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SOUNDING BOARD
WHERE COMMON SENSE IS STILL COMMON
 


SOUNDING BOARD
Tuesday, January 28, 2003
_____________________________________________
 

The issue of trust and the weapons inspection

Amidst the tension in the Security Council over the progress report covering the work of the UN weapons inspectors, Hans Blix expressed frustration with Iraq's failure to make Iraqi scientists available for unmonitored interviews. Blix said Iraq had provided him with an incomplete list of nearly 500 Iraqi scientists associated with Iraq's weapons programs, a far cry from the list of more than 3,500 individuals gathered from previous inspections. To this, Blix remarked, "Inspection... is a process of verification for the purpose of creating confidence. It is not built on the premise of trust. Rather, it is designed to lead to trust" (Washington Post 28 January 2003, p. A01).

You don't have to read the blow-by-blow accounts everyday to get the sense of distrust by the US-led council of war, on one hand, and Iraq, on the other. The inadequate cooperation of Iraq to the inspections also seem to signify a certain level of distrust of Iraq on the independence of the inspectors to some hawkish members of the Security Council. Extending the statement of Mr. Blix, it should be understood as, "Right now, you don't trust us, we don't trust you. But cooperating fully may convince us to have a certain level of trust to keep this inspection on track. So let us interview those scientists in private, damn it."

Maybe the last line should not be mentioned at all.


posted by Allan at 11:59 AM (GMT+8)
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SOUNDING BOARD
Friday, January 17, 2003
_____________________________________________
 

A critical affirmation of affirmative action

President George W. Bush called the University of Michigan's admissions policies as fundamentally flawed and resolved to challenge it before the Supreme Court. President Bush was particularly referring to the university's policies that award students a significant number of extra points based solely on their race and establish numerical targets for incoming minority students. Read the full text of his speech.

As this is one of the most contentious debates in international politics, it is necessary to define affirmative action and its implications.

Cahn (The Affirmative Action Debate. 1995. New York: Routledge, Inc., p. xi) defines affirmative action as “taking appropriate steps to eradicate the then widespread practices of racial, religious, and ethnic discrimination”. Newman (Affirmative Action and the Courts. In: F.A. Blanchard and F.J. Crosby, eds. Affirmative Action in Perspective. 1989. New York: Springer-Verlag., p. 32) makes specific reference to affirmative action as “… any race- or sex-conscious employment practices devised with the intention of redressing past racial or gender imbalances and injustices”. Taylor (Reverse Discrimination and Compensatory Justice. In: S.M. Cahn, ed. The Affirmative Action Debate. 1995. New York: Routledge, Inc., p. 9-14) characterizes these measures as reverse discrimination and compensatory justice “carried out by organized agencies of the central government representing the whole people”. The underlying assumption here is that societal injustice can only be corrected by societal compensation.

These definitions share important attributes, namely: (1) society has committed discrimination in the past against a particular group of population; (2) government has adopted an objective of eradicating discrimination; and (3) society needs to take appropriate steps to end discriminatory practices and correct the imbalances that resulted from past discrimination.

These “correction” processes done in the past decades necessitated governments to implement programs that favor a particular population group. This is done by implementing focused programs with targets or quota on skills training, school admissions, employment, military service and public service (Newman, J., 1989. Affirmative Action and the Courts. In: F.A. Blanchard and F.J. Crosby, eds. Affirmative Action in Perspective. 1989. New York: Springer-Verlag, p. 35-42). These are the outputs of affirmative action. Thus, for those directly favored by affirmative action programs, we would expect to see an overall increase over time in skills training, school admissions, and employment levels, among others. The experiences of the United States in past decades seem to be consistent with this expectation (Stephanopolous and Edley 1995).

In addition to the rationale presented above, what we should not neglect is the transitory nature of affirmative action programs. It is always necessary to have goals and timetables to correct imbalances, and reviewed periodically. However, one thing should be clear --- whether in the name of affirmative action or not, decisions to give benefits to unqualified over qualified individuals is unconstitutional.


posted by Allan at 2:45 PM (GMT+8)
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SOUNDING BOARD
Tuesday, January 14, 2003
_____________________________________________
 

Understanding terrorism in the Philippines in the context of "soft power"

In "The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone", Joseph S. Nye, Jr. presents a framework that emphasizes "soft power" rather than hard power. Hard power in US context is military and economic power, while soft power is the ability to co-opt rather than coerce. It rests on the ability to shape the political agenda by influencing the preferences of others. It influences the mindset of people, gain more support and hence legitimizes government actions. He places great importance on trust in government, and argues that soft power can be eroded if people lose confidence in institutions.

To illustrate this further, he explained how power is distributed through a pattern that resembles a complex three-dimensional chess game. On the top board, military power is unipolar. US is the only remaining superpower. On the middle board, economic power is multipolar, with US competing in the world market with Europe, Japan, China and the rest of the economic players. The bottom board is the most complicated. It is where power is dispersed. Non-state actors participate on the bottom board and actions generate cross-border effects. Nye argues that developing foreign policy, which do not consider all three boards, e.g., unilateralism, is inadequate and bound to fail.

Applying Nye’s analytical framework in a national context, there are three levels by which the Arroyo government’s intervention in the area of counter-terrorism must take note of: (1) military strategy; (2) poverty alleviation; and (3) targeted communications and advocacy. On the top board, government’s military power is largely unipolar. Government usually makes decisions on its own in terms of military campaigns. The middle board is the economic board, and in here, government must cooperate with partners within the government (central Bank with Finance, for example), in the private sector, as well as multinational corporations. The bottom chessboard is where government is only one among the many competitors. This is the area where non-state actors (NGOs, student organizations, media, etc.) dominate and where interest groups battle for the control of development agenda. This is also where much of advocacy of terrorists are done. Because government does not wield too much power in this area, terrorists can gain public support and recruit possible members to their cause. Those who recommend only military campaign and poverty alleviation are clearly missing the bottom board. This is where non-state actors are strong, and hence, government needs to collaborate with other non-state actors to undermine the appeal of terrorists.

Trust in government is important in strengthening soft power. At the bottom board, it becomes more and more important for government institutions to be trusted by the people for doing something good for the community – bringing hope back to their lives. One way to do this is to involve the marginalized groups in economic and political reforms to give them voice. Exposing them to various channels of information and education can strengthen their participation in the community. Government must intervene to bridge the alienation and polarization of marginalized sectors. Hernando De Soto explains in an interview that the Shining path terrorists in Peru was defeated by their Institute of Liberty and Democracy not on the battlefield, but ideologically. They opened up their legal system to people’s participation and their entrepreneurship.

Peru’s experience of trust-building and encouraging participation also shows the potential to bring poverty alleviation and military campaign a step closer to being more effective in addressing terrorism. Building trust in and interaction with government further legitimizes military campaigns and makes poverty alleviation efforts more effective in reducing terrorist recruitment. In turn, effective military campaigns make poverty alleviation, and targeted communications and advocacy possible in conflict-ridden areas. In addition, poverty alleviation, in itself, makes targeted communications and advocacy more credible. Thus, these three approaches are mutually reinforcing. As in the three-dimensional chess board, the effectiveness of one approach depends on the ability to play “all three boards”.

The Philippine government's counter-terrorism effort could not be divorced from the reforms in the armed forces. Strengthening the trust of the people in the military is crucial in reducing recruitment appeal by the Abu Sayyaf. Military abuse is one of the reasons fueling the Moro insurgency (Gloria, G. and Vitug, M., 2000. Under the Crescent Moon). Improvement of the image of the armed forces also plays a crucial role in trust building, and therefore, must be done side-by-side with counter-terrorism efforts. Otherwise, people’s distrust of the armed forces may very well facilitate terrorists’ efforts in "countering counter-terrorism".


posted by Allan at 12:54 PM (GMT+8)
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Current counter-terrorism "policy" of the Philippines

The United States Code, Title 22, Section 265f (d) defines terrorism as “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetuated against noncombatant targets by substantial groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience”. The US Department of State lists the Abu Sayyaf Group and Communist Party of the Philippines/New People’s Army (CPP/NPA) as foreign terrorist organizations.

Malacañang, however, does not base its counter-terrorism operations on the US list. This is evident on how Malacañang treats Abu Sayyaf differently with the government’s two primary insurgent groups – the Communist Party of the Philippines/New People’s Army (CPP/NPA) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). The Abu Sayyaf is the only target of Malacañang’s counter-terrorism strategies. While CPP-NPA is also in White House’s list of foreign terrorist organizations, Malacañang seems to be treating the group as a local communist movement, and hence, does not totally close its doors on CPP-NPA with respect to a possible peace agreement. The peace negotiations with the CPP-NPA were discontinued in June 2002 due to the group’s assassination of two members of the House of Representatives. Despite this, Malacañang is still conducting back-channel negotiations with the rebels. Even with the recent move of Malacañang to request the European Union to brand the NPA as a terrorist organization, still, the objective is to bring the insurgents back to the negotiating table.

Just like the CPP/NPA, Malacañang intends to achieve peace with the MILF through dialogue, negotiations, redressing grievances and provision of resources to poor Muslim communities. The government’s policy also stresses that sovereignty and territorial integrity will never be compromised (MTPDP 2001). This means that a separate “Islamic state” is out of the question. MILF demands a separate territory where Koran will be followed and not a “man-made constitution” (Gloria, G. and Vitug, M., 2000. Under the Crescent Moon). Despite this, Malacañang’s current policy for MILF is summed up in Ms. Arroyo’s instruction to “keep the communication lines open”. This treatment is not accorded to Abu Sayyaf. In fact, even though Malacañang does not have an anti-terrorism policy, it has a clear policy with respect to the Abu Sayyaf Group: it targets to “annihilate Abu Sayyaf by 2003” (NEDA 2001).


posted by Allan at 10:58 AM (GMT+8)
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SOUNDING BOARD
Saturday, January 11, 2003
_____________________________________________
 

Terrorism in the Philippines: understanding the roots

The previous post highlights the need to look beyond poverty alleviation as THE solution to terrorism in the Philippines. This crucial perspective becomes more important when juxtaposed with the history of Abu Sayyaf.

The Abu Sayyaf Group operates in an environment marked with an Islamic insurgency that traces its roots from the guerrilla war for independence in 1970 – when the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) was formed. The MNLF was founded around 1970, conducted a guerrilla war for independence. It once enjoyed support from Libya, Saudi Arabia, and nearby Malaysia. The MNLF originally demanded an independent Muslim state in the south, but over time, its goal shifted to autonomy within the Philippines. The MNLF reached a peace agreement with the Philippine government in 1996, which led to the establishment of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao. A faction in MNLF rejected the peace agreement and was not satisfied with the creation of ARMM. They continuously push for the creation of a Mindanao Islamic Republic. This has lead to the creation of this splinter group – the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) – which is more religiously oriented than MNLF and emphasizes the promotion of Islamic ideals (Chalk 2001; Gloria, G. and Vitug, M., 2000. Under the Crescent Moon).

The Abu Sayyaf was born in 1989 and is loosely organized along a cell structure. This group is a combination of dissidents from MNLF and those who had fought with the Afghan rebels against the Soviet Union (Niksch 2002). The Abu Sayyaf’s overall aim is to establish an independent and exclusive Islamic Theocratic State in Mindanao (S. S. Misra 2002). This group is totally different from MILF. The MILF merely wants independence while Abu Sayyaf espouses religious intolerance and killing of civilians (including women, children and elderly) especially non-Muslims. The majority of the group’s members are Muslim youths between 16 to 30 years old. Abu Sayyaf has also engaged in massive kidnapping-for-ransom activities, extortion and marijuana cultivation. Recently, these activities of the Abu Sayyaf have given a bad name to the Philippines across the globe.

The understanding of the distinctions discussed above is very crucial in defining the strategies of the government in dealing with Abu Sayyaf, MNLF and MILF. Whether or not the present government recognizes the extent of the differences mentioned is another matter.


posted by Allan at 6:51 PM (GMT+8)
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SOUNDING BOARD
Thursday, January 09, 2003
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The key to tackling JI and terrorism as a whole

In a recent article entitled "Tackling Terror", TIME Asia stressed that collaboration among Asia's governments is crucial in winning the war against terror, with special slant on Jemaah Islamiah. It lies in common counterterrorism intelligence databases, exchange of personnel, transfer of expertise, joint operations, and sharing of experience. The article also draw attention to the need to tackle the roots of terrorism. Governments need to ensure that Muslim communities in their countries are not marginalized.

This focus on addressing marginalization (distinct from poverty per se) is the lacking ingredient the counter-terrorism strategy of the Philippines. Confronted by the series of terroristic activities of the Abu Sayyaf, Ms. Arroyo's words reveal how shallow she understands the situation.

The fight against terrorism is intertwined with the fight against poverty. Terrorism is caused by evil. Evil can spread its ideology when people are poor” (San Francisco Chronicle, 25 November 2001).

However, there is a need to recognize interplay of other factors other than poverty. While it is undeniably important, addressing poverty is only a piece of the puzzle. In fact the arrest of 21 Singaporeans in August 2002 for terrorism-related activities allegedly under the Jemaah Islamiah further puts the poverty-terrorism link into question. The 21 detainees all earned decent wages and owned their houses. Specifically, 14 of them earned between S$ 1,500 and S$ 3,000 (1 Singapore $ roughly equals 30 pesos), with one of them earning more than S$ 5,000 per month (Straits Times, 27 September 2002). Employing poverty alleviation as a counterterrorism strategy in this case will not certainly make a dent. Peru's case also weakens the poverty-terrorism link. Peru was able to downplay the appeal of the Shining Path terrorist group. This was done not through military pressure or poverty alleviation but through interacting with the people and opening the legal system for people’s participation and entrepreneurship.

Addressing poverty is important, but, like military action, it is not enough. The experiences of Peru and Singapore serve as lessons for the Arroyo government to look at poverty alleviation only as one part of the important components of a counter-terrorism strategy. And if Ms. Arroyo would like to attain her ambitious short term target to eliminate Abu Sayyaf by 2003 and arrive at a long term solution to terrorism in the Philippines, she needs to look at the problem in a holistic manner.


posted by Allan at 7:57 PM (GMT+8)
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SOUNDING BOARD
Wednesday, January 08, 2003
_____________________________________________
 

China's aid to Burma: prospects for political and economic reforms

President Jiang Zemin of China says China will offer Burma US$200 million in preferential loans for economic development. He made the statement during a visit of the Burmese leader General Than Shwe to Beijing. Is this good or bad? Let's see.

China is Burma's closest ally since the military coup in 1988. This alliance has made China the biggest supplier of Burma's military hardware. China is also Burma's third largest trading partner, after Singapore and Thailand. This, however, does not take into account informal trade across their common border.

Burma relies heavily on China for its hardwre and trade because of its limited trade with other countries (especially western countries) owing to its poor human rights record, including the mass rape of women by military officials.

Is it merely coincidence that China also has poor human rights record? Nevertheless, as we see China rising on the economic horizon, it becomes more important to see this as a way to fast-track political and economic reform in Burma. A strong and globalized Chinese economy means less dependence on arms trade. No matter how bleak, there seems to be a diplomatic way out of this. It may be faster if only Burma has oil.


posted by Allan at 5:04 PM (GMT+8)
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SOUNDING BOARD
Saturday, January 04, 2003
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Break from politics: some odd news

These young car thieves need more training - an even more basic one. The carnap could have worked well, except they forgot one thing: they don't know how to drive a stick shift. I guess they don't make them like they used to? I'm referring to the thieves, of course.

A commercial laundry staff washing hospital linens found a human foot on Friday. I could just imagine how surprised the staff was. Any claims from your patients, doc?


posted by Allan at 2:44 PM (GMT+8)
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“Government of national unity”: the implication of an inside-track reform

Right after her shocking declaration that she is not running for election in 2004, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has approved the formation of a "unity government" that includes all opposition parties as well as communist and Muslim separatist rebel groups, House Speaker Jose De Venecia Jr. said Thursday. The following day, Malacanang was quick to clarify that while President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is open to the idea of a unity government, she does not agree with the details expounded by Speaker de Venecia. The President said the government of national unity should be "program-oriented rather than people-centered".

The idea seems to be well-received generally by most sectors. However, whether it is the De Venecia (personality-based) or Arroyo formula (program-based, which Malacanang has not explained very well yet), Malacanang has not yet managed to go beyond the conceptual notion of a unity government. In principle, SOUNDING BOARD finds the idea laudable in terms of finding ways to widen access and participation of critical sectors. The big hurdle is how to do it, or whether the Arroyo government can ever work at all with that setup. And it is in this context that this issue of SOUNDING BOARD takes an opposing view.

The current discussions are only focusing on the tip of the iceberg. There is a deeper and more fundamental flaw in the thinking of government with respect to participation of different sectors. If we go deeper, we will quickly notice an implicit message behind the “unity government”: if you want reforms, join us. If you find nothing wrong with the previous statement, you are either Jose De Venecia, Jr., Gloria Arroyo or anyone from Malacanang.

Influencing policies from outside is the essence of democracy. This power is inherent in the people themselves. In the case of Philippine democracy, being able to influence policies was what the Filipino people fought for when they topple the Marcos dictatorship. It is what the people are continuously fighting for – the right, power and ability to have a say on the things that influence their lives. If the current government believes that a strong republic is best done by bringing all critical forces in the cabinet, the President should reconsider De Venecia’s proposal. It is wrong. Doing that highlights a major weakness of the government to let critical stakeholders effectively influence policies as members of civil society. Doing that implies that the current government’s idea of democratic governance is one where reforms emanate and focus within government. The country needs a more efficient and effective way of governance – one that does not necessarily require a “unity government” but one that is founded on people empowerment and trust.

Like “Plan 747”, the “unity government” is another strategy that carries the stamp of De Venecia – no wonder they both carry the same trait: hollow. If the system itself is the problem, the solution is definitely not to join it – reform it.


posted by Allan at 1:51 PM (GMT+8)
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