Supposedly-neutral states meet in Tehran
The Non-Aligned Movement is a
shadow of its former self. In a multi-polar world of many criss-crossing
alignments it may have no place at all, leaving the 115 member organization,
founded in the wake of the 1955 Bandung Conference of independent Asian and
African states, as a meaningless relic of the Cold War.
However, the fact that Iran is
hosting the Movement’s 16th summit, which began yesterday, is an acute
embarrassment to the US and other western countries who have been demonizing
Iran for the benefit of their pet project, a nuclear-armed, expansionist
Israel. This doubtless explains why the meeting is being largely ignored by a
western media more concerned about Mitt Romney’s wife than the significance of
the Tehran meeting.
The US even attempted to lean on
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon not to attend. For once Ban failed to do
Washington’s bidding and is there in Tehran, meeting with Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, who is currently the
organization’s Secretary General. Ban is doubtless aware of the hypocrisy of
sanctions against a country which is itself surrounded either by nuclear
states, or by countries recently invaded by the US. NAM delegates, including
India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Indonesia’s President Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono, will be the focus of regime propaganda aimed at reducing the impact
of western economic sanctions, particularly on oil sales and payments.
Even more significant, Egypt’s
new Muslim Brother President Mohamed Morsi is also be there, the first visit to
Iran by an Egyptian president since the Iranian revolution in 1979. Morsi took
the occasion to criticize Syria, a subject on which Khamenei was silent,
preferring to focus not on Iran’s support for the el-Assad regime but on Iran’s
right to its nuclear program.
The meeting also serve as an
Iranian reminder to Afro-Asia that it was the west that armed Saddam Hussein to
launch his 1980 war against Iran, which cost a million lives, and to remind all
the Muslim countries of the anti-Muslim sentiments and radical Christian bias
of so much political discourse in the US.
Plentiful reminders are also on
hand of the use of assassination of Iranian civilians by Israel and maybe
others. These are the weapons which will be brought into play to offset western
pressure on smaller countries to kowtow to the west on economic sanctions.
While sanctions have had a major
impact, China and India have paid no more than lip service to them and China
continues to help build major infrastructure projects for a state which is
almost penniless.
Certainly the movement delegates
can also see much to dislike about the Tehran regime and its political and
social oppression. They are able to observe too the impact that sanctions have
had on standards of living which had already been eroded by corruption and
inefficiency in an economy dominated by the state and cleric-linked
institutions.
Iran also finds itself on the
wrong side of most of the Arab world with its continued support for Syria’s
ruthless but so far durable Bashar el-Assad while some of them have been
funneling arms to the rebels. It seems unlikely that anything positive about
Syria will come out of the Non-Aligned meeting.
Members such as India and
Indonesia would like to use the non-aligned movement as a vehicle for pushing
their own aspirations to regional and international influence. But it is
unclear how this can be achieved given the diversity of nations involved and their
varying degrees of ties with the US, China and Russia.
However, for all its lack of
identity and common goals the NAM remains a symbol of lingering Afro-Asian (and
Cuban) resentment over western colonialism and imperialism and continued
western and particularly US assumptions that they can continue to dictate to a
wider world whether on politics, social mores or economics. They need only look
to the Afghan and Iraq wars and the continued occupation of Palestinian
territory for reminders.
Philip Bowring
Business & Investment Opportunities
YourVietnamExpert is a division of Saigon Business Corporation Pte Ltd, Incorporated in Singapore since 1994. As Your Business Companion, we propose a range of services in Strategy, Investment and Management, focusing Healthcare and Life Science with expertise in ASEAN. We also propose Higher Education, as a bridge between educational structures and industries, by supporting international programmes. Many thanks for visiting www.yourvietnamexpert.com and/or contacting us at contact@yourvietnamexpert.com
No comments:
Post a Comment