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March 15, 2010

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Commentary Week In Review

Guy Taylor | Bio | 11 Aug 2007

The Commentary Week in Review is posted on the blog every Friday. Drawing from more than two dozen English-language news outlets worldwide, the column highlights a handful of the week's notable op-eds.

World Bank-Rolling Iran

Mark Kirk pointed out in the August 10 Washington Post that while both the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency have found Iran in breach of its obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the World Bank continues to fund projects in Iran.

According to Kirk, a Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives, the World Bank is presently funding "nine government projects in Iran totaling $1.35 billion -- one of which operates in Isfahan, where Iran's nuclear program is headquartered."

"The United States remains the top investor in the World Bank, contributing $950 million in 2006 and $940 million this year," wrote Kirk, who concluded that "one has to wonder why [Iran, which] exports 2.6 million barrels of oil a day needs World Bank development assistance."

Mexico's Growing Drug Mess

"Entire states fell under the influence of the drug lords" last year in Mexico, where, according to Ralph Peters' assessment in the August 9 New York Post , "narcotraficante infighting took over 3,000 lives."

"Imagine if our country were so ravaged by drug cartels that the president sent the military into a third of the states to break the terror," wrote Peters. "That's where Mexico is today."

He argued that in response to the problem:

Mexicans elected a tough president, Felipe Calderon. And President Calderon took action, ordering the army into nine states and deploying troops to cities such as Tijuana and the run-down resort of Acapulco. But the drug lords are fighting back. Today, the level of violence transcends mere crime. Mexico faces a narco-insurrection. And its government needs help. The Bush administration is working with Calderon's team to craft a counter-drug aid package that would provide surveillance equipment, transport aircraft and training. The program could be announced when the leaders of the U.S., Mexico and Canada meet in Quebec on Aug. 20. The finalized program will probably cost several hundred million dollars.

"Money well spent," according to Peters.

Lesson From Colombia

Speaking of international narco-politics, Sue Branford argued in the August 9 New Statesman that "as the Bush administration increases pressure on Afghanistan to use extensive aerial spraying to destroy the opium crop in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai should heed the lessons from Colombia."

Branford explained:

For the past seven years the US-funded "war against drugs" [in Colombia] has been symbolised by the picture of a single-engined plane swooping down over peasant farms and dousing crops with powerful defoliants. Now, after a largely wasted outlay of $4.7bn, coca crops are once again to be eradicated manually. This policy U-turn amounts to a public admission of what has long been obvious: Colombia's anti-narcotics programme, Plan Colombia, has failed. In 2006, after the most intensive use of aerial spraying in the country's history, the area under coca cultivation increased to 157,200 hectares, one of the largest ever recorded.

Furthermore, according to Branford:

Secrecy surrounds the exact chemical formula of the defoliant used, but it is believed to have been Roundup Ultra, mixed with other additives to increase toxicity. Elsa Nivia, director of the Colombian branch of Pesticides Action Network, has calculated that this chemical mixture was 104 times more toxic than the Roundup commonly used by gardeners. ...The Colombian government has persistently refused to investigate the effect of their defoliant on the local population. Studies in Ecuador, however, show that families living near the frontier suffered long-term damage to their DNA as a result of defoliant blown over the border by the wind and the Ecuadorian government is suing Colombia in the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

Branford also noted that "coincidentally, the new U.S. ambassador in Kabul, William Wood, was ambassador to Colombia from 2003 to 2007. Claiming that aerial spraying worked in Colombia, he has even contracted the same private contractor, DynCorp, to repeat the job in Afghanistan."

Darfur Peace Without Western Intervention?

"Peace and some respite for Darfur's displaced millions seem closer this week than they have for a long time," according to Jonathan Steele, who wrote in the August 10 Guardian that "the breakthrough is due not so much to the latest UN resolution to create a larger foreign peacekeeping force as to the success of talks between the rival rebel groups."

"They seem to have agreed on a common platform to put to the Khartoum government in full-scale negotiations within the next few weeks," wrote Steele. While his article included a thorough breakdown of the rival groups and what's at stake for them, it was also packed with some eye-popping assertions about the conflict and how it and other wars, including that in Afghanistan, are perceived in the West.

For instance, he wrote that:

The Darfur crisis has suffered from two problems. One is the exaggerated and sometimes almost hysterical tone in which it tends to be discussed. It is not "the greatest humanitarian disaster the world faces today", as was claimed even by Britain's usually cautious new prime minister last week. Iraq, where 8 million people need emergency aid, more than 3 million have fled from their homes in the last two years and about a thousand are dying of violence every month, is more grim. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, in spite of a fragile peace deal, as many as 1,200 people are estimated by humanitarian agencies to be dying every day. In Darfur, 2 million people have been displaced and up to 200,000 may have died. This does not mean Darfur is not a huge tragedy, but that the situation there has changed. The problems of 2003 and 2004, when the Sudanese airforce was regularly bombing villages, are not the same now. Far more civilians are dying from Nato airstrikes in Afghanistan. Critics who demand that French or U.S. planes shoot down Sudanese military aircraft should consider calling for a no-fly zone in Helmand province.

Make Them Pay to Drive in the City

Cameron Munro argued in the August 7 Washington Post that the "congestion charge" on motorists in central London "has brought substantial benefits to those who live and work in London -- whether they drive or take mass transit -- and it could do the same in traffic-clogged cities in the United States."

The way it works, according to Munro:

London drivers are charged the equivalent of $16 per day for traveling into the center of the city between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m. on weekdays. They can pay the charge by phone, on the Internet and in many stores. They can even set up accounts so they don't have to remember to pay the charge every day they travel into the zone. ...[The] charge, which began in 2003, doesn't need big toll plazas. Instead, the system is enforced using some 700 cameras across 200 sites in the charging zone. ...Life for those working and living inside the London zone has improved through the reduction in traffic and lowering of dangerous pollution, which exceeds accepted health standards in central London and many U.S. cities.

With a congestion charging proposal currently pending for New York City, Munro argued that "if it goes into effect in New York City and is as successful there as it has been in London, other congested cities across the United States might adopt similar plans."

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