Features
The 9/11 cataclysm and the lag in democratic development
It continues to be in the fitness of things for the world to solemnly recollect the mindless terror attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York on September 11, 2001, the Pentagon and one other target in the US since the world cannot afford to forget or condone the wanton shedding of civilian blood for whatever ‘cause’.
Considering that politically-motivated violence and terror constitute a principal threat to democracy, the thought that the democratic world needs to stand up “every single day” for its cherished system of governance is something to be nourished in the collective consciousness of the practitioners of democracy the world over.
There is also no denying that the democratic world needs to, if possible, muster its resources collectively to militarily neutralize terror threats from wherever they may emanate in the short and medium terms in particular. However, it will be in the interests of democratic opinion to initiate long term measures of a democratic and peaceful nature to contain terrorism at its roots.
It is democracy and its core values that usually prove effective in managing terror on a long term basis. Military efforts are at best effective in the short term but the yearning of sensible opinion everywhere is for long lasting peace and security. Thus far, it has been only the democratic system of government and its connected institutions that have proved most effective in containing terrorism.
However, the sound establishment of democracy and the fostering of its core values and institutions usually prove arduous in the global South in particular. Some of the factors that hinder the establishment of democracy in Southern cultures are feudalistic practices and values, identity politics, personalism and male dominance. Democratic development essentially involves the removing of these barriers and the fostering of people-centred, participatory governance, which is what people’s sovereignty usually refers to.
Needless to say, not many countries of the South have made any substantial progress towards the establishment of democracy in the terms outlined above. In the case of South Asia, with the exception of India, no other country professing to be democratic could be described as making any headway in the process of democratic development.
Now that ‘economic crimes’ are very much in the news, it would be relevant to point out that economic hardships coupled with inequalities play a key role in hindering democratic development. If religious identity and issues linked to it, for example, are thriving in regions such as South Asia, it is because economic grievances are seized by hard line religious opinion, to make partisan appeals to communities with a view to coming to power through a mobilization of such groups. For instance, such hardliners may adopt the point of view that their communities are in economic misery on account of their religious identity. In fact, such opinion mobilization efforts lay the basis for communalism and ethnic extremism. Democratic development suffers in the process.
That this is the case ought to be obvious to Sri Lankans, for instance. Sri Lanka’s ethnic and religious turmoil derives mainly from the strategy of chauvinistic political leaders of one community denigrating other communities as being responsible for the material hardships suffered by their groups. This has been the case since the 1950s and such tendencies continue to thrive.
Afghanistan points to the extreme lengths to which demonizing ‘others’ may be taken by groups that flourish on the creation and the sustaining of religious and ethnic divisions. The al-Qaeda which was responsible for the mind-numbing twin-tower blast in New York was a creature of such divisive processes. Ironically, it is a creation of the CIA because it initially manifested itself as the Afghan Mujahedin.
The latter was armed by the US during the 10-year long Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. However, the Soviet invasion was made use of by the Mujahedin to demonize the Soviets and to later become a law unto itself. Initially the Soviets and later the US were projected as the blood-sucking ‘Other’. This has helped in bolstering the cause of the Taliban and the al-Qaeda, both progeny of the Mujahedin, against the West.
Considering these complex realities of the South, it could be said that democratic development is a long uphill struggle in the hemisphere. The best that the West could do is help out Southern states in their democratization efforts. Socio-economic development is one such area of North-South engagement and numerous are the Western organizations that are already figuring in these endeavours. Since economic advancement is a key to ending Southern strife and terror, there is no denying that this is the way to go for the West.
However, the West risks overturning all the good it could achieve through the above processes by militarily involving itself in the South. It’s time for the West to figure out as to what positives it has achieved through its military misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, for instance. Today both these countries are in the throes of implosive violence. Western military intervention has achieved almost nothing substantial.
Thanks to resourceful Western journalists, such as Patrick Cockburn, the world knows the ‘inside stories’ of endemic civilian suffering amid the Western military interventions of Iraq and Afghanistan. His voluminous on-the-spot account of the Western military involvement in Iraq in particular in ‘The Age of Jihad’ (a Verso publication) lays bare the heart-rending details. It is clear that the invaded and the invader suffered grievously in equal measure.Accordingly, democratic development is no easy road to traverse for governments of the South as well as for Western development organizations that show eagerness to help them out, but it is the preferred alternative to the seeming quick-fix of military intervention which further intensifies war and conflict.