Anti-EU Summit March

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Anti-EU Summit March

National News:
Tony Blair Rules Out Aid for Consignia
Unemployment Rises Again in November
House of Commons Motion Deploring David Blunkett's Offensive Remarks
For Your Reference: The Ease with which a "Public Emergency" is Declared and Maintained

International Commentary:
How May Afghanistan "Rise From the Rubble"?
For Your Reference: Colin Powell Visit Hints at Long-Term Interests, Short-Term Trade-Offs in Post-Taleban Central Asia

National Stop the War Demonstration in London

Tens of thousands of Belgian workers marched through Brussels on Thursday, December 13, in anticipation of the EU summit meeting which takes place in that city this weekend. The marchers are opposing rising unemployment, the war on Afghanistan and the EU’s proposed anti-terrorism measures. Waltraud Etz, a representative of the European Trade Union Confederation, which organised the march, declared: "We want more jobs and better quality jobs."

The Belgian police have taken repressive measures to limit the impact of further demonstrations, which are expected over the weekend. Some 22 people have already been arrested at the Dutch borders and 4,000 police are being deployed during the period of the summit. Plans have also been announced for the use of barbed wire barricades, water cannons and riot police and the protesters have been refused permission to demonstrate directly outside the summit venue at Laeken Castle.

The Laeken European Council is expected to discuss the following issues: The setting up of a convention to prepare future changes to the Treaties of Union; A review of the enlargement process of the EU with a view to concluding it by the end of 2002; The EU’s "fight against terrorism", in particular the European arrest warrant recently agreed in Rome and the European extradition rules. Also expected to be discussed in this context are the development of an integrated system of external border controls and the strengthening of Europol to become an integrated EU police force.

Tony Blair has said that he has ruled out any government aid for Consignia despite its plans to make up to 30,000 workers redundant. Asked in parliament on Wednesday about the planned job cuts, Tony Blair said times had changed and that Consignia was now its own boss.

"We gave the commercial freedom to the post office that people wished for and the post office does face an extremely difficult and challenging time, and I of course would regret any job losses," Blair said. "But it is important also that this is matter that is dealt with between the company and unions." The government ended the postal service's 350-year monopoly on letter delivery earlier this year.

The "free-market" rationale for Tony Blair's stand is given by economists who say there is no gain without pain, and competition is necessary to improve the quality of life. But the reality is the delivery of social programmes into the hands of the financial oligarchy, the abdication of responsibility to care for the welfare of society by the government, the abandonment of the manufacturing base for the economy, and deepening economic recession.

Consignia operates under a unique formula like a private firm within the public sector. In this context, it has posted a record half-year loss of £100 million as growth in mail volumes has slowed and problems at its Parcelforce unit have mounted. John Roberts, chief executive of Consignia, told a House of Commons select committee on Tuesday in a reversal of Consignia's previous policy that 30,000 job cuts were necessary to meet saving targets of £1.2bn ($1.7bn) in the face of falling demand growth, heavy losses and rail delays.

Peter Carr, the chairman of the postal industry watchdog Postwatch, said Consignia was in financial crisis and cutting jobs was the right thing to do.

The number of people claiming unemployment benefits rose for a second consecutive month in November for the first time in nearly nine years, new figures have shown.

Although the unemployment rate remains close to a 26-year low at 3.2 percent, mounting job losses such as the 30,000 announced by Consignia on Wednesday, have begun to take their toll.

The National Statistics office said on December 12 that the number of people claiming unemployment benefit rose 4,800 in November, following an upwardly revised 7,500 rise in October, to 959,100.

The rise is slightly lower than economists' forecasts and comes as little surprise given increasing recent signs that the economy is slowing. Manufacturing has been particularly hard hit. The number of manufacturing jobs fell 141,000 in the year to October 2001 to 3.79 million, a record low.

The government's preferred International Labour Organisation (ILO) measure of unemployment, which includes those seeking work but not necessarily claiming benefit, rose 29,000 in the three months to October to 1.52 million giving an ILO unemployment rate of 5.1 percent.

An Early Day Motion was tabled by Scottish Nationalist Party MP Annabelle Ewing on December 10 deploring remarks by the Home Secretary on ethnic minorities and national identity. It has also been signed by Andrew George, Nigel Jones, Alex Salmond, Simon Thomas, Paul Tyler, Michael Weir and Pete Wishart. The motion runs as follows:

That this House deplores the remarks of the Home Secretary in talking of the need for members of ethnic minority communities to "feel British" and even to "feel and become English"; notes that these remarks have been described by Glasgow Labour councillor and President of the British Pakistani Association, Mr Bashir Mann, as being "deeply offensive"; further notes that the recent British Social Attitudes Survey finds that only 13 per cent of people in Scotland identify themselves as British, with 80 per cent feeling Scottish, which means that his remarks are doubly offensive to Scotland; and celebrates the positive contribution of ethnic minority communities to Scotland's national life over many years.

The Order derogating from (opting out of) Article 5(1) of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms was approved by Parliament in order for the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Bill to be presented with the declaration by the Home Secretary that it complies with the Convention. Article 5(1) of the Convention permits the detention of a person with a view to deportation only in circumstances where "action is being taken with a view to deportation". As the Anti-Terrorism Bill gives the government powers to detain a foreign national "on national security grounds" without intending to deport that person – i.e. to hold them indefinitely without trial – this is in contradiction with fundamental law. The way round this has been for the government to declare a "public emergency", in which case the European Convention provides the right of derogation, and the government has indicated that it will continue to avail itself of this provision until further notice.

Although the Anti-Terrorism Act specifies that the extended power of arrest and detention is a temporary measure strictly required by the exigencies of the situation which comes into force for an initial period of 15 months and then expires unless renewed by Parliament, the invariable experience of these "temporary" provisions required by "the exigencies of the situation" has been that they are renewed annually by Parliament, as the Act provides for, or are indeed made permanent.

How easily the government can simply declare a state of "public emergency" – which, it should be noted, is now in operation "until further notice" – especially once "international terrorism" is declared to be the main enemy, can be gauged from the relevant passage in the Derogation Order, which follows:

Public emergency in the United Kingdom

The terrorist attacks in New York, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania on 11th September 2001 resulted in several thousand deaths, including many British victims and others from 70 different countries. In its resolutions 1368 (2001) and 1373 (2001), the United Nations Security Council recognised the attacks as a threat to international peace and security.

The threat from international terrorism is a continuing one. In its resolution 1373 (2001), the Security Council, acting under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, required all States to take measures to prevent the commission of terrorist attacks, including by denying safe haven to those who finance, plan, support or commit terrorist attacks.

There exists a terrorist threat to the United Kingdom from persons suspected of involvement in international terrorism. In particular, there are foreign nationals present in the United Kingdom who are suspected of being concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of international terrorism, of being members of organisations or groups which are so concerned or of having links with members of such organisations or groups, and who are a threat to the national security of the United Kingdom.

As a result, a public emergency, within the meaning of Article 15(1) of the Convention, exists in the United Kingdom.

Having committed aggression against Afghanistan on the spurious pretexts, among others, that it was a "failed state" and the government was unrepresentative, Anglo-American imperialism has turned its attention following its toppling of the Taleban regime to what it is referring to as resurrecting Afghanistan as a "viable state" and forging the Afghans into a "unified people".

For example, Newsweek, in its December 17 issue, asserts that "Afghanistan is the picture of an unmade nation". The issue, of course, is "unmade" by whom, since Britain and the US defined the Taleban order as "chaos" and set out to impose an imperialist "order". This process has consisted of pounding the cities of Afghanistan into rubble and causing an unimaginable humanitarian catastrophe. The Afghan state is certainly not in a functioning position after this.

Newsweek refers to "the trauma of repairing failed states". Referring to the project of "nation-building", it asserts that all the term really means is "fixing what can be fixed with international money and expertise and the hard work of local populations, and hoping that what results is whole cloth". The article continues: "An inclusive central government that does not try to subjugate the provinces must be established. A neutral, at least partly international, peacekeeping force must impose order on the cities and roads. Relief aid must be rushed to starving peasants. Then the rebuilding itself begins: Afghans must be employed to repair everything from airports to ancient canals; seeds and fertiliser must be distributed to those who would rather farm; refugees must be resettled and exiles—among the most highly educated and entrepreneurial Afghans—must be encouraged to return and help re-establish a professional class. Institutions that carry an authority beyond person or clan or ethnicity must be revived. Things like a constitution and rule of law, a central bank and a professional police force may seem like luxuries, but they are the only means of ensuring that stability takes root."

This is all very well, but is this the project of nation-building US imperialism and the British government have in mind? The project of nation-building is left undefined beyond its mechanics, and the most crucial of those mechanics which Britain and the US have in mind is ensuring that they secure a foothold in Afghanistan, that it joins the family of European-style nation-states, that it becomes viable through integrating into the globalised system of western democracies, free-market economy, human rights that presuppose the freedom of capital to exploit. In short, it is a project of annexation under the signboard of "nation-building".

A century ago Afghanistan was nominally independent but in reality all foreign policy was in the hands of Britain – the Emir was on Britain's pay-roll. Britain would like to turn back the clock and get history to repeat itself in contemporary guise. But the Newsweek article carries an implied warning to the US and Britain in saying, "Afghans have never had trouble defining themselves against outsiders ('me against my brother, my brother and me against our cousins, we and our cousins against the enemy')."

The nation-building project of the Afghan people can only be carried out by the Afghan people themselves. It is not an issue of Anglo-US imperialism or some military stabilisation force balancing ethnicities in a form chosen from outside Afghanistan. It can only take place in the context of the free and independent development of Afghanistan, the flourishing of its culture, the renewal of its traditions. The "civilised values" of Europe and America, laid out in the Paris Charter, mean nothing but the exploitation of the working people in the industrialised countries, the suppression and annexation of peoples and nations in the poor and developing world, and the extinction of genuine nation-building projects, whether in the imperialist heartlands or elsewhere.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell made his first tour of Central Asia last week, visiting Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan as part of an eight-day, nine-nation, "coalition"-building exercise that also included stops in Romania, Turkey, Belgium, Russia, Germany, France and Britain. (A scheduled stop in Kyrgyzstan was cancelled at the last minute due to bad weather.)

AFP news agency said on December 6 that whereas the Clinton administration's interest in the Central Asian states was narrowly focused on oil and gas pipelines, and the Rumsfeld Pentagon has been cultivating regional governments for immediate strategic advantage in the campaign against the Taleban and Al-Qaida, this visit by America's top diplomat suggested to many observers that the Bush administration is now looking to craft a more rounded, long-term approach toward the region.

Colin Powell arrived in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, on December 7 and held talks with Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Komilov, Defence Minister Qodir Ghulomov, and President Islam Karimov the next day, Western and Russian news agencies reported. At a joint press conference with Karimov following their meeting, Powell stated that US-Uzbek relations had been brought to a "qualitatively new level" and that American interests in Uzbekistan were long-term and broad-based, encompassing closer co-operation not only in political and security matters but in economic development and human rights, Interfax reported. Furthermore, "our interests in this region should be permanent and these relations will continue after the [Afghan] crisis," Powell said. In a letter he delivered to Karimov, read aloud on Uzbek TV on December 8, US President George W. Bush continued the theme of "developing a long-term partnership with Uzbekistan" that went beyond "the joint fight against terrorism and regimes supporting terrorists". Bush wrote that he intended to triple the amount of aid to support political and economic reforms in Uzbekistan, and invited Karimov to Washington in the coming months.

Ever since the original talk of a "qualitatively new relationship" between Washington and Tashkent with the signing of a security pact on October 7 (the day the bombing of Afghanistan began), officials from both sides have refused to comment on widespread speculation that Uzbekistan has been expecting political and financial pay-offs for its co-operation in the military campaign against the Taleban, chiefly by making the air base at Hanabad in the south of the country available to some 1,500-2,000 US troops. Thus the reference in Bush's letter to a tripling of the amount of assistance was illuminating. Moreover, on December 6 the Uzbek newspaper Narodnoye slovo printed the alleged text of an inter-governmental memorandum, signed on November 30, whereby Washington pledged to Tashkent $100 million in "additional economic and humanitarian aid and assistance in the security sphere". A further $50 million in credits was promised through the Export-Import (Ex-Im) Bank of the United States to support Uzbek small and medium-sized businesses.

The document's preamble assessed highly the "qualitatively new long-term relations developing between the two states" and the need for "consistent implementation of democratic and market reforms in Uzbekistan". While in Central Asia, Powell reminded journalists travelling with him that America would embrace nations "looking for their place in the sun" on condition of democratisation and economic liberalisation, Reuters reported on December 8. However, as Powell admitted at the press conference in Tashkent, he and Karimov had disagreed over the slow pace of democratisation in Uzbekistan yet acknowledged that closer bilateral co-operation would proceed apace nonetheless, Interfax also reported on December 8.

One tangible result of Colin Powell's talks with Islam Karimov was an agreement to reopen the Friendship Bridge on the Uzbek-Afghan frontier, Uzbek and Western news sources reported. The 1-kilometer bridge has been closed since 1996, when Taleban military gains in northern Afghanistan impelled the Uzbeks to block off the route over the Amu Darya River due to security concerns.

Colin Powell flew directly from Tashkent to the Kazakh capital, Astana, on December 8. After meeting his Kazakh counterpart, Yerlan Idrisov, Colin Powell spent two hours behind closed doors with President Nursultan Nazarbaev on December 9 and offered few details of their conversation at a subsequent joint press conference, according to Khabar TV. After noting that he was conveying an invitation to Nazarbaev to visit Bush in Washington on December 21, Powell told journalists that the possible role of Kazakh air bases, military infrastructure, and technical personnel to expedite the transport of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan had been discussed, the television reported. But he did not indicate whether Washington was going to take up Nazarbaev on his offer, made last month, to host foreign troops on Kazakh soil for the duration of the operations in Afghanistan. The Kazakh president had still received no definite request as of December 9, Reuters reported. Kazakhstan has opened its airspace to military over-flights since September.

While Powell and Nazarbaev underlined their agreement on "anti-terrorism" measures, questions about the best pipeline routes to transport Kazakh oil to Western markets brought out their differences. Powell asserted that Kazakh crude oil would be of "critical importance" for supplying Western energy requirements in upcoming years, Reuters reported on December 9. And after meeting American businessmen in Astana, Powell said that he was "particularly impressed" with the size of investments planned in the local oil sector, "in the range of $200 billion over the next five to 10 years," according to the Kazakh Embassy in Washington's news bulletin of December 11. But he reiterated that Washington would contemplate only two of the three possible export routes most commonly discussed for Caspian oil: the Caspian Pipeline Consortium pipe, officially opened last month and stretching 1,530 kilometres from Kazakhstan's Tengiz field to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiisk; and a pipeline still on the drawing board that would run from Azerbaijan to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. The third possibility, a pipeline running through Iran, remains unacceptable to Washington on political grounds, "and I see nothing in the post-September 11 that suggests we should rethink that," said Powell as quoted by Reuters.

By contrast Nazarbaev, while saying that he supported the Baku-Ceyhan route, maintained that a pipe through Iran would be "most expedient", Interfax and AFP reported. He stressed that it was not merely his opinion: "Our investors engaged in the oil business reckoned the most profitable route was through Iran and the Persian Gulf," the president said, adding, "We are interested in multiple routes."