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To Change Or Not To Change
Anwaar Hussain
Almost
all of the major world crisis can be traced to the Arab world.
Concurrently, out of all the foreign forces present in the Arab world, a
whopping 85% are American forces. So in essence it is America Vs the Arab
World. For better understanding, let us take a brief look at the character
of the two protagonists.
Here
is the creed of the gang that now occupies the White House;
“The
American leadership is good both for
America
and for the world; and that such leadership requires military strength,
diplomatic energy and commitment to moral principle.”
Written
by none other than William Kristol himself, note the ominous prioritizing
of the words ‘military strength’, ‘diplomatic energy’ and
‘commitment to moral principle’. The later two clichés really have
been put in there for the support of the ‘military strength’. Read it
yourself at the official website of Project
for New American Century.
William
Kristol is the crown prince of the neoconservative cabal, Papa Kristol
being the man who has been credited with defining the major themes of
neoconservative thought. Founded in 1997, the Project for the New American
Century (PNAC) is a front group which crafted the powerful alliance
between right-wing Christian and Catholic Right leaders and other diehard
neocons behind a platform of global
U.S.
military dominance.
Here
are some other facts;
USA
’s Crude oil production is going to reduce by
approximately a fifth of its current level by year 2025 and its petroleum
products consumption is likely to nearly double in the same period.
Presently,
out of the proven world oil reserves of nearly 1037 billion barrels,
Saudi Arabia
,
Iran
,
Iraq
,
Kuwait
,
Qatar
,
Oman
and UAE together sit on approx. 669 billion barrels of these. It amounts
to nearly 2/3rd of the total or, in other words, just 5% of the
world’s population sits atop almost 70% of the world’s energy
resources. One doesn’t have to be clairvoyant to see that the American
leadership is going to get this oil by hook or by crook…period.
So
on the one side we have the American Neoconservatives holding firmly the
reins of an awesome military force and who do not shirk from slamming this
huge colossus into any one that stands in their path. And on the other
side is their principle adversary, the Arab world, which sits astride an
obscene amount of oil. Now let us take a look at the state of preparedness
of the Arab world to meet the challenge.
Consecutive
Arab Human Development Reports (AHDR)
have painted a very grim picture of Arab world’s political, economic and
cultural matters. The reports are written by Arab intellectuals
themselves. No one, therefore, can cry foul or dig out a Jewish conspiracy
behind these scathing reports.
Here
are some highlights of these reports;
Stagnant
Growth and Less Per Capita
GDP
[Gross Domestic Product] in all Arab countries combined stood at $531.2
billion in 1999, less than that of a single middle-size European country,
Spain
, ($595.5 billion). The real per capita income for the period 1975-1998 as
a whole grew very slowly, by around 0.5 percent a year, in effect, a
situation of quasi-stagnation. Meanwhile, the global average increase was
more than 1.3 per cent a year, implying a relative deterioration in the
average standard of living in the Arab region compared to the rest of the
world. In regional terms, only sub-Saharan Africa did worse than the Arab
countries, having seen an actual fall in real GDP per capita over the past
quarter century. Latin American and Caribbean countries saw a modest
average improvement of 1 per cent while South Asia averaged a 3 per cent
rate; the best performer,
East Asia
and the Pacific, achieved 5.9 per cent growth.
Education
Shortfall, Science and Tech Backwater
A
telling indicator of the poor level of educational attainment in the Arab
countries is the persistence of illiteracy rates that are higher, and
educational enrollment rates that are lower, than those of less
developed countries in East Asia and
Latin America
.
Illiteracy
rates in the Arab world are still higher than the international average
and are even higher than the average in developing countries. Moreover,
the number of illiterate people is still increasing, to the extent that
Arab countries embark upon the twenty-first century burdened by over 60
million illiterate adults, the majority of whom are women.
Arab
countries have some of the lowest levels of research funding in the world.
R&D [research and development] expenditure as a percentage of GDP was
a mere 0.4 for the Arab world in 1996, compared to 1.26 in 1995 for Cuba,
2.35 in 1994 for Israel, and 2.9 for Japan. The number of scientists
working in Arab countries is about one-third of the global average, and
about a quarter of graduates from universities emigrate.
Information
Isolation
There
is a "severe shortage" of new writing and an acute dearth of
translations of works from outside. The figures for translated books are
gloomy, to say the least. The Arab world translates about 330 books
annually, one fifth of the number that
Greece
translates. In the 1,000 years
since the reign of the Caliph Mamoun; the Arabs have translated as many
books as
Spain
translates in just one year. The use of the Internet is abysmally low
with only 0.5 per cent Arab population using Internet. Filmmaking appears
to be declining. Newspapers circulate in the
Middle East
at one-fifth the rate of the developed world. Arabic books represent less
than 1 percent of world production, even though Arabs make up 5 percent of
world population.
Freedom
Deficit
Out
of seven world regions, the Arab countries had the lowest freedom score in
the late 1990s [in the rankings of Freedom House]. The Arab region also
has the lowest value of all regions of the world for voice and
accountability.
There
is a substantial lag between Arab countries and other regions in terms of
participatory governance. The wave of democracy that transformed
governance in most of Latin America and East Asia in the 1980s and Eastern
Europe and much of Central Asia in the late 1980s and early 1990s has
barely reached the Arab states. Political participation is less advanced
in the Arab world than in other developing regions. Meanwhile, mass
mobilization-type regimes still exist in a number of Arab countries,
freedom of association is restricted in other cases, levels of political
participation are uneven, and the transfer of power through the ballot box
is not a common phenomenon in the Arab world.
Women
Participation
Arab
women, the reports found, are almost universally denied advancement. Half
of them still cannot read or write. The maternal mortality rate is double
that of Latin America and four times that of
East Asia
. "Sadly, the Arab world is largely depriving itself of the
creativity and productivity of half its citizens," the report
concluded.
Women
also suffer from unequal citizenship and legal entitlements, often evident
in voting rights and legal codes. The utilization of Arab women's
capabilities through political and economic participation remains the
lowest in the world in quantitative terms, as evidenced by the very low
share of women in parliaments, cabinets, and the work force and in the
trend towards the feminization of unemployment.
The
proportion of women in Arab parliaments is very low. According to the
reports, women occupy 3.5 per cent of all seats in parliaments of Arab
countries compared to 4.2 per cent in East Asia (excluding China), 11.0
per cent in sub-Saharan Africa, 12.7 per cent in South-East Asia and the
Pacific, 12.9 percent in Latin American and Caribbean countries, and 21.2
per cent in East Asia (including China).
One
indisputable conclusion emerges from its somber pages of tables and
charts: the Arab world is in decline, even relative to the developing
world….so much for their state of preparedness to meet the challenge.
A
serious, deep reading of the reports clearly shows that the Arabs have to
change or they will be made to change. Since no self-transformation is
possible without a willingness to adapt, the Arabs will have to first face
the facts however unpalatable these may be. The rest of the world too must
read the reports to understand the milieu in which Bin Ladenism is
produced. The Independent correspondent
Robert Fisk called it an all too accurate summation of “the barren,
ossified life of so many Arab countries”.
So
what does the Arab world do in the face of this difficult situation? For
starters, here are the results of a study of 192 countries. It
was concluded that physical assets such as machinery, buildings, and infrastructure explain
only 16 % of growth while human and social assets contribute no less than
64 % to growth performance.
The
very first steps, therefore, should be to wake up, look around, admit that
a mammoth problem exists, prioritize the solutions and proceed onwards at
full speed. The Arab world has neglected its human assets for far too
long. Any further disregard is sure to burry the Arab world ever deeper
into the sands of time.
Lebanese-American
poet, writer Khalil Gibran in his book ‘The Eye of the Prophet’ says
"The true riches of a nation lie not in its gold or silver but in its
aptitude to educate itself."
Copyrights : Anwaar Hussain
Courtesy : Fountainhead
Email ; eagleeye@emirates.net.ae
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