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Pakistan Stares Into the Abyss
Andrew Buncombe, Anne Penketh and Omar Waraich, The Independent UK via Truthout
A spiraling conflict, economic collapse and blackouts threaten anarchy with far-reaching implications.
Pakistan was locked in crisis last night, with the government pressed by Washington to deepen its conflict with Islamic militants in the lawless regions on the Afghan border, and obliged to call in the International Monetary Fund to stave off financial catastrophe.
In the rugged north of the country, a major military offensive to root out Taliban militants has created a flood of up to 200,000 refugees and pitched Pakistani against Pakistani, Muslim against Muslim, in a conflict some are beginning to regard as a civil war.
A new US intelligence estimate meanwhile has warned that the renewed insurgency, coupled with energy shortages and political infighting, means that Pakistan, which is the only Muslim nation with nuclear weapons, is “on the edge.”
“Pakistan is going through the worst crisis of its history,” according to a leaked letter signed by the former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, the main opposition leader. It is a view shared by Imran Khan, another opposition leader, who says that the political and economic meltdown “is leading to a sort of anarchy in Pakistan.”
(23 October 2008)
3 Oil-Rich Countries Face a Reckoning
Simon Romero, Michael Slackman and Clifford J. Levy, New York Times
As the price of oil roared to ever higher levels in recent years, the leaders of Venezuela, Iran and Russia muscled their way onto the world stage, using checkbook diplomacy and, on occasion, intimidation.
Now, plummeting oil prices are raising questions about whether the countries can sustain their spending — and their bids to challenge United States hegemony.
For all three nations, oil money was a means to an ideological end.
President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela used it to jump-start a socialist-inspired revolution in his country and to back a cadre of like-minded leaders in Latin America who were intent on eroding once-dominant American influence.
Iran extended its influence across the Middle East, promoted itself as the leader of the Islamic world and used its petrodollars to help defy the West’s efforts to block its nuclear program.
Russia, which suffered a humiliating economic collapse in the 1990s after the fall of communism, recaptured some of its former standing in the world. It began rebuilding its military, wrested control of oil and gas pipelines and pushed back against Western encroachment in the former Soviet empire.
But such ambitions are harder to finance when oil is at $74.25 a barrel
(20 October 2008)
‘Axis of Diesel’ forced to change its ways by plummeting oil price
James Bone, Tony Halpin and Michael Theodoulou, The Times
Together they form an “Axis of Diesel”. Buoyed by petrodollars, Russia, Iran and Venezuela hectored the West as they extended their reach abroad, backing separatists in Georgia, Islamists in the Middle East and Leftists around the world.
Now those oil-producing powers may be forced to draw in their horns as crude prices tumble. They face austerity budgets that could force them to scale back their military spending and foreign assistance even as falling oil prices fuel domestic dissent.
“All countries heavily dependent on petroleum revenue are nervously watching oil prices as they drop not just far, but quickly,” said Jonathan Elkind, a senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington…
(18 October 2008)
Chagos islanders lose battle to return
Duncan Campbell and Matthew Weaver, Guardian
Law lords rule 3-2 that islanders evicted in the 1970s cannot go back
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Chagos islanders evicted by the British government in the 1970s today lost their long-running battle to return to the Indian Ocean archipelago.
The islanders had previously won the right to return to all islands except Diego Garcia, the main island, where there is a US military base.
The 3-2 ruling today by the law lords overturns the islanders’ victory and is the final stage of a legal battle that started 10 years ago.
Lord Hoffmann ruled the government was entitled to legislate for a colony in the security interests of the United Kingdom.
The US state department had argued that the islands might be useful to terrorists.
Lord Hoffmann said: “Some of these scenarios might be regarded as fanciful speculations, but in the current state of uncertainty the government is entitled to take the concerns of its ally into account.”
He rejected the argument by the Chagossians’ lawyers that the government did not have the power to remove their right of abode in what is now known as the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). “The law gives it and the law may take it away,” he said.
(22 October 2008)
The British Empire at its ugliest. A rather chilling precedent for what may happen when oil and food run short. -BA
