GLOBAL
CRISIS OVER IRAQ
Resistance is never futile
By ARUNDHATI ROY *
WHAT do we mean by the idea of confronting “empire”?
Does “empire” mean the government of the United
States (and its European satellites), the World Bank, the
International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation,
the multinational corporations? Or is it something more than
that? “Empire” has sprouted subsidiary identities
in many countries, and produced dangerous byproducts: nationalism,
religious bigotry, fascism, terrorism. All are in alliance
with the project of corporate globalisation.
India, the world’s biggest democracy, is now at the
forefront of the corporate globalisation project. The WTO
is prising open its market of a billion people. The Indian
government and elite are welcoming corporatisation and privatisation.
It is no coincidence that India’s prime minister, home
minister, and “disinvestment” minister - men who
signed the deal with Enron in India, men who are selling the
country’s infrastructure to corporate multinationals,
men who want to privatise water, electricity, oil, coal, steel,
health, education and telecommunication - are all members
or admirers of the RSS, a rightwing, ultra-nationalist Hindu
guild that openly admires Hitler (1).
In India democracy is being dismantled with the speed and
efficiency of a structural adjustment programme. The project
of corporate globalisation destroys lives in India, and massive
privatisation and labour “reforms” push people
off their land and out of jobs. Hundreds of impoverished farmers
have committed suicide by drinking pesticide. There are reports
of starvation deaths from all over the country. While the
elite ascend to an imaginary destination somewhere near the
top of the world, the dispossessed fall into crime and chaos.
History tells us this climate of frustration and national
disillusionment is the perfect breeding ground for fascism.
The two arms of the Indian government have achieved perfect
pincer action. One sells India off in chunks, and the other,
to divert attention, orchestrates a howling chorus of Hindu
nationalism and religious fascism. Nuclear tests are being
conducted, history rewritten, churches burnt and mosques demolished.
Censorship, surveillance, the suspension of civil liberties
and human rights, the redefinition of Indian citizenship (particularly
with regard to religious minorities): these are all becoming
common practice.
In March 2002, 2,000 Muslims were butchered in a state-sponsored
pogrom in the state of Gujarat. Muslim women, specially targeted,
were stripped and gang-raped, then burned alive. Shops, homes,
textile mills, and mosques were looted and burned. More than
150,000 Muslims were driven from their homes. The economic
base of their community was devastated.
While Gujarat burned, the Indian prime minister was on MTV
promoting his new poems. This January the government that
organised the killings was voted back into office with a comfortable
majority. Nobody has been punished for genocide. Narendra
Modi, architect of the pogrom, and proud member of the RSS,
has begun his second term as the chief minister of Gujarat.
Were he Saddam Hussein the atrocities would have been seen
on CNN. But since he is not - and since the Indian market
is open to global investors - the pogrom is not even an embarrassing
inconvenience. There are more than 100 million Muslims in
India. A time bomb is ticking in our ancient land.
So it is a myth that the free market breaks down national
barriers. The free market does not threaten national sovereignty,
it undermines democracy. As the disparity between the rich
and the poor grows, the fight to corner resources intensifies.
Corporate globalisation, to push through its sweetheart deals,
to corporatise the crops we grow, the water we drink, the
air we breathe, and the dreams we dream, needs an international
confederation of loyal, corrupt, authoritarian governments
in poorer countries to pass unpopular reforms and quell mutinies.
Corporate globalisation (let’s call it by its name,
imperialism) needs a press that pretends to be free and courts
that pretend to dispense justice.
All the while the countries of the North harden their borders
and stockpile weapons of mass destruction. They have to ensure
that only money, goods, patents and services are globalised.
Not the free movement of people. Not respect for human rights.
Not treaties on racial discrimination or chemical and nuclear
weapons or greenhouse gas emissions or climate change - or
justice.
This is all “empire”: this loyal confederation,
this accumulation of power, this increased distance between
those who make the decisions and those who suffer from them.
Our fight, our vision of another world, must be to eliminate
that distance. So how do we resist “empire”? The
good news is that we are not doing too badly in resisting.
There have been major victories, especially in Latin America.
In Bolivia there was Cochabamba (2) and in Peru the uprising
in Arequipa (3). In Venezuela President Hugo Chavez is holding
on, despite the US government’s best efforts. Lula da
Silva has become president of Brazil. The world is looking
to the people of Argentina, trying to refashion a country
after the havoc done by the IMF. In India the movement against
globalisation is gathering momentum and is poised to become
the only real political force against religious fascism.
But we also know that behind the slogans of the war against
terrorism, men in suits are at work. While bombs rain down,
and cruise missiles skid across the skies, we know that contracts
are being signed, patents registered, oil pipelines laid,
natural resources plundered, water privatised. However the
“empire” is now out in the open and too ugly to
face its own reflection. Before 11 September 2001 the US had
a secret history, secret especially from Americans. But now
those secrets are history, and that history public know ledge.
We know that every argument used to escalate the war against
Iraq is a lie, the most ludicrous being the US government’s
commitment to bring democracy to Iraq. Killing people to save
them from dictatorship or ideological corruption is an old
US governmental habit.
Nobody doubts that Saddam Hussein is a dictator, a murderer
whose worst excesses were supported by the governments of
the US and United Kingdom. Iraq would be better off without
him. But, then, the whole world would be better off without
President George Bush.
What can we do? We can improve our memory, learn from our
history. We can build public opinion until it becomes overwhelming.
We can expose George Bush and Tony Blair, and their allies,
as baby killers, water poisoners, and cowardly long-distance
bombers. We can re-invent civil disobedience in a million
ways. When Bush says “you’re either with us or
you are with the terrorists,” we can refuse his choices.
We can let him know that the people of the world do not need
to choose between a malevolent Mickey Mouse and mad mullahs.
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* Arundhati Roy is a writer, author of The God of Small Things,
HarperCollins, 1997, for which she won the Booker prize. This
is an extract from her speech to the World Social Forum at
Porto Alegre in January 2003.
1) The RSS was founded in 1925; at present it has 3 million
members who are sent to paramilitary training camps - see
Le Monde, 15 March 2002).
2) In Cochabamba the water wars waged by Bolivians in 1990
and 2000 forced the government to deprivatise water management.
3) In June 2002 six days of popular uprising in the town
and department of Arequipa, in the south of Peru, forced President
Alejandro Toledo to stop privatisation of electricity companies.
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