Good roads with footpaths and over-bridges for pedestrians can contribute a lot in improving safe living in cities.
   But adding to our misery, a group of people become VIPs by rotation and keep all the police force, traffic police and others agency busy in serving those VIPs leaving aside no resource for the citizens. The traffic police are a paid agency of the Republic and have its own revenue earning sources. But they are overstretched and poorly managed. The incumbent regime will do a great favour to us, the parents of thousands of Hamims, by concentrating in improving the human and other resources of the Republic to serve the people instead of making big and hollow lectures on daily basis.
   MH Khan
   Via e-mail

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