Asia Times: Deadly Indifference


	June 30, 2001	atimes.com

Southeast Asia

THE ROVING EYE
Deadly Indifference
By Pepe Escobar

The United Nations was 56 years old just a few days ago. Nobody in the rarified circles of Global Empire paid the slightest attention - although the UN was right in the middle of a global gathering to discuss HIV-AIDS. Call it the indifference syndrome.

Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo - fighting hard to dismiss stereotypes of Nigerians as drug-running yobs - once again denounced the future of Africa as "bleak", to say the least, and even evoked "the prospect of the extinction of the entire population of the continent". More than 20 African heads of state were attending this UN special session. But no leaders of G-8 countries were available, even for a cursory comment.

An then, to add insult to injury, a compromise final UN text made absolutely no reference to any crucial topic related to the spread of AIDS - such as human rights, women's choices regarding their sexual life, homosexual behavior, or a huge array of euphemistically dubbed "cultural obstacles".

One may argue that the only "cultural obstacle" in the menu was nothing less than the repercussions of a cultural war between the United States and Western Europe against predominant Muslim nations who consider homosexual behavior extremely unsettling. But it is inconceivable that a cosy political environment such as the UN would not be conducive to some kind of agreement. Western diplomats were bragging about some sort of "victory" over Muslim nations. This kind of confrontation is not the point. The point would be to persuade Muslim nations to really identify and detail the profile of risk groups affected by AIDS.

Unfortunately for the UN, its latest talk-show - concerned at least in theory with a worldwide plague that has already killed 22 million people - was ultimately sunk by mere moralizing. We are far, far away from meeting Kofi Annan's target of a US$7 billion global AIDS fund. The US so far has pledged a mere $200 million - plus a conditional $1.3 billion in 2002, subject to approval by the House and Senate.

It's never enough to repeat the numbers concerning AIDS. According to the UNAIDS consortium, which groups assorted UN agencies plus the World Bank, in December 2000 there were 36.1 million AIDS-infected people all over the world (25.3 million in sub-Sahara Africa). Only a few thousand Africans have access to treatment.

Around 95 percent of AIDS victims live in poor countries - but more than 90 percent of people with access to treatment live in wealthy countries. Peter Walker, from the Red Cross, says that "during this decade, AIDS will kill more people in Africa than all 20th Century wars". Meanwhile, leaders quarrel over stylistic flourishes in their air-con paradises, and the funds to fight the plague are pitiful. Call it the indifference syndrome.

The indifference syndrome applies not only to extremely disturbing health-and-social issues such as the spread of AIDS - but above all to political conflicts. Globalization, the End of History, the New American Century: whatever you call it, the not-so-new world order is extremely, and cruelly, selective. Only a few places - and issues - really matter. The rest is history - or its dustbin: indifference syndrome territory.

Most of sub-Sahara Africa is in a sorry state of slow and deadly decay. Even former economic miracles such as Uganda and the Ivory Coast cannot escape this fate. Indonesia - essentially an immense archipelago under Javanese rule - along with the Philippines and Thailand, now tend to be presented by the Western media consensus as a collective basket case, compared to more sound and Confucian northeast Asia. The Caucasus - a colony of tsarist Russia in the 18th Century - remain basically incomprehensible to the West. These are all indifference syndrome territories.

Nobody cares any more about the Kurds in Iraq - or the Iraqi part of Kurdistan, to put it another way. In Central Asia, there is widespread turbulence from southern Tajikistan to northern Pakistan, through Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, and reaching the Iranian part of Baluchistan. Although huge economic interests are involved, these conflicts are regarded as peripheral. As for Pakistan, it is routinely condemned - almost as gleefully as Indonesia - to disintegration. These are all indifference syndrome territories.

Nations that were scarcely colonized or not at all by Western powers, such as Yemen, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sudan and Afghanistan, still resist Western domination or interference. Basically organized along tribal lines, they barely survive on some sort of medieval social contract. The state entity, as we know it, barely exists. And as far as public opinion is concerned, they are remote, dangerous curiosities: indifference syndrome territories.

For the geopolitical observer, although not for the majority of puzzled public opinion, there are so many "exotic" relics to choose from - like the remains of the Soviet empire or the Ethiopian empire. Not to mention the fact that we are still living the aftershocks of the crumbling of the Ottoman and the Austro-Hungarian empires - in the Balkans, all over eastern Europe, and in the Middle East. But most nuances simply disappear. Western observers tend to read the chaos in the Caucasus as the end of Russian colonialism - but the Russians themselves, according to diplomats, regard it as one more, unbearable, loss of territory.

In Africa, most of the Sahel region mapped by German explorer Heinrich Barth - from Mali and Niger to Sudan - faces rebellions from former slave traders like the tuaregs. Nobody cares. And the show must go on - with smirking CNN puppets or cold-as-a-cucumber BBC anchors persisting on their litany of collective massacres, mixing Rwandan refugees with former Yugoslavia refugees or Sierra Leone refugees.

French diplomats tend to define these geopolitical casualties as "strategically depreciated" nations, all-round victims of "conceptual devaluation". Near-bankrupt Pakistan would be a supreme example.

So, geography is destiny. If you are a country nowadays, you'd better be in a place that matters. Nigeria and Angola matter because of oil. South Africa matters because of its natural resources. Congo, absolutely unmanageable, is also crucial because the riches under this Conradian Heart of Darkness are untold. But Burkina Faso, for instance, is not exactly alluring. A privileged theater for the syndrome of indifference would be a place like northern Uganda or southern Sudan. Better still, a gangster-state par excellence: Liberia.

And to top it all, if you follow the No 1 rule in the property market - location, location, location - you can also pinpoint which countries or regions are destined to rise above the fray. The Caucasus is not relevant for Western Europe - but the former Yugoslavia is. Indonesia is not so vital for the US - even as a future counterbalance to China - but South Korea is. The more-than-half-a-century bad blood between nuclear India and nuclear Pakistan is relevant as long as they don't deploy their missiles: from the global elite's standpoint, the survival drama of their combined 1-billion plus population is bound to disappear into the magma of indifference syndrome.

Public opinion tends to react to geopolitical fissures like they react when they read about typhoons in the South China Sea or earthquakes in California. Most people cannot even contemplate the repercussions of a Chinese imperial crisis - detonated either in Buddhist Tibet or Muslim Xinjiang. The same applies to Central Asia - which inherits conflicting features of the Russian, Persian and Chinese empires. Central Asian countries are like orphans from history - brand new republics with a tremendous identity crisis.

These regions are bound to explode. And when they do, the worldwide indifference will not be confronted with a whimper - but with a big bang.

((c)2001 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)

back to the top

©2001 Asia Times Online Co., Ltd.

Building B - 5th Floor, 102/1 Phra Arthit Road, Chanasangkhram, Bangkok 10200, Thailand