15 - 21 November 2001
Issue No.560
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 15 - 21 November 2001 Issue No.560 |
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Negotiating 'on the moon'
Although the anti-globalisation movement was reduced to a skeletal presence at the World Trade Organisation ministerial meeting in Doha, dissent reverberated in the conference halls, writes Faiza Rady
Shadows of the war against terrorism in Afghanistan -- replete with menacing images of bogeyman Osama Bin Laden -- loomed large over the World Trade Organisation (WTO) ministerial conference in Doha, Qatar, this week. The chilling backdrop effect provided the Bush administration, and their allies, with the righteous purpose and the imminent sense of urgency to breeze through the WTO meeting -- no questions asked.
The US special Trade Representative at the WTO, Robert Zoellich, said as much when he declared that international trade was part and parcel of the fight against terrorism. "Trade promotes the values which are central to this long- term struggle," asserted Zoellich.
Killing two birds with one stone, the Bush administration wrapped up the neo-liberal market economy with the war against terrorism in one neat little package: two for one. "What we are witnessing is trade being 'bundled' (Microsoft-style) inside the with-us-or-against- us logic of the war on terrorism," commented Canadian writer and activist Naomi Klein.
The Pentagon, backed by Qatar's security forces, laid out the groundwork for the trade-terrorism merger. Put on high alert, the United States navy and the local police swiftly transformed the glitzy desert oasis into a fortified garrison. Courtesy of the US helicopter ship Peleliu (whose jump jets lately served to bomb Afghanistan) and two other vessels gliding across the Gulf of Qatar with 2,100 marines on board, the American and European delegations were provided with adequate security. Nevertheless, and just in case Bin Laden and his evil cohorts would seize the day to unleash biological warfare against the neo- liberal crowd, their opponents and everybody else, US security services provided the Americans and a selected few among the attending Western delegations with gas masks, protective gear and mobile phones in case they had to be evacuated.
The locals were used for backup. Thousands of heavily-armed Qatari police neatly dressed in blue camouflage patrolled the streets to guard the foreign dignitaries.
Discounting the mythical Bin Laden and his menacing Al-Qa'eda footsoldiers, the anti-globalisation movement posed no threat to the powers that be. Reduced to a skeletal presence in Doha, where accredited NGOs were allowed one sole representative, and visa applications were routinely denied, only some 500 representatives managed to slip in. Activist Anuradha Mittal of Food First, a US-based development NGO, deplored the social and political vacuum. "This is very different from Seattle where voices of the working poor, family farmers, unions, women activists and others sent a clear message to the WTO: your unaccountable and unparticipatory practices that have unleashed economic warfare on the poor are unacceptable," said Mittal.
Marginalised and muted in Doha -- a country that the US State Department' latest report, incidentally, denounced for its repression of human rights and gross curtailment of democratic freedoms -- the anti-globalisation movement silently protested against the hijacking of their right to dissent. Denied entrance to the conference hall, some 50 delegates staged a silent sit-in with their mouths gagged and "No Voice" placards held high. Meanwhile. French farmers' trade union leader and anti-globalisation activist, José Bove, railed against the free- marketeers' muzzling of the movement. "They are cut off from reality and might just as well be convening on the moon," fumed Bove.
Inside the conference halls, Southern delegates, however, refused to "convene on the moon." Leading the way, African delegations protested against the draft declaration's disregard of their positions.
Although officials have loudly pledged to reform and introduce democracy, transparency and Third World demands into the WTO, the situation is largely unchanged. The North continues to maintain its stranglehold over the organisation and real partnership among nations remains elusive. A case in point is the unilateral and exclusionary decision-making process. The draft declaration that is designed to provide the basis for launching a new round of future negotiations was written during two exclusive meetings: in Mexico in August and in Singapore last month. Although the trade body has a membership of 142 nations, with alleged equal participatory status -- there is no such thing in the real world. Only 21 nations, hand-picked among the world's richest and most powerful, were admitted to the WTO ministerial preparatory meetings in Mexico and Singapore. Consequently, this rich nations' club produced a draft tailored to address their own interests -- at the expense of Southern demands. The text was then passed on to be rubber-stamped by the other nations. They were not allowed to make substantive changes.
Another point of crucial contention for countries of the South concerns the so- called free market. Spearheaded by the US, Northern countries have imposed deregulation on the South for the past two decades, while consistently refusing to open up their own markets to Southern agriculture. While lauding the virtues of market liberalisation sky-high, the US and the EU continue to maintain an entrenched system of state subsidies. In the US, this applies to virtually all sectors of the economy. "The pharmaceutical industry, biotechnology, agribusiness and services rely upon and demand public subsidy, while instructing others on the virtues of economic rationality," comments political writer Noam Chomsky.
In the rich OECD countries, agricultural subsidies comprise 45 per cent of the value of all production, reports the Friends of the Development Box (FDB), an umbrella of Southern development NGOs. "Small farmers in developing countries simply cannot compete in this unfair environment," reads the FDB statement. At Doha, with the future of Southern agriculture hanging in the balance, Third World ministers fought hard to protect the sector. And for the first time since Seattle, the North felt the heat. In the words of one official: "The big guys are coming under heavy pressure and it's coming at them from all directions."
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