Democracy and Foreign Policy Persistence: Why Pakistan’s India strategy under Nawaz Sharif may not cause a paradigm shift

By on June 19, 2013 in Asia, Democracy and Elections, International Relations, Terrorism and Security

for the third time since 1990, he has been recognized over the course of his political career as a principal challenger to the military’s supremacy in governing Pakistan. Indeed Mr Sharif’s proactive pursuit of peace with India became the primary reason for his forcible ouster from power by the army in October 1999 and he was subsequently imprisoned and exiled for intruding into what the army considers its exclusive foreign policy domain. But the tide of history has now turned back in his favour and he promises a ‘new chapter’ in the country’s relationship with India. ‘We will start from where we were interrupted in 1999’, he declared as soon as the PML-N won the May 11th elections.

Since his dealings with India precipitated his ouster from power 14 years ago, there is now a heated debate over the prospects of a fast-paced rapprochement with its southern neighbour. Sharif has already pledged to take some bold initiatives: improving trade, energy and transportation links; expediting the Mumbai terror investigations; establishing a commission of enquiry on the Kargil conflict (which had subverted the peace process with India, especially the February 1999 Lahore Declaration); and reigning in non-state actors such as Lashkar-e-Tayba, accused of committing terrorism against India. Indian leadership (from the majority in Congress and the BJP opposition) have wholeheartedly welcomed Mr Sharif’s return to power and his overtures towards India. For now at least, there is visible public optimism in both countries that perhaps the two traditional foes are finally well on their way towards a sustainable course of mutual peace.

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The time is now for wealth taxes in Britain

By on June 18, 2013 in Democratic Wealth, Political Economy

Private households in the UK own an estimated £10.3 trillion in property and other assets, most of which is relatively lightly taxed. Following the 2008 financial crash, the need to find additional public resources to reduce or obviate the need for painful spending cuts and fund growing long-term demand for public services makes wealth an attractive potential tax base. However, while it is generally accepted that the current system of property and wealth taxation in the UK is highly flawed, there is no broad political consensus on whether and how different forms of wealth should be taxed. There is also a lack of evidence about the potential impact of different approaches.

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Why a ‘water war’ over the Nile River won’t happen

By on June 14, 2013 in Africa, Environmental Policy

Is northeastern Africa heading for a bloody “water war” between its two most important countries, Egypt and Ethiopia? Judging by the rhetoric of the past two weeks, one could be forgiven for thinking so.

Ethiopia’s plans to build a multibillion dollar dam on the Nile River spurred Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi – whose country lies downstream from Ethiopia – to vow to protect Egypt’s water security at all costs. “As president of the republic, I confirm to you that all options are open,” he said on Monday. “If Egypt is the Nile’s gift, then the Nile is a gift to Egypt… If it diminishes by one drop, then our blood is the alternative.”

The following day Dina Mufti, Ethiopia’s foreign ministry spokesman, said that Ethiopia was “not intimidated by Egypt’s psychological warfare and won’t halt the dam’s construction, even for seconds”.

Morsi’s bellicose warnings followed the suggestions of leading Egyptian politicians on television last week that Cairo should prepare airstrikes and send special forces to uphold its God-given right to the lion’s share of Nile waters. The Ethiopian government of Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn has signalled that it is not impressed and that it will carry on with work on the multibillion dollar Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam – a move seen by some as raising temperatures further, possibly triggering the “water wars” that pessimists have long predicted will characterise the geopolitics of the 21st century.

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Social and environmental injustice in rural China

By on June 12, 2013 in Asia, Law, Oxon China

It is well-known that one of the key fault lines of inequality in China is the rural-urban divide. Rural China has been the engine of much development through industrialisation; through farming to provide food for China’s cities; and through land grabs which open new areas for investment and government revenue. Yet the benefits of such development are distributed unfairly. Many rural residents either do not benefit directly from development or do so at great cost to their health. These inequalities are compounded by the continued disparity in welfare provision between rural and urban areas. Welfare provision in China’s countryside has doubtlessly improved after the introduction of rural healthcare cooperatives in recent years, but it remains limited. Illness is as an extreme embodiment of routinized and recurrent forms of social suffering and exclusion from various forms of care and welfare. As I document in my book, Fighting for Breath, a population’s attempt to secure care is both a physical and a social struggle to maintain integrity and to ensure family and neighbourly support.

Over the past decade, I have spent almost two years living in rural China and researching attitudes to development,illness, pollution and morality. This has brought me to witness first-hand some of the often unthinkable suffering rural villagers face (environmental and otherwise), as well as poignant moments of human dignity, kindness and resilience. Many of these scenes will stay with me forever. A woman in her fifties salvaging roof tiles before she demolished by hand her own newly built home to make space for a road. A seventy-year-old woman refusing treatment for glaucoma — because ‘one eye is enough’ — whilst opting to save the money for her grandson’s education. My host tending to her dying father (suffering from oesophagus cancer) as he spat blood into newspaper scraps. Sixty-year-old Uncle Wang committing suicide by drinking pesticide in the final stages of stomach cancer. His wife, a few years later, scavenging plastic bottles in the township to boost the family’s income and support her granddaughter’s education. Villagers growing crops in fields they know to be severely polluted. An anti-incinerator activist lying in bed surrounded by flies next to his sick wife after suffering a stroke.

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50 events that shaped Kenya

By on June 11, 2013 in Africa

In July 1962, Tom Mboya set out his vision of the new nation in a speech as powerful and heartfelt as any other in Kenya’s history. Delivered to the bedrock of colonial society, the white settlers in the Kenya National Farmers’ Union, Mboya observed that “to date, our people have been dragged through history”. He promised: “Henceforth, we will write our own history.”

What history have Kenyans written? This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of Kenyan independence from British rule. To mark the occasion Kenya’s Daily Nation – the largest newspaper in East and Central Africa with a circulation of over 200,000 – published a front page article written with my long time co-author Daniel Branch that discusses 50 events that have shaped Kenya since independence.

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