"We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them against each other, rout them out of their safe hiding places, and bring them to justice." – President George W. Bush Sep. 24, 2001
Terrorist organizations need money to operate. Weapons and ammunition are expensive. Major international operations require substantial investments for personnel, training, travel and logistics. Organizations must have substantial fundraising operations, as well as mechanisms for moving funds to the organization and later to terrorist operators. These functions entail considerable risk of detection by authorities, but also pose major challenges to both the terrorists and intelligence agencies.
The fifth anniversary of 9/11 passed with a great deal of hand-wringing over all the people who want to kill Americans. Especially worrisome is the apparent rise of terrorists whose origins seem far from fanatical. These terrorists are not desperately poor uneducated people from the Middle East. A surprisingly large share of them have college and even graduate degrees. Increasingly, they seem to be from Britain, like the shoe bomber Richard C. Reid and most of the suspects in the London Underground bombings and the liquid explosives plot.
The U.S. might take a vow to wipe off terrorism from this planet but even a casual look at the economics of such criminal activities makes it an impossible task. Though most countries might make a mistake of believing it as a plain or politically/ideologically motivated criminal activity the actual truth comes to the surface only when we take a closer look at the economics. It is certainly not a war between nations, religions or classes or even civilisations.
It is fundamentally a broad conflict that puts the moderate against the extremist. The job of fighting terrorism cannot be separated from the task of preventing, containing and ending conflicts. All too often the places that generate terrorism as well as drug-trafficking, health epidemics, refugees, outflows and environmental disasters are shattered societies where hunger, greed, repression and poverty have fed violence, despair and extremism.
A close nexus
"Organised crime" will be a defining issue of the 21st century as the cold war was that of the 20th century and colonialism that of the 19th century. Transnational crime will proliferate because crime groups are the major beneficiaries of globalisation. The global drug industry alone now accounts for 2 per cent of the world economy and it is constantly rising.
According to a 1999 World Bank report, the smuggling trade between Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and Pakistan was worth more than $2.5 billions in 1997. If smuggling from other neighbouring nations is included in this network, the turnover could easily cross $5 billions most of it is in narcotics and its related ingredients like various chemicals which go for refining heroin.
There is a close nexus between Taliban and Pakistan in drug- trafficking. According to the U.N. Drug Control Programme, Afghanistan produced 4,600 metric tons of opium in 1999 — three times more opium than what is produced elsewhere in the world. This opium is processed in refining factories in Pakistan before being sent to Lagos en route to Europe and America. It is this drug money, running into several millions of dollars, that fuels terrorism, funds networks across the world and makes possible missions like the WTC air attack.
But drugs may not be the largest part of the global mafia's business. Mafia related stock-frauds use offshore corporations through various hideouts in the international system to manipulate the stock market.
There are around 50 "states" in the world, e.g. Bahamas, the Pacific island of Nauru, Yugoslavia and the Republic of Montenegro, that exist largely by selling their national sovereignty to those who wish to buy it in order to make their business deals inconspicuous. The "state" of Dominia advertises itself on the World Wide Web — its passport can be bought in a package with a name change, under the slogan "Perfect for someone who would like to leave his past behind". There is no secret as to what these states do; but since they have the formal attributes of independent states, they cannot simply be closed down.
Estimates of profits
Internationalisation of criminal activities induces organised crime in different countries to establish strategic alliances to cooperate, rather than fight, on each other's turf, through subcontracting arrangements and joint ventures, whose business practice closely follows the organisational logic of what Manuel Castells, of the fame of The Rise of Network Society, has characterised as "the network enterprise", the characteristic of the Information Age. Furthermore, the bulk of the proceedings of these activities are by definition globalised through their laundering via global financial markets.
Estimates of profits and financial flows originate in the criminal economy very wildly and are not fully reliable. Yet they are indicative of the phenomenon. The 1994 United Nations Conference on Global Organised Crime estimated that global trade in drugs amounted to about $500 billions a year; that is, it was larger than the global trade in oil. Overall profits from all kinds of illegal activities were put as high as US$1 trillion a year in 1993, which was about the same size as the U.S. federal budget at that time. Sterling considers plausible the figure of $500 billions as the likely global turnover of "narco-dollars." In 1999, the IMF ventured a very broad estimate of global money laundering in a range between 500 billion and 1.5 trillion dollars a year (or 5 per cent of global GDP).
Need for new agency
The recent global experience of catastrophic terrorism at World Trade Center in New York necessitates the formation of a new institution in India to gather intelligence and deal with all terrorism-related issues. It may be called a National Terrorism Intelligence Bureau, which can collect and analyse information so that it may give a timely warning of suspected catastrophic terrorist activities much ahead of time. The Bureau could have access to data of all law-enforcement agencies and it should be the apex organisation. The Bureau may have following broad functions:
First, to monitor and timely warn the government bodies concerned, and law-enforcement agencies regarding terrorist threats; second, to receive and store all lawfully collected relevant information from any government agency including law- enforcement, phone tapping and judicial information; third, to protect established civil liberty of citizens; fourth, to produce integrated reports that could be disseminated to any agency needing them: finally to suggest ways for counter-terrorism intelligence, including bilateral efforts of individual agency. In short, the Bureau would combine the active intelligence gathering approach of the national security agencies, which are not legally constrained in their foreign investigations, with the domestic authority and investigative resources of law enforcement agencies.
Breeding ground
In devising strategies to fight the terrorists and terrorism, it would surely be useful to minutely observe and understand the forces that drive them. Poverty (illiteracy) amid plenty is one of the greatest challenges and the breeding grounds for terrorism. According to the World Development Report 2000-2001, "at the start of new century, poverty remains a global problem of huge proportions. Of the world's 6 billion people, 2.8 billion live on less than $2 a day, and 1.2 billion on less than $1 a day. Six infants of every 100 do not see their first birthday, and 8 do not survive to their fifth. Of those who do reach school age, 9 boys in 100, and 14 girls, do not go to primary school." Similarly, technical hegemony is creating a new map of the world. A small part of the globe, accounting for some 15 per cent of the earth's population, provides nearly all of the world's technology innovations. A second part, involving perhaps half of the world's population, is able to adopt these technologies in production and consumption. The remaining part, covering around a third of the world's population, is technologically disconnected, neither innovating at home nor adopting foreign technologies. Thus, a concerted attack on poverty and technology diffusion on a large scale will go a long way to contain terrorism and it will dry up the ideological base which sustain the terrorists and terrorism. Lecturing poor countries about weak governance, while providing precious little money for technological advance, public health and other needs, is mere rhetoric which will not work.
Quarrels over ideology have ended. The prosperity of the richest countries is at an all-time high, and so is their capacity to look beyond their own immediate needs. At the same time, the crisis of the poorest countries is acute, and the shortcomings of the current strategy of globalisation painfully evident. Much of the poorer world is in turmoil, caught in a vicious circle of disease, poverty and political instability. Large-scale financial and scientific help from the rich nations is an investment worth- making, not only for humanitarian reasons, but also because even remote countries in turmoil become outposts of disorder for the rest of the world, as has been happening in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sudan.
During the cold war, the U.S. and its allies invested trillions of dollars to stop the spread of communism. Now, a similar amount should be spent for wiping out terrorism from the globe and the generous aid could facilitate the poor, backward countries in integrating into a global economic network.
Needless to say that at present America's foreign aid is just 0.1 per cent of its GDP, a derisory shadow of what it used to be. In 1969 the Pearson Commission recommended that donor countries give 0.7 per cent of their gross national product in official development assistance (ODA). The total gap in international development cooperation is close to $100 billions a year, precisely the amount that would be available if the appropriate ODA, according to the 0.7 per cent target, were met. The challenge is to persuade the industrial countries that aid expenditure to build a more secure world is a vital investment and certainly more efficacious than military expenditures.
Following America's lead, most of the large and developed economies have allowed their own foreign-assistance programmes to shrink since the end of the cold war. Even when the United States reaped a peace dividend of more than 2 per cent of GDP by reducing its defence spending after 1990, it cut, rather than increased, foreign-assistance spending as a share of its national income. The need of the hour is that American administration should pledge to raise foreign assistance to at least 0.3 per cent of the GDP. This would not only bring the world's richest country back in line with the average aid proportion of other donor nations, but would make available an extra $20 billions a year to invest in economic development. Such a turnaround in America's role could harness much larger contributions from the European Union, Japan, and other potential donors (both public and private). This increase in foreign assistance by donors would have a positive impact in a serious attempt to contain terrorism as well as break the nexus of illegal economic activities and terrorism at global scale and will foster social capital, civil society and development.
Sophia Model United Nations- 2010
Security Council
Agenda #2: Economic, social, religious and regional conflicts affecting the world at large emphasising on Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea, Iran, Democratic Republic of Congo and Afghanistan.
The economy:
A subsistence economy is, by definition, independent of the rest of the world. It has little need to export or import. But as an economy modernizes, it customarily imports an increasing variety of products, both raw materials and manufactures. Other things being equal, a modernizing economy becomes successively more integrated into the global system as measured in economic, social and political terms. This is not to say that a modern economy cannot reduce its dependence on certain imports by using its technological capabilities to develop substitutes, but usually it can do so only at a cost.
At the same time that the modern nation-state is becoming progressively more integrated into the world economy, it is also assuming increasing social responsibilities toward its people. Its importance as an administrative unit is clearly on the rise. As Theodore Geiger points out, there is among the rich countries "a long-term trend toward increasingly comprehensive and active management of theireconomic systems. The purposes are to assure that resources will grow at an adequate rate, that they will be allocated to meet the expanding diversity of high-priority national objectives and that there will be neither significant unemployment, on the other hand, nor excessive inflation on the other....In addition to their previous activities, governments now seek to provide minimum incomes and equal opportunities to all, assure rising standards of education and health, protect and improve the physical environment, rebuild the cities, foster and finance the advancement of knowledge, support the arts, expand recreational facilities to meet greater leisure and earlier retirement, and in a growing variety of other ways, better the quality of life for an increasing population." This assumption of new functions and responsibilities by governments reflects an evolving set of values and an expanding social consciousness within modern societies.
Indeed, international economic integration has two important advantages, one essentailly economic and the other essentially political. In economic terms it promotes more rational, more efficient use of the earth's resources. The political plus is that it enhances the prospects for reducing international conflict. Both of these have far-reaching social consequences, linking improvements in the quality of life to the creation of a unified global economy.
Although global trends indicate a steady growth in interdependence among nations over the past two decades in international trade, international production, international monetary matters or international technology exchange, it would be a mistake to assume that nationalism is everywhere on the wane. It is still a very potent force. Economic nationalism takes many forms. In the United States it takes the form of resentment of labor groups toward imports of low-cost textiles manufactured in countries like Hong Kong, Taiwan or India. The U.S steel industry pushes for government action to limit imports of steel from Europe and Japan. France drags her feet as the European Economic Community moves toward political as well as economic integration. Romania initially declined membership in COMECON investment bank in Moscow for fear that the financial pool to which it contributes would be used for purposes which it does not approve. Peru and Tanzania restrict investment from abroad because it signifies foreign control of their embryonic industrial economies.
Today's current world, with its ups and downs, of inflation and depression, constant devaluation of currencies as well as being in the flux of modern day disasters (natural and man-made), has indeed proved to us one thing- The new-age man has excelled at production, but failed miserably at distribution.
Ethnic Conflicts
Most countries by several different ethnic groups and as many as half of all countries have experienced conflicts among these groups.Ethnic differences are the single most important source of large scale conflicts within states.Ethnic groups and their relationships are imperative in achieving and maintaining social peace in the world.If we are to deal with them intelligently it is necessary to understand its dynamics.
The globalisation gives us an opportunity to get to know and understand each other better, and in that sense it should contribute to less conflict between people. However, people are searching back to their roots, and become more focused on their ethnic heritage.
Pluralism in the world is increasing – and an increasing number of ethnic minorities are living together. The democracies have to support the interests of the minorities and this brings up a number of conflict areas.
Countries on focus:
· Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea: North Korea, one of the world's most centrally directed and least open economies, faces chronic economic problems. Industrial capital stock is nearly beyond repair as a result of years of underinvestment and shortages of spare parts. Large-scale military spending draws off resources needed for investment and civilian consumption. Industrial and power output have declined in parallel from pre-1990 levels. Severe flooding in the summer of 2007 aggravated chronic food shortages caused by on-going systemic problems including a lack of arable land, collective farming practices, and persistent shortages of tractors and fuel. Large-scale international food aid deliveries have allowed the people of North Korea to escape widespread starvation since famine threatened in 1995, but the population continues to suffer from prolonged malnutrition and poor living conditions. Since 2002, the government has allowed private "farmers' markets" to begin selling a wider range of goods. It also permitted some private farming - on an experimental basis - in an effort to boost agricultural output. In October 2005, the government tried to reverse some of these policies by forbidding private sales of grains and reinstituting a centralized food rationing system. By December 2005, the government terminated most international humanitarian assistance operations in North Korea (calling instead for developmental assistance only) and restricted the activities of remaining international and non-governmental aid organizations such as the World Food Program. In May 2008, the US agreed to give 500,000 metric tons of food to North Korea via the World Food Program and US nongovernmental organizations; Pyongyang began receiving these shipments in mid-2008, but in March 2009 rejected additional US aid shipments. The economy probably grew in 2009 as a result of favorable climate conditions and energy assistance from other countries. In December 2009, North Korea carried out a redenomination of its currency, capping the amount of North Korean won that could be exchanged for the new notes, and limiting the exchange to a one-week window. Firm political control remains the Communist government's overriding concern, which will likely inhibit the loosening of economic regulations.
· Afghanistan: The United Nations reported that approximately 2,021 civilians were killed by coalition, government, and insurgent forces in the first 10 months of 2009, an increase on 1,838 killed during the same period in 2008. Of these, 69 percent were attributed to "anti government elements," and 23 percent to international-led military forces. The human rights situation in Afghanistan is marked by a rise in civilian casualties, setbacks for women, mounting attacks on freedom of expression and a culture of impunity when it comes to punishing perpetrators of abuses, the United Nations says in a new report.
Afghanistan is experiencing its worst violence since the fall of the Taliban government. Widespread human rights abuses, warlordism, and impunity persist, with a government that lacks the strength or will to institute necessary reforms. Corruption and an escalating cost of living are affecting millions.
Non state armed groups are active on several fronts in the south, south-east, central and east of the country as well in pockets of the north. Taliban and associated non-state actors have not only increased attacks both on Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) and ISAF but have also begun to target the UN and its partners as well.
Questions to ponder
-Understanding the intricate and complex social and political setup of the afghan society.
-The religious and ethnic beliefs and traditions prevelant in order to analyse the solutions to the ethnic conflicts.
-The role of the UN and other aid agencies in restoration of the war devastated regions.· Democratic Republic of Congo: Democratic Republic of Congo, a vast country in the heart of Africa, is trying to find its feet on the path to peace after a five-year conflict dubbed "Africa's world war" that involved seven countries and enveloped the region. Conflict and humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo have taken the lives of 5.4 million people since 1998 and continue to leave as many as 45,000 dead every month. Civilians in the North Kivu province of eastern Congo continue to endure chaos, displacement and suffering -- with tens of thousands of uprooted people in dire need of assistance. According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), around 1,000 civilians were killed in the aftermath of the joint offensive against the LRA by Uganda, Congo and South Sudan. The human rights situation in the DRC continues to deteriorate. Serious violations, such as arbitrary executions, rape, torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment are pervasive, committed mostly by the army, police and intelligence services. Armed groups operating in the country, both foreign and Congolese, although responsible for only six per cent of documented human rights abuses, have perpetrated massacres, arbitrary executions, abductions of villagers, and subjected women to systematic rape, sexual slavery and other forms of sexual violence with full impunity. The war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the widest interstate war in modern African history. Even though the war may have officially ended years ago, people in the Congo are still dying at a rate of an estimated 45,000 per month; 2,700,000 people have died since 2004. This death toll is due to widespread disease and famine; reports indicate that almost half of the individuals killed are children under the age of 5. Forty women are raped every day, according to the Congolese Women's Campaign Against Sexual Violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo. According to the United Nations , 26,000 women had been raped in South Kivu alone in 2006, although the number of reported cases had dropped to 463 in the first quarter of 2009. The conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo is arguably the world’s most deadly crisis since World War II and the death toll far exceeds those of other recent and more prominent crises, including those in Bosnia, Rwanda, Iraq, Afghanistan and Darfur.
Questions to ponder upon:-
-Special emphasis and understanding of the Civil war in Congo and its repercussions.
-The causes of ethnic conflicts with special reference to the North and South Kivu region?
-Analysis of the tensions in the Bas-Congo, Katanga, Orientale and Ituri regions.
-What are the plausible solutions to the ongoing crisis in order to promote a peaceful future for the people of Congo?
-Role of UN in resolving the ongoing crisis in Congo.
IRAN:An intensified clampdown on political protest preceded and, particularly, followed the presidential election in June, whose outcome was widely disputed, deepening the long-standing patterns of repression. The security forces, notably the paramilitary Basij, used excessive force against demonstrators; dozens of people were killed or fatally injured. The authorities suppressed freedom of expression to an unprecedented level, blocking mobile and terrestrial phone networks and internet communications. Well over 5,000 people had been detained by the end of the year. Many were tortured, including some who were alleged to have been raped in detention, or otherwise ill-treated. Some died from their injuries. Dozens were then prosecuted in grossly unfairmass "show trials". Most were sentenced to prison terms but at least six were sentenced to death.
The election-related violations occurred against a background of severe repression, which persisted throughout 2009 and whose victims included members of ethnic and religious minorities, students, human rights defenders and advocates of political reform. Women continued to face severe discrimination under the law and in practice, and women's rights campaigners were harassed, arrested and imprisoned. Torture and other ill-treatment of detainees remained rife and at least 12 people died in custody. Detainees were systematically denied access to lawyers, medical care and their families, and many faced unfair trials. Iran remained one of the states with the highest rates of execution and one of very few still to execute juvenile offenders: at least 388 people were executed, including one by stoning and at least five juveniles.
Compelling evidence emerged that a number of detainees, both women and men, had been raped and otherwise tortured in detention, but instead of investigating allegations thoroughly, the authorities were quick to deny them and then harassed the victims and closed the offices of a committee collecting victims' testimonies.Women continued to face discrimination in law, despite some minor improvements. Women's rights campaigners, including those active in the "One Million Signatures" campaign to end legal discrimination, were harassed, detained, prosecuted and banned from travelling for collecting signatures in support of their petition.
Members of Iran's ethnic minorities continued to face discrimination along with harassment and imprisonment for advocating greater respect for social and cultural rights, including the right to mother tongue education. In June, the government announced that it would allow some higher education in regional languages.Iran maintained one of the highest rates of execution globally. At least 388 people were executed, including one man who was stoned to death and at least five juvenile offenders sentenced for crimes committed when they were aged under 18. At least 14 were executed in public.
An International Monetary Fund report estimated that the country's non-oil fiscal deficit would rise to about 18% of its GDP by the end of the last financial year, making it even more at risk to a fall in oil prices. While UN sanctions, imposed over its refusal to suspend its uranium enrichment programme have played some role in Iran's recent economic decline, the general feeling is that although they have made some aspects of business more difficult, they are not economically that significant.Iran possesses nearly a 10th of the world's oil, yet fuel is rationed. Inflation is at unprecedented levels, and there is disenchantment with government spending policies which are largely seen as populist and which the country cannot afford.
Iran protests Afghanistan's limiting flow of dammed tributaries to the Helmand River in periods of drought; Iraq's lack of a maritime boundary with Iran prompts jurisdiction disputes beyond the mouth of the Shatt al Arab in the Persian Gulf; Iran and UAE dispute Tunb Islands and Abu Musa Island, which are occupied by Iran; Iran stands alone among littoral states in insisting upon a division of the Caspian Sea into five equal sector. Iran is a source, transit, and destination country for women trafficked for the purposes of sexual exploitation and involuntary servitude; Iranian women are trafficked internally for the purpose of forced prostitution and for forced marriages to settle debts; Iranian children are trafficked internally and Afghan children are trafficked into Iran for the purpose of forced marriages, commercial sexual exploitation, and involuntary servitude as beggars or laborers.
tier rating: Tier 3 - Iran did not provide evidence of law enforcement activities against trafficking, and credible reports indicate that Iranian authorities punish victims of trafficking with beatings, imprisonment, and execution; Iran has not ratified the 2000 UN TIP Protocol (2008).Despite substantial interdiction efforts and considerable control measures along the border with Afghanistan, Iran remains one of the primary transshipment routes for Southwest Asian heroin to Europe; suffers one of the highest opiate addiction rates in the world, and has an increasing problem with synthetic drugs; lacks anti-money laundering laws; has reached out to neighboring countries to share counter-drug intelligence.
Emphasize upon:
- The sharia law and its implications in today's life
- The Iran-Iraq relations and its importance in solving the conflicts
- The nuclear policy followed by Iran.
CONCLUSION
If our society is to survive and progress, we need a new ethic, a reordering of global priorities and fresh leadership. Continuing improvement in human well-being on a global scale is tied to the emergence of an increasingly unified global society. Forces at work are moving us inexorably toward a unified world or to a deteriorating one. We can still exercise that choice, but not for much longer. The most urgent item on our agenda in the years immediately ahead is the creation of a world without borders, one which recognizes the common destiny of all mankind.
Reference:
un.org
amnesty international official site
the countries official government site
BBC,CNN,Reuters sites
cyberschoolbus.com
