| Submit your comments on this article | |
| India-Pakistan | |
| Ignominy of trading with India | |
| 2007-06-01 | |
By Khaled Ahmed
Free trade destroys many orders. It destroys the ‘self-sufficient’ state. It destroys boundaries that maintain separated identities. It also destroys ideologies that work only in insulation. It destroys dominance of the state too. Tribal societies, based on delimited food-scarce territories, are undermined by trade. Warriors don’t like trade and traders. The national security state with a backlog of just wars to be fought for national honour is aghast at the prospect of becoming ‘feminine’ through accepting the ‘insertion’ of enemy imports. Today Pakistan is on the threshold of entering the South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) which really means ‘opening up’ with India. But it has not ratified the SAFTA treaty while everyone else in South Asia has. It might actually get out of SAFTA, as remaining inside it means making India a Most Favoured Nation. The prevalent argument is that India must make a move on Kashmir first. What if India did make that move? Will free trade with India become safe then? Those who argue against free trade with India put forward arguments that have nothing to do with Kashmir. They refer to the configuration of the national economy of Pakistan that will not gibe with the more powerful industrial configuration of India. Although the industrialists of Pakistan object to opening up with India less and less these days, the national security thinkers do make reference to ‘competitive disadvantage’ of opening up. They must persuade prime minister Shaukat Aziz to graduate from his ‘conditionality’ of Kashmir to actually getting out of the SAFTA agreement whose Article 8 recommends an ‘integration’ of the regional economies. Article 8 refers to ‘removal of intra-SAARC barriers to investment’ while making it possible for the weaker economies to seek protection through ‘rules of fair competition’. Even the Supreme Court of Pakistan did not manifest its dislike of the charge made during the Pakistan Steel Mills case that a part of the capital that sought to buy the steel mill was tainted with Indian money. A ‘free’ judiciary may not like ‘free trade’ in Pakistan. There is nothing more unconvincing in the Pakistani stance than the Kashmir conditionality. That this conditionality was not invoked in relation to the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline may actually have alerted India to the real intent of Islamabad. The real reason goes deeper than that. It is the fear of the nature of change that might come about through the SAARC vision. Why did the ‘peripheral’ states of South Asia sign the treaty anyway? Today, Pakistan, standing at the threshold of a scary change through trade, may not have signed it. No matter how well regulated, free trade will destroy all sorts of barriers, change the nature of the state as well as that of the men who live in it. Is Pakistan ready for the change? It would appear that the masses are. The power elite may be hesitant. If completely unregulated, trade is called smuggling. It has destroyed the ’notional’ Durand Line, and today Pakistan is losing territory in its west while in the east a similar thrust into India by Pakistan’s military has been aborted. The national security regime is frayed at the edges. It does not live in national action but remains alive in the national mind. As a ‘revisionist’ state, Pakistan is fast running out of steam. The power elite is hesitant. This hesitation may be owing to a lack of clarity at a deeper level of consciousness. A lack of intellectual capacity will not allow proper interpretation of internationally popularised slogans like ‘trade corridors’. General Musharraf as an ‘out-of-the-box’ leader has talked about Pakistan as a ‘trade corridor’. He must have picked it up from the economists he talks to. Nothing will destroy the supremacy of the Pakistan army as the transformation of Pakistan into a ‘free-trade hub’. The economist of today is the most subversive philosopher in history since Socrates. Imagine India using trade routes that spread like arteries across Pakistan’s sacred territory. Pakistan is a corridor of nothing unless India violates it with its manufactures. The cost of maintaining Pakistan’s honour has escalated. Pakistan pays into Kashmir an estimated $2.6 billion annually to keep the APHC and the jihadi organisations alive in Held Kashmir. This also includes the ‘infiltration budget’. Pakistan gets 800 ‘incursions’ annually for this money. Pakistan’s ‘conflict economy’, inclusive of military expenditures, is 10.6 percent of its GDP. This is unsustainable. In the post-Musharraf period, the politicians will find it difficult to defend this kind of spending. Their refusal to go on with it will be non-intellectual as any intellectual reformulation will mean taking on Pakistani nationalism. Pakistan is fast losing territory and culture to a creed that can only be compared to medieval Muslim conquests. It doesn’t feel it is being conquered because it is ideologically prepared for defeat. But, economically, this creeping transformation presages an end to the modern state through a retreat into Hobbesian purgatory. The politician will breach the India-Pakistan boundary through free trade even though it may be the last one to be breached in the world. (Only North-South Korea and Israel-Syria-Lebanon borders are the last bastions remaining.) He has tried doing it in the 1990s and has been repeatedly toppled because of it. The real death of Pakistan is coming gradually through the death of its culture. People make fun of ‘enlightenment’ and ‘moderation’ because they see the anti-cultural forces within and without the state winning territory on a daily basis. This is ‘black humour’ rather than rejection of culture. Free trade and culture go hand in hand. The ‘monoculture’ of free trade (read globalisation) is cakes and ale compared to the ‘monoculture’ of Pakistani nationalism as interpreted by the clergy and the army. Those who are scared of it call it Talibanisation. There is no honour in heroic isolation. The pinnacle of isolation is martyrdom. Free trade may be dishonourable but it avoids death and stops poverty. Nothing is more dishonourable than poverty. | |
| Posted by:John Frum |
| #4 Free trade destroys many orders. It destroys the ‘self-sufficient’ state. Yeah, that's why Uncle Kimmies people are so happy, well fed, and the envy of the world. That's why North Korea suffers from tens of millions of illegal Chinese crossing over their border in search of the better life. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2007-06-01 06:51 |
| #3 Article: $2.6 billion annually to keep the APHC and the jihadi organisations alive in Held Kashmir. This is money that could have been used to build roads. Put up power lines. Power stations. The people running Pakistan have prioritization problems. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2007-06-01 05:35 |
| #2 Nope. Just 3 stinking millions dollars per incursion. |
| Posted by: JFM 2007-06-01 05:34 |
| #1 $2.6 billion annually to keep the APHC and the jihadi organisations alive in Held Kashmir. This also includes the ‘infiltration budget’. Pakistan gets 800 ‘incursions’ annually for this money. Thats $30 million per incursion. I had no idea terrorism was so expensive. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2007-06-01 03:07 |