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US trade policies risk fueling
terrorism
By Emad Mekay
WASHINGTON - United States trade policy could be
isolating Muslim countries, including those that joined
Washington in its self-styled war on terror, deepening
poverty and increasing social dissatisfaction, which are
fertile grounds for anti-US sentiment, says a leading
think tank in the capital.
According to the
Washington-based Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), a
conservative Democratic organization, US free trade
initiatives are under way in most areas of the globe,
except for the western Muslim world and the
least-developed parts of Asia.
In a statement,
PPI said that its most recent report on trade issues,
"Blank Spot on the Map", finds that US trade policy may
in coming years find itself unintentionally at odds with
the war on terror, despite assertions by officials in
the administration of President George W Bush that trade
is an important tool against terror.
Since 1980,
the western Muslim world - about 32 countries from
Morocco to Central Asia and Bangladesh - has seen its
share of world trade drop from 10 percent to 3.8
percent, and investment fall even more sharply. At the
same time, its population has grown from 380 million to
over 600 million, with most of this growth in cities.
The economic result has been sluggish growth and
declining income; the social costs are unemployment,
political anxiety, and growing fascination with
religious extremists, said the report, written by Edward
Gresser.
"The combination is creating a large
pool of unemployed urban young people - the type of
person most susceptible to political extremist groups
and religious fundamentalists," it added.
Economic decline has fueled calls within Muslim
countries for economic changes. Last year a United
Nations publication, the "Arab Human Development
Report", called for major restructuring efforts in
countries such as Bahrain, Jordan, Egypt, Qatar and the
United Arab Emirates.
But the PPI report
suggests that the current US trade agenda may make it
harder for such efforts to bear fruit. Washington's
regional and bilateral trade initiatives planned for
2003-05 include deals with Singapore, Chile, Central
America, the Southern Africa Customs Union, Australia,
Morocco, renewal of the African Growth and Opportunity
Act (AGOA), the Enterprise for ASEAN Initiative and the
Free Trade Agreement for the Americas (FTAA). The United
States' existing free trade partners are Canada and
Mexico (within NAFTA) Israel and Jordan.
Only
one Muslim country, Jordan, a tiny kingdom of 4.5
million people and limited natural resources, and later
Morocco, a country of 30 million people, are on the
list. By 2005, assuming the administration achieves its
goals, Washington will have created wide-ranging free
trade concessions for 70-90 countries in Africa, Latin
America and Southeast Asia.
The agreements will
have their greatest impacts on the relatively few
products for which the US retains high trade barriers -
some agricultural goods, clothes, fabrics and luggage.
Most major exporters to the US - including China, Korea,
and the European Union - will experience only slight
effects since they are not highly dependent on these
products.
By contrast, the economies of the
poorest Asian countries and the western Muslim world
rely very heavily on exports of high-tariff products
like clothes and fabrics. These goods are the principal
export for heavily populated majority-Muslim states like
Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey and Egypt, and important to
Indonesia, the country with the world's largest Muslim
population.
Duty-free treatment for Latin
America, Africa and Southeast Asia in these sectors will
be a potent draw for investment, and by extension, a
deterrent for investment in the Muslim world, the report
said.
"The consequence - in the absence of a new
initiative to provide some degree of parity for these
countries - will likely be that reformers attempting to
improve economic policies and trade regimes within the
Muslim world may find their efforts frustrated; and
efforts to 'drain the swamp' will become more
difficult," the report said.
In the introduction
to the report, Gresser says such findings contradict
starkly with assertions made in late September 2001 by
US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, who said trade
policy could help fight terrorism by promoting growth
and economic assimilation.
"Earlier enemies
learned that America is the arsenal of democracy;
today's enemies will learn that America is the economic
engine for freedom, opportunity and development. To that
end, US leadership in promoting the international
economic and trading system is vital," Zoellick said in
a September 20, 2001 article in the Washington Post. But
according to Gresser, "In practice, though, the Muslim
world is the blank spot on the Bush administration's
trade agenda - and because of this, that trade agenda
risks undermining, rather than supporting, the war on
terrorism."
"And, as America's trade regime
tilts more sharply against Muslim states, US trade
policy may not supplement the war on terror 'a la
Zoellick', but actually work against it by reducing the
Muslim world's growth opportunities and ability to reach
world markets," he added.
But this "perverse
result is not inevitable", said Gresser, who recommended
that a strategic trade initiative geared toward the
Muslim world could end, or at least ease, the slant. "At
minimum, such an initiative - analogous to programs now
available for Central America, the Andean nations, and
Africa - could avert creation of a trade regime that
complicates the campaign against terrorism," Gresser
said.
By pushing reform and economic integration
of Muslim countries, such an initiative could play its
own role by sparking growth and creation, and so limit
the magnetism of radicalism and religious
fundamentalism, the report said.
(Inter Press
Service)
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