7/30/2019 Shireen Mazari (2)

1/3

http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintWriterName.aspx?URL=Shireen+M+MazariOur leaders' voluntary submission to colonisation

Shireen M Mazari

Wednesday, August 26, 2009From Print Edition

New 0 0 0

First there has been the threat to the ordinary citizen of an effective occupation ofPakistan by the US, especially for those living in what is becoming a threateninglyclose proximity to the droves of Americans arriving in form or another. Before theMinistry of Foreign Affairs was given orders to the contrary, press reports of August6 show that its spokesman, Mr Basit, on August 5, at the Karachi Press Club, hadalready given out the fact of the 1,000 marines coming for the protection of the new,imperial US embassy in Islamabad.

Now we are seeing houses being barricaded for US personnel all across the capital and we

know of the 300 plus 'military trainers' already ensconced in Tarbela. In addition we have thenotorious Blackwater (now hiding under a new label, Xe Worldwide) and the rather obviousCIA front-company, Creative Associates International Inc (CAII), operating not only inPeshawar but now in Islamabad also it transpires and a recent reflection of this was thesealing off of the road in Super Market last week right in front of a school! Whatever the USembassy gives out or the terrified Pakistani leadership echoes, the reality is that there is aquestionable and increasingly threatening US armed presence in Pakistan and this may beaugmented soon with an ISAF/NATO presence. Incidentally, to add to the suspicions of the USpresence, reports are coming in of around 3,000 Hummer vehicles, fully loaded, awaitingtransportation from Port Qasim.

Will some of these go to the Pentagon's assassination squads, who may take up residence insome off the barricaded Islamabad houses and with whom the present US commander inAfghanistan was directly associated? Ordinary officials at Pakistani airports have also been

muttering their concerns over chartered flights flying in Americans whose entry is not recorded even the flight crews are not checked for visas and so there is now no record-keeping ofexactly how many Americans are coning into or going out of Pakistan. Incidentally the CAII'sCraig Davis who was deported has now returned to Peshawar! And let us not be fooled by thecry that numbers reflect friendship since we know what numbers meant to Soviet satellites.

Now another threat, in the making for some time, is becoming more overt. Pakistan's preciousand fertile agricultural land is up for grabs to the highest foreign bidder. Pakistan is not alonein being targeted thus by rich countries with little or no food resources. The UN has alreadycondemned this purchase of agricultural land as a form of neo-colonialism. Over the past fiveyears in a hardly-noticed wave of investment, rich agricultural land and forests in poorcountries are being snapped up by buyers from cash-rich countries. Leading this grab of poorcountry resources are the rapidly industrialising states and the oil-rich countries who have,between 2006-2009, either directly through governments or through sovereign wealth funds

and companies, already grabbed or are in the process of grabbing between 37 to 49 millionacres of developing countries' farmland (a July 2009 report by Robert Schubert of Food andWater Watch).

Wealthy countries like Japan and South Korea are acquiring farmlands abroad for food securitywhile oil-rich countries are seeking cheap water and cultivated crops to be shipped home. Theland buyers from the oil-rich arid countries are seeking water as much as land because bybuying or leasing land with sufficient water, they can divert their own domestic irrigation waterto municipal water supplies.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintWriterName.aspx?ID=9&URL=Shireen%20M%20Mazarihttp://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintWriterName.aspx?ID=9&URL=Shireen%20M%20Mazari

7/30/2019 Shireen Mazari (2)

2/3

The foreign land purchases destabilise food security since land given to foreign investorscannot be used to produce food for local communities the foreign investors' intent being totake the food back to their own food-scarce countries. Many of the land purchases comprisetens of thousands of acres which are then turned into single-crop farms and these dwarf thesmall-scale farms common in the developing world, where nearly nine out of ten farms (85 percent) are less than five acres. Such land grabs have now been recognised as harming the localcommunities by dislodging smallholder farmers, aggravating rural poverty and food insecurity.

With Gulf countries importing 60 per cent of their food on average, Saudi Arabia and the UAEare leading the investments into Asia and Africa to secure supplies of cereals, meat andvegetables. The rise in demand for food imports for the GCC comes at a time when exportableagricultural surplus worldwide has declined.

How does all this impact Pakistan? Pakistan has rich agricultural land and adequate wateralthough the latter's distribution has been subject to political machinations. There has alsobeen a seemingly deliberate effort by successive ruling elites to undermine the country'sagricultural potential and nowhere is this more brazenly evident than at present with poweroutages preventing crucial water supply through tubewells; and many rich lands beingconverted into housing colonies! Then we have had artificially created sugar and wheatshortages 'artificial' because for the last few years our wheat and sugarcane crops havebeen bountiful. As for the wonderful local fruit, that is also being diverted to feed external

populations through exports that are not only depriving the locals of their land's bounty butalso raising local prices so only the rich elite can consume what is left.

Now it has come out that we are selling land to the Gulf states, thereby undermining our localagriculture further. Abraaj Capital and other UAE entities have acquired 800,000 acres offarmland in Pakistan (we have learnt no lessons from the sale of the KESC and the PTCL).Qatar Livestock is investing $1 billion in corporate farms in Pakistan. But all this produce willbe taken out, so the argument that this foreign investment will bring in new technologies intoour agricultural sector does not hold. In any case, one does not have to sell one's land toforeign forces to acquire new technology which is available in the open market and the

government can help local farmers acquire it.

Not surprisingly, the Gulf countries are pleased with Pakistan's rulers bending over backwardsto accommodate their needs at the expense of the ordinary Pakistani for none of the food

produced on these lands will be available cheaply for Pakistanis; it will go to feed the Gulfpopulations. Gulf countries are happy because their imported food bill will cost 20-25 per cent

less, positively impacting on their present high inflation rate. We may import this food fromthem for a price, just as our government has now decided to import sugar from the UAE. Ofcourse the UAE itself imports sugar so the absurdity should be abundantly clear to all,including our profiteers!

In the visibly servile mindset of our leaders, instead of offering incentives on a similar scale tolocal farmers, Islamabad is offering legal and tax concessions, with legislative cover, to foreign

investors in the form of specialised agricultural and livestock 'free zones' and may alsointroduce legislation to exempt such investors from government-imposed tax bans. The mostworrisome aspect of such wheeling-dealing is the government's decision to develop a newsecurity force of 100,000 men spread across the four provinces to ensure stability of the Arabinvestments. This will cost the Pakistani state around $2 billion in terms of training and

salaries and the real fear is that this force will be used to forcibly eject local small farmersfrom their lands. Concerns have been further heightened because no labour laws will beapplicable to corporate agricultural companies and there will be no sales tax or customs dutieson import of agricultural machinery by these investors. Nor will their dividends be taxed and100 per cent remittances of capital and profits will be permitted. So where is there even aniota of advantage for the ordinary Pakistani as opposed to the rulers?

With the US increasingly occupying Pakistan with their covert and overt armed presence, andthe Gulf states taking over our rich agricultural lands our rulers are voluntarily making us acolony again as we were under the British who used our men to fight their wars and our

7/30/2019 Shireen Mazari (2)

3/3

cheap labour to ship the finished produce back to Britain! Have we come full circle after 62years of our creation?

The writer is a defence analyst. Email: callstr@hotmail.com