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John explains how India is a nation of stark contrasts, and the country's richest city, Bombay, may show it best. At one extreme is a thriving business community of maritime trade, merchant banks and two stock exchanges. At the other is a city of one million humans per square mile and typified by the "rail roads" district foreigners and outsiders know nothing about. It teems with desperate people living under conditions "barely describable - a packing case for a home with sewage "ebbing and flowing in the monsoon." John asks how can a nation with memories of "great popular struggle" and democracy allow this. The answer is its leaders chose to sell its sovereignty to the neoliberal model of a global economy dominated by giant transnational corporations, especially those in the US.The rise of the Hindu nationalist (proto fascist) BJP-led government in the 1990s accelerated the process. It removed the barriers in place to protect Indian industry and opened the country to invasion by foreign predatory corporations that took full advantage. The result is a nation that could be a poster child for how an adopted economic model got it all wrong and caused mass human misery. It's seen in an increase in "absolute poverty" to over one third of the population or about 364 million people. John explains that although India's growth rate is high, "this is about capital, not labour, about liberated profits, not people." He also exposes the myth of India being a high-tech juggernaut. While the nation has risen to "pre-eminence" in computer and other technology, the new "technocratic class" is tiny. Also, the so-called consumer boom has benefitted at most about 15% of the population.
Over two thirds of the people live in rural villages and depend on small scale agriculture for their livelihood and survival. These people have been devastated by the nation's embrace of the Western economic model. It's caused a hidden epidemic of suicides among them because they can't compete with agribusiness. Those opting for a less severe solution are forced off their land in a futile attempt to seek refuge among the teeming masses in the cities. The result is growing poverty, deprivation and extreme human misery on a massive scale. Because of its huge population of over one billion, India stands out as a warning of the kind of future people everywhere will face unless a way is found to reverse a failed economic model that enriches the few, devastates the many and is strangling the ability of the planet to continue sustaining the abuse afflicted on it.
The hated apartheid may have ended in South Africa about 16 years ago, but the new neoliberal Washington Consensus was even worse. The obsession with race in a white supremacist society was replaced by the dominance and pursuit of wealth allowed only a privileged minority at the expense of the great mostly black majority. The result is that while average household income has risen for about 15% of the population (including some blacks), the overall black majority household income has fallen by about 20% making conditions today far worse than under apartheid.
The new South Africa under its heroic new president Nelson Mandela chose to embrace the Western economic model. He agreed to an "unspoken deal" that allowed the white elite to retain economic control in exchange for black majority rule that would be subservient to the former white government. The current president Thabo Mbeki cut the deal when he led a group of ANC officials in secret meetings in London between 1987 - 1990. They agreed to essentially betray their people and their 40 year struggle for freedom now lost. In came the World Bank and IMF dictating mass privatizations and structural adjustments to cut essential social services in return for financial aid. It's caused an oppressive level of debt, unemployment of about 38%, an HIV infection rate of about 20%, 40% of the schools with no electricity, 25% of the people with no access to clean water and most of those with access unable afford the cost, 60% with inadequate sanitation and 40% with no telephones. The result has been an economic apartheid replacing a legal one with the majority black population worse off today than under the political oppression of the past. It's a disturbing story of what's occurred in all countries that agreed to the Washington Consensus under which they sold their sovereignty to the interests of capital. The difference in South Africa is that the man oppressed blacks thought would win their freedom, in fact, sold them out instead.
John returned to South Africa after a 30 year absence following his expulsion by the apartheid government he abhorred. He interviewed Mandela in retirement and is nearly alone explaining the first ANC president's "ambiguity." He posed tough questions asking how could the ANC that struggled so long for freedom now have embraced "Thatcherism." Why would he allow his long-suffering people to suffer even greater harm under a system where virtually everything, including essential services, is privatized and deregulation allows big business free reign to pursue profit at the expense of the public interest. Mandela responded that "You can put any label on it you like; you can call it Thatcherite but, for this country, privatization is the fundamental policy." A sorrowful answer from a man who knows better. John also confronted Mandela about why he supported and showed deference to oppressive governments in Indonesia, Burma, Algeria, Colombia and Peru and even ordered a bloody invasion of neighboring tiny Lesotho. Again the answer he got was none too impressive and from a man who once was and still is in important ways a giant in the fight for social equity and justice.
Once again John shows how he discovered on his return that the spirit of resistance had survived. He found it among numerous "social movement" and allied organizations that he called the most "sophisticated and dynamic in the world." They've forged links to international human rights and anti-capitalist movements along with independent trade unionists. He said what South Africa has in abundance is a force called "ubuntu" - "a humanism that is never still.....a subtle concept....that says a person's humanity is expressed through empathy and solidarity with others; through community and standing together." It's what Steve Biko called "authentic black communalism." It's in that spirit that John hopes the future of South Africa lies.
Chapter Five: Liberating Afghanistan - the US Inflicted Nightmare on Another Long-Suffering People
John begins describing Afghanistan like it's more a moonscape than a functioning country - Kabul streets with "contours of rubble rather than streets, where people live in collapsed buildings, like earthquake victims waiting for rescue......(with) no light or heat." It's an age-old story for these beleaguered people who've had a long history of conflict and suffering with little relief ever. For almost a century the country was victimized by the "Great Game" of competition between the British empire vying with Tsarist Russia for control of this part of the world. In recent history, it paid dearly again in the 1980s when a US recruited mujahedin guerrilla army battled against a Soviet occupation. It forced the occupiers out but only at the expense of a ravaged country that never recovered throughout the 1990s as a brutal civil conflict followed the Soviet withdrawal. Then came 9/11 and the US inflicted nightmare that continues to this day with no end in sight.
John explains that Afghanistan today is what the CIA called during the Vietnam war "the grand illusion of the American cause." While Kabul has some freedoms denied by the Taliban, the rest of the country has virtually none. In place of the Taliban, who've begun a resurgence, are the brutal regional "warlords" that human rights groups say have "essentially hijacked the country." The nation is a war zone and failed narco-state with regional "warlords" and drug kingpins controlling everything outside the capitol. The country's US selected and nominal president Hamid Karzai (a former CIA asset) is a caricature of a man and willing stooge who's little more than the mayor of Kabul. He has no mandate or support and wouldn't last a day on his own without the heavy protection afforded him round the clock by the US military.
Life was no bed of roses under the Taliban. But despite their ultra-puritanical ways and harsh treatment for the disobedient, at least they kept order and wouldn't tolerate banditry, rape or murder. They also virtually ended opium production. Now all that's changed. The US-British invasion in 2001 ended the ban on opium production, allowed the "warlords" to replant and the result is that 87% of the world trade in this drug is from these fields. In addition, unemployment is soaring at about 45%; there's been little reconstruction; the poverty is overwhelming; there's little electricity, clean water or most other essential services; lawlessness is back; Sharia law has been reinstated; the internal conflict has resumed; and no one is safe either from the country's warring factions or from the hostile occupying force. In addition, the Taliban have reclaimed parts of southern Afghanistan and are gaining supporters among the people fed up with the misery inflicted on them by the US and multinational force invaders. It may just be a matter of time before the violence again explodes into another catastrophic guerrilla war just like in Iraq. Already it seems to be beginning.
So what was the invasion and occupation all about? We now know it was planned before 9/11 and had nothing to do with a Muslim fundamentalist government that treated its people harshly. It had everything to do with an Afghan leadership that wouldn't surrender its authority to US demands and its imperial quest to dominate this strategically important region. It was explained earlier by former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski under President Carter in his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard. He referred to Eurasia as the "center of world power extending from Germany and Poland in the East through Russia and China to the Pacific and including the Middle East and Indian subcontinent. By dominating this region, the US would assure itself control of a vast supply of energy and other essential resources. Afghanistan was a key part of the plan as it was across this country that the US wanted to build the oil pipelines needed to transship the Caspian basin oil to deep water ports where it could easily be shipped to the parts of the world the US would allow it to go.
At first the US was very content to work with the Taliban when they were in power. As long as it was felt a deal with them was possible, their religious extremism and human rights abuses were of no concern. It was only when agreement couldn't be reached that the decision was taken to remove them. And that brings us to the present. The country is in ruins, the conflict continues without end, and the people are suffering more than ever with no visible hope on the horizon for relief.
John wrote his book to document the history of imperial abuse he witnessed first-hand in five countries. But he also wants it to be a message of the hope he found that may one day lead to the same rebirth of democracy and social equity now growing in parts of Latin America like Venezuela. He finds courageous and dedicated people everywhere, even in Afghanistan where conditions are so bad it's hard finding any. He said that "Through all the humanitarian crises in living memory, no country has been abused and suffered more, and none has been helped less, than Afghanistan." It's still that way and seemingly getting worse. Unless it changes, a time of peace and an end to the violence and suffering of the Afghan people is a long way off at best. And yet hope persists. John finds it everywhere in the hearts of people who'll never give up the struggle for the fair and just world they want and are fighting to get.
A Summation
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