Resisting
The Canadian
Capital In South Asia
By Harsha Walia
07 October, 2006
Countercurrents.org
Though
not largely discussed, South Asia is a major hub of global economic
interests with a massive concentration of Canadian finance capital,
foreign aid, and development agencies.
Export Development Canada
(EDC) is the Crown Corporation responsible for coordinating Canadian
investment abroad. During 2000-2004, 27% of Canadian Foreign Direct
Investment was in energy, mines, and minerals with focal points in South
America and South Asia. According to Natural
Resources Canada, Canadian firms have interests in 6400
mining properties around the world. Canadian-based companies conduct
about 40% of all mineral exploration, representing 12% of all Canadian
foreign direct investment.
One such mining operation
is in India. In 1993 a consortium of private companies, including Canadian
company Alcan, formed Utkal Alumina International Ltd to initiate a
bauxite mine and an alumina refinery in Kashipur. Alcan is the second
largest aluminum producer in the world and holds 45% of active shares
in the Kashipur venture. It is estimated by the Alcan't
in India Solidarity Campaign that the project will displace
60,000 people. In December 2000, 22 of 24 affected village councils
passed resolutions opposing the project after three villagers were shot
and killed by state police following an anti-mining community meeting.
Beginning in 2004, Canada's
then Minister of International Trade Jim Peterson began negotiating
a foreign-investment promotion and protection agreement with India to
give Canadian companies assurances that their assets would not be nationalized
and remain as free from regulation as possible. Two major Canadian firms
that have ventured into India are Sun Life Financial, which has become
a leading private-sector insurance firm in India, and engineering-construction
giant SNC-Lavalin, affiliated with SNC Technologies Inc., developer
and manufacturer of ammunitions.
A booming industry in India
is Indian Business Process Outsourcing, the majority of which constitutes
call-centers. Statistics from National Association of Software and Service
Companies from 2002-2003 reveal that the US and Canada account for 71%
of total outsourcing, and according to McKinsey & Co. estimates,
global corporations are generating cost savings from 40-60% by outsourcing
to India. Cost-saving measures, according to India
Resource Center, include infringements on labour protections
such as the eight-hour workday, allowing for night-shift work, and working
on statutory holidays.
The Canadian International
Development Agency (CIDA) is Canada’s lead development agency.
Much of Canadian foreign development aid has been termed “phantom
aid”- aid that does not improve the lives it is intended to- and
includes spending on overpriced technical assistance and tied aid. Canadian
corporate lobbies advocate tied aid because it is foreign aid that must
be spent in the donor country, therefore providing them an indirect
subsidy. According to Action
Aid, phantom aid accounts for over 50% of Canada’s
aid spending and 47% of Canadian phantom aid is tied to spending in
Canada. Tied aid is part of the larger objective of neo-liberalization
and private
sector development, one of CIDA’s top five priorities:
“Poverty reduction requires strong efforts to address the needs
of the private sector in developing countries.”
Bangladesh has been one of
Canada’s largest aid recipients over the last three decades. According
to CIDA's Country
Development Programming Framework 2003-2008 for Bangladesh,
private sector development is a major program objective. As part of
a multilateral global effort, Canada pushed for Bangladesh to set up
Export Processing Zones in 1978, which are regulated by the Bangladesh
Export Processing Zone Authority and are outside the realm of national
labour laws. A CIDA-funded Local
Enterprise Investment Centre facilitates local private
enterprise by partnerships with foreign business, in particular in the
growing garment industry valued at $5 billion worth of exports.
According to a New Age report
in June 2006, Bangladesh's apparel sector employs 2.5 million, 80% of
whom are women, in more than 5,000 factories. Amirul
Haq Amir, Coordinator of the Bangladesh Garment Workers
Unity Council, has stated that garment workers are paid “between
US$14 to US$16 per month, the lowest salary in the world.” From
May-July 2006, around 4000 garment factories in Dhaka went on strike,
resulting in major unrest and at least one striker died from police
gunshots. Since 2003, the Maquila
Solidarity Network has been pressuring the Retail Council
of Canada to ensure that the factories they use in Bangladesh are safe
and healthy workplaces.
In others parts of the world,
CIDA has also come under fire for supporting governments who align with
Western government and business interests. For example a July 2006 MacClean’s
Business report outlines CIDA’s involvement in creating
Colombian mining laws beneficial to Canadian companies, while in Haiti,
CIDA has been criticized for political destabilization by funding agencies
opposed to Aristide.
A similar situation has evolved
in Nepal. Since 1964, Canada has contributed more than $213 million
in development assistance for Nepal,
including $10.4 million in 2004-05. Although the CIDA website boasts
of “neutrality” in the civil war, it lays blame for poverty
and underdevelopment on the “Maoist insurgency”. CIDA’s
2004 Peace
and Conflict Impact Assessment acknowledges, “CIDA
will need to monitor whether its projects become Maoist targets because
of linkages with government programs”- the government of Nepal
being King Gyanendra who first dismissed the elected government in 2002
and then proceeded to seize complete control after a royal coup in 2005.
Hardly imaginable, but the small Himalayan country has become a front
in the “war on terror” with U.S. M-16s, assault rifles,
and over US $10 million to the Royal Nepal Army. According
to Amnesty International, such “assistance has enabled
an increase in grave violations of international humanitarian and human
rights law” in Nepal.
Afghanistan has been the
single largest recipient of Canadian bilateral aid with almost $1 billion
allocated from 2001-2011, while at the same time one of the most visible
manifestations of the Canadian presence in South Asia is Canada’s
increased military involvement in Afghanistan as part of its “War
on Terror”.
As written by J.W. Smith
in The World’s Wasted Wealth, “Politics is the control of
the economy… It is the military power of the more developed countries
that permits them to dictate the terms of trade and maintain unequal
relationships.” U.S. President Woodrow Wilson recognized this
“Since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer
insists on having the world as a market, the flag of his nation must
follow him, and the doors of the nations which are closed against him
must be battered down.”
In the spring of 2006, Canada
began a major military role in “Operation Enduring Freedom”,
with a battle group of more than 2,300 soldiers based around Kandahar.
In May 2006, Parliament voted to keep Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan
for two years longer than previously planned. Rick Hillier, Canada's
Chief of Defence Staff, outlined his vision for the troops “We
are the Canadian Forces and our job is to be able to kill people.”
In May 2006, CIDA launched the “Confidence in Government”
initiative in the Shah Wali Kot district of Afghanistan. In a May 22
Globe
and Mail article, Lieutenant-Colonel Tom Doucette, commander
of Canada's provincial reconstruction team stated “It's a useful
counterinsurgency tool."
A July 10, 2006 Canadian
Press report details an agreement between the Afghani and Canadian governments
stipulating, “Afghan civilians who are accidentally injured or
killed, or whose property is damaged by Canadian soldiers, have no legal
right to compensation.” According to an in-depth CBC backgrounder,
Canadian Forces instructors were in Kabul to train members of the Afghan
National Army. Canadian troops are also training Afghan soldiers in
Kandahar and the RCMP has a commitment to train Afghan police officers.
The Department of National Defence has admitted that Canada's secret
special forces have been operating in Afghanistan.
On September 2, Canadian
Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor publicly stated that Canadian soldiers
should be working in Pakistan to fight “Taliban insurgents inside
Pakistan.” In an interview with the Associated Press of Pakistan,
O’Conner stated, “I suggested that some Pakistan officers
be stationed with our troops in Kandahar and Canadian troops be stationed
on the Pakistan side." This raises an explosive issue of the presence
of Canadian troops in Pakistan, which has already seen major protests
at the presence of US troops along the Pakistani border.
This “War on Terrorism”,
with its resulting occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq, are the most
extreme forms of terrorism, making a war on terrorism “profoundly
self-contradictory” as stated by Howard Zinn.
Meanwhile, Canadian exports
to Afghanistan has increased over 100 fold in the past five years, growing
from 167,000 Cnd $ to over 19,000,000 Cnd $, according to Industry Canada
statistics. Canadian corporations
such as Bell Canada and CAE (one of Canada’s largest defense contractors)
have profited immensely: Bell won a 1 billion $ contract with the US
military to supply helicopters, while CAE won a $20 million contract
to supply combat simulation technology.
The CIDA-funded Women’s
Rights in Afghanistan Fund, established by Rights and Democracy
(created by the Canadian Parliament in 1988) provides grants to grassroots
women’s organizations in Afghanistan. A “non-partisan”
Afghanistan backgrounder on the website of the Fund highlights only
the historic abuse of women by the Taliban and characterizes the current
period as one of “ongoing conflict” without any mention
of foreign forces in the country.
Sonali
Kolhatkar, co-director of the Afghan Women's Mission, recently
wrote “Despite the best efforts of the Bush and Blair administrations
to convince the world that the 2001 war ‘liberated’ women
in Afghanistan and that they continue to work in the interests of Afghan
women, grassroots women activists reveal a very different picture. With
the Taliban regime ousted, Afghan women have not experienced better
times.”
Columnist Eric
Margolis has written “Afghanistan's complexity and
lethal tribal politics have been marketed to the public by government
and media as a selfless crusade to defeat the `terrorist' Taliban, implant
democracy, and liberate Afghan women."
Gender governance programs
are also funded by CIDA in Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and
Pakistan. Leila Ahmed's seminal “Women and Gender in Islam”
documents the co-optation of feminism by imperial and colonizing forces,
revealing the contradictions of humanitarian interventions. “Whether
in the hands of patriarchal men or feminists," she writes, "the
ideas of western feminism essentially functioned to morally justify
the attack on native societies and to support the notion of comprehensive
superiority of Europe.”
Vijay
Prashad has characterized one of the dominant manifestations
of imperialism as the manufacturing of strategically placed NGO’s.
“The NGO”, he writes, “becomes an arm of the international
bureaucracy that ends up, consciously or unconsciously, doing the work
of imperialism”. Other CIDA funded NGO’s in South Asia include
South Asia Partnership, Sri Lanka Canada Development Fund, Aga Khan
Foundation, World Vision, Oxfam, and Shastri Institute.
To the people of South Asia,
they represent part of a larger political phenomenon that Arundhati
Roy in a commentary titled “Help
that Hinders” characterized as “wealthy NGOs
financed and patronised by aid and development agencies, funded by western
governments, the World Bank, the United Nations and multinational corporations.
Though they may not be the same agencies, they are certainly part of
the same political formation that oversees the neoliberal project…
NGOs form a buffer between empire and its subjects… They’re
the secular missionaries of the modern world.”
In the face of persistent
political, economic, and so-called humanitarian interventions in the
region, South Asian communities are raising their voices: women in the
Narmada movement physically preventing the construction of dams, local
panchayats (village councils) boycotting Coca Cola abuses and environmental
devastation, protests rallies greeting Bush across the region, the Loktantra
Andolan (Democracy Movement) against the tyrannical rule of King Gyanendra,
50,000 farmers rallying against the WTO in Mumbai, labour strikes and
riots led by Bangladeshi garment workers, and women of the region charting
their own course to fight against female infanticide, Huhood Ordiances,
dowry deaths, and violence. Let us strengthen our end of this resistance
by demanding an end to Canadian and other Western countries projects
for the corporatization, militarization, and NGOization of the people
of South Asia.
- Harsha Walia is a South Asian activist based in Vancouver,
Coast Salish Territories.
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