US federal study predicts 10 oil derailments per year

Jeff Lusanne

A recently revealed report by the US Department of Transportation estimates that trains hauling ethanol or crude oil will derail an average of 10 times a year over the next two decades. The estimated damage of such derailments is $4 billion, and the chances are that some derailments would be near populated areas and cause fatalities. Both ethanol and certain varieties of domestic crude oil have proven to be highly volatile in derailments, causing explosions, fires and leaks.

The study was completed last July, in response to both accidents and steadily rising traffic. Railroads have always carried hazardous fuels and chemicals, but many shipments are “loose car” traffic to and from specific industries, and travel mixed with other non-hazardous freight. In 2005 and 2007, Congress passed legislation calling for the increased use of biofuels, which increased the amount of ethanol in gasoline.

This created a boom in ethanol production, and the creation of “unit trains” of ethanol, headed from big processing plants largely in the Midwest to refineries where the ethanol was blended with gas. Then, in 2011, a boom began to take off in crude oil produced in the Bakken region of North Dakota and Montana. Pipelines were not available to carry the capacity, nor would it be feasible to build them to the various locations of production and refining, so the traffic went to rail.

Since 2006, there have been at least 33 ethanol train accidents and 21 oil train accidents involving a fire, derailment or a significant fuel spill in the US and Canada. There have also been many other freight train derailments, but when a unit train of oil or ethanol derails, the entire train is a hazardous risk.

Yet the unit trains of oil and ethanol are very profitable. They don't have to be switched en route, which would require time and labor, and they travel very long distances—1,000 to 2,000 miles, from regions in the Midwest and Canada to refineries and terminals mostly on the East Coast. Long-distance unit-train shipments have been sought out by railroads for decades, as they reap higher profits.

While the money comes in, the study anticipates 15 derailments in 2015, declining to about five a year by 2034. It estimates 207 total derailments, of which 10 would be “higher consequence events” causing extensive damage and potential fatalities.

Last week saw one of these events, as a train of crude oil operated by CSX derailed near Mount Carbon, West Virginia. Twenty-eight of the tank cars on the 109-car train derailed, and many caught fire, producing enormous fireballs and leaking oil onto the ground. The home of Morris Bounds was destroyed, and the 68-year-old man barely escaped by running out his door immediately prior to the impact of the derailment.

That accident only failed to cause more property damage and threat to the lives of the public and employees based on the luck of its location. At many other places immediately nearby, the route of the oil train passes through communities large and small along the industrious Kanawha River Valley.

The federal analysis notes that oil and ethanol travel through communities with an average population density of 283 people per square mile, and 16 million Americans live within a half-kilometer of a route carrying the traffic.

Federal regulators responded to the release of the study by saying that regulations for stronger tank cars and better braking need to be put in place. But the tank cars in the accident were a newer variety, CPC-1232, with certain features that are supposed to improve durability to prevent damage in the event of a derailment.

As the risks of carrying oil by rail become tragically clear, railroads reaping money off the oil trains are also seeking to reduce crew size on trains to just one person. While trains currently have an engineer and conductor, railroads want to merge that into one position. This decision stems from a drive to reduce labor costs, not as a means of improving safety or operations.

While the engineer operates the train, the conductor reads signals that direct traffic, communicates with the dispatcher of rail traffic, manages paperwork about the train’s cargo, including information on hazardous materials. The conductor also handles all work on the ground, which includes throwing switches, switching out freight cars and fixing mechanical problems. This is dirty, dangerous work and it is done year round, night or day, in all weather.

The rationale railroads provide for eliminating conductors is the upcoming federal mandate for railroads to implement a new technology called Positive Train Control (PTC). It will provide constant enforcement of speed restrictions and protection from collisions. Once implemented, trains would receive continually updated information about its authority for movement at a given speed in a given area, and equipment in the locomotive would enforce these restrictions.

That would not prevent all accidents, however, but only those associated with certain mistakes by a crew or faulty equipment. Implementation is still in progress, while the danger of oil train derailments becomes clearer. In response, the Federal Railroad Administration in January proposed a rule that would make two-man crews mandatory. The Obama administration has not signed off on the rule, while railroads are lobbying to prevent it.

The railroads are not the only organization pushing for one-person crews: unions want in on the spoils as well. Last fall, conductors at BNSF Railway were presented with a contract by their own union, the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail & Transportation Workers (SMART), that proposed the elimination of an in-cab conductor. It would have created a position of “master conductor,” a roaming, on-the-ground conductor.

Conductors at BNSF, including in the territories carrying much of the Bakken oil from the wells to its next handler, voted down the contract, recognizing it as a betrayal even though incentives were offered. The SMART union was angling against the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET), which represents engineers. SMART, figuring on one-man operation, rather than opposing it wanted the concessions contract to include certain perks that would ensure the BLET would take the hit when one-man operations were introduced.

This continues a long tradition of bitter conflict between the union bureaucrats, even as the craft members work side by side every day.

The supposed concern of railroads for “safety” is belied by their treatment of operating employees. Both engineers and conductors effectively work on-call, with no set schedule. The railroads utilize 21st century technology, like remotely controlled engines, but employ 19th century methods in planning and scheduling crews. Employees are expected to answer the phone at any hour and report to work within two hours. They will then operate up to a 12-hour shift, which only includes the time that they operate the train, not the time it takes to reach the train from a crew base. Sometimes, crews will even “die” on the train—exceed the 12 hours—and have to sit, unpaid, until their taxi arrives.

On top of that, workers are permitted and often made to work six shifts in a row, and only then are given 48 hours rest. But those shifts can be at varying times, day and night, making solid rest potentially impossible.

Railroad operating crews are also expected to work weekends and holidays, and have little ability to get a substantial amount of time off. For example, at CSX, where the most recent oil train derailment occurred, the attendance policy assigns points for missing a call. The first attendance warning comes at 20 points. A missed call with no excuse is 10 points, a missed call for sickness is 4 points, and a missed call for sickness with a doctor’s note is 3 points.

Republicans move to pass right-to-work legislation in Wisconsin

Niles Williamson

A spokeswoman for Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker announced Friday that he was prepared to sign so-called “right-to-work” legislation introduced by fellow Republicans in the state legislature. The bill would outlaw labor contracts that require workers to pay union dues or other fees as a condition of employment.

Republican Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald called for an Extraordinary Session on Friday allowing for the bill to be introduced in the State Senate yesterday and put to a vote as early as Wednesday.

After passage in the senate, the bill will then go to the state assembly, where the Republicans hold a significant majority, for approval next week. The legislative rules for an Extraordinary Session will make it harder for Democratic members of the senate and assembly to use extended public hearings and legislative debate as a delaying tactic.

Walker, a possible Republican candidate for President in 2016, had insisted during the 2014 state gubernatorial election that he would not hesitate to sign right-to-work legislation into law if passed in the Republican-controlled state legislature. If, as expected, the legislation passes and Walker signs it into law, Wisconsin will become the 25th “right-to-work state.”

The introduction of right-to-work legislation comes immediately after Republican budget proposals in Wisconsin and Illinois that would cut hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from social programs and public universities.

Walker’s proposed 2015-2017 budget cuts $300 million from the University of Wisconsin system, nearly $100 million from primary and secondary public schools and $15.6 million from SeniorCare, a state program for providing health care to elderly individuals who don’t qualify for Medicaid.

While AFL-CIO President Phil Neuenfeldt has denounced the budget proposal as “full of shortsighted and backwards priorities,” the union has done little to oppose the budget, promoting feeble protests and calling for the lobbying of Democrats and Republicans in the legislature.

The principal aim of Wisconsin’s right-to-work law, like others that have been passed throughout the US, is to undermine the ability of the working class to collectively organize and fight for its interests. It is backed by sections of the corporate and financial elite, generally associated with the Republican Party, which wants to dispense with the unions as it intensifies the assault jobs, wages and social programs.

From the standpoint of the trade unions, however, the right-to-work laws are seen as a threat to their institutional interests and their role as a mechanism for suppressing working-class resistance. The Democratic Party in Wisconsin and other states has opposed such legislation because it sees the unions as a critical means of containing the class struggle and enforcing austerity measures.

Among workers, there is a widespread and entirely justified hatred of the unions—the result of decades in which the unions have collaborated with the corporations and the state in imposing cuts, layoffs and other attacks. When similar right-to-work laws were signed into law by Republican governors in the former industrial union strongholds of Michigan and Indiana in 2012, the trade unions and the Democratic Party proved incapable and unwilling to mobilize the working class to oppose the measures.

The Wisconsin AFL-CIO has called for union members to testify before the Senate Labor Committee and to attend protests at the capitol building on Tuesday and Wednesday. Such activities are designed to blow off steam and dissipate opposition to the legislation. The union will work to keep any significant protests that emerge from getting out of their control as they did in 2011. The AFL-CIO has not called for any strikes in opposition to the legislation.

The current proposal from Walker comes four years after the governor pushed through a round of attacks on public education and the working class, coupled with a bill that removed collective bargaining rights for most public employees, known as Act 10.

Hundreds of thousands of workers and young people protested the reactionary Act 10 throughout the state in February and March of 2011 in mass demonstrations, job actions by teachers, walkouts by students, and the occupation of the capitol building. A call put out by the Socialist Equality Party for a general strike to bring down the Walker government and block the passage of the bill was taken up widely by protestors but rejected out of hand by the unions.

While workers indicated their hostility to the austerity measures included in the legislation, the unions insisted on their willingness to accept deep cuts to workers’ wages and benefits. Their only real concern was maintaining their institutional interests, foremost among them the automatic dues check-off that fills their coffers.

Prior to the full implementation of Act 10, public sector unions hastened to sign contracts that included significant concessions but maintained the collection of dues as well as the union’s role in managing public workers.

After the passage of Act 10, a futile recall campaign targeting Walker and a number of Republican legislators was launched by the trade unions, the Democratic Party and their pseudo-left affiliates. The campaign was designed to cover for the union’s capitulation to Walker, disperse the protests and disorient workers, turning them back behind the Democrats.

Walker easily defeated Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, a Democrat, in the 2012 gubernatorial recall election. As with other Democrats, including former Governor Jim Doyle, Barrett had boasted of imposing deep austerity on public workers with the aid of the trade unions. Walker won reelection in 2014 against multimillionaire Democrat Mary Burke, a former business executive, who boasted of being a “fiscal conservative.”

The unions fully back the attack on workers that is being carried out in various forms throughout the country by Democrats and Republicans. Across the border in Illinois, Democrats have supported unconstitutional attacks on state workers’ pensions. To the east, in Michigan, Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr, a Democrat, oversaw the bankruptcy of Detroit, backed by the Obama administration. The unions have supported them in this campaign as they are politically tied to the Democratic Party and support unconditionally the capitalist system.

Opposition to the right-to-work law in no way implies support for the unions themselves. In fact, the defense of the democratic rights of the working class, and opposition to the assault on its jobs, wages and social programs, is possible only by breaking with these reactionary organizations and forming new organizations of struggle, pitted against both big-business parties and the capitalist profit system.

US oil strike highlights sacrifice of workers’ safety to corporate profit

Jerry White

Following the breakdown of talks Friday between the United Steelworkers union (USW) and industry bargainer Shell Oil, no date has been set to resume negotiations for a new three-year labor agreement covering 30,000 workers in the US oil industry.

The USW expanded the strike to three additional refineries and one chemical plant in Texas and Louisiana over the weekend, but the union continues to restrict the strike to just 6,500 workers at 12 of the 65 USW-organized refineries in the US. This plays into the hands of the oil giants, who are continuing production and refusing to budge on workers’ demands for improved safety and working conditions.

The top five Big Oil companies, which made $90 billion in profits last year, are pressing for a three-year freeze in wages and the expanded hiring of lower-paid contractors to replace union workers.

In a letter to striking employees, Shell management claimed its ability to hire and fire contractors was beneficial to full-timers. “Hiring flexibility is a proven way to protect our core Shell workforce and the long-term economic viability of our workforce,” the company wrote. “This strategy has served us all well, as we have not had to conduct any layoffs in decades.”

In fact, the exploitation of contractors, a policy long accepted by the USW, undermines the conditions of all workers. While the USW officials are motivated solely by the potential for increased dues income, the expansion of contract labor is part of the drive to cut costs, which is also behind the deadly conditions and impossibly long schedules in the industry.

Monday's flare-up at the BP Whiting Refinery. Source: The Times of Northwest Indiana

On Monday morning, a massive flare-up occurred at BP’s Whiting installation in Indiana, lighting up the sky as striking workers stood at picket lines outside the refinery. The release of burning gas, which BP said was due to a compressor problem, lasted for half an hour, workers said.

“As an operator, I rely upon my maintenance people to tell me what is and what is not safe,” Gary Roth, an operator at Tesoro’s Carson refinery, told the World Socialist Web Site Monday. “There are people inside of that refinery who have so much knowledge about the inner workings of each and every piece of equipment, and to lose those people would be to lose our safety.

“The contractors are not familiar with the equipment like our own people. The union maintenance workers can go and put their hand on a compressor or another piece of equipment and know something has to be taken care of because there is an issue. Unless you work with this kind of equipment day in and day out, you cannot do that.”

Gary

Over the last three-and-a-half decades, the oil industry, like the steel, auto, mining, trucking, airline and other industries, has carried out a relentless drive to slash jobs and reduce labor costs, while using new developments in technology to increase the output of the remaining workers. The multinational corporations have no intention of retreating and granting the next generation of workers such “outmoded entitlements” as guaranteed hours, job security, health insurance or pension benefits.

Announcing that it had rejected Shell’s seventh offer on Friday, the USW issued a statement with the headline: “Industry demands more blood, will not engage in meaningful talks to address critical safety issues.”

The union listed the companies’ refusal to address “well-documented and widespread safety deficiencies,” reduce “excessive overtime,” or fill permanent vacancies with full-time maintenance workers. “Management refuses to entertain any discussion that impedes on what the companies insist are their sole and exclusive rights—without regard for consequences that can be deadly to employees and destructive to their operations,” the USW wrote.

All of this is true. But the source of the problem is not the companies’ unwillingness to work with the trade unions in labor-management committees. Such committees have long existed. In the name of boosting “corporate competitiveness” and profits, they have agreed to the steady erosion of safety and working conditions.

The real problem is the private ownership of the oil industry by a handful of immensely powerful energy conglomerates that subordinate every aspect of production—from safety and environmental protection to manning levels and infrastructure upgrades—to the drive to increase profits and investor returns. While the oil companies have responded to falling crude oil prices by slashing jobs, reducing exploration and cutting wages and benefits, the one thing they have not stopped is dividend payouts and stock buybacks for the benefit of their richest investors.

Scene of last week's explosion at ExxonMobil's Torrance, California refinery.

Under capitalism, the private owners have “sole and exclusive rights” over decisions concerning production and the allocation of financial resources. This is despite the fact that these resources are derived from the sweat and labor of the working class.

That is why the fight to guarantee the health and well being of oil workers and the safety of surrounding communities is inseparable from the fight to nationalize the oil industry under the democratic control of the working class. Only in this way can energy production be organized on the basis of human need, not private profit.

The USW and the unions in general are hostile to socialism and defend without question the so-called “right” of the capitalists to privately own the means of production. That is why no matter how many appeals USW negotiators make to the corporations to change conditions “that can be deadly to employees and destructive to their operations,” the sacrifice of workers’ lives and limbs will continue.

Because they have collaborated for decades in corporate cost cutting, the unions have been complicit in the undermining of safety. Next month, the USW is hosting the 2015 Health, Safety and Environment Conference at the Westin Convention Center and Hotel in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In addition to being a junket for union bureaucrats, the March 9-13 conference is a celebration of labor-management “partnership” and a platform to promote the Obama administration and the Democratic Party.

One of the keynote speakers is Joseph Main, Obama’s assistant secretary of labor in charge of the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA). Main epitomizes the elevation of union bureaucrats into corporate management and the government. A long-time safety director for the United Mine Workers, he became a safety consultant for the mine bosses before being hired by Obama to head MSHA.

During his tenure, some of the deadliest mine accidents have occurred, including the 2010 blast that killed 29 West Virginia miners at the Upper Big Branch Mine. The coal operators have received nothing but wrist-slaps for their criminal negligence.

The Obama administration has treated oil bosses no differently. From the kid-glove treatment of BP in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill to last year’s decision by Obama’s Justice Department to drop any investigation into the safety violations that led to the fatal explosion at Tesoro’s Anacortes, Washington refinery, the Democrats have proven to be no less servile to Big Oil than the Republicans.

On the picket line in Anacortes this weekend, workers told the World Socialist Web Site that safety, long working hours and fatigue were overriding concerns, along with efforts to undermine their health benefits. The oil companies, flush with profits, had no reason to squeeze the workers further, one striking worker commented, but “they were doing it just because they could.”

Strikers were angered over the limited strike policy of the USW, which left only a fifth of the industry’s USW workers to take on some of the largest companies in the world. They pointed out that Shell oil workers just down the road were still working while Tesoro workers were walking the picket lines. Others had no doubt that Obama would respond to a strike by all oil workers by declaring it a “national security threat” and illegal.

On the picket line at the BP refinery in Whiting, Indiana, one worker said, “Every one of these refineries is a ticking time bomb.” Referring to the corporations, he added, “Safety costs them and they want to keep as much money in their pockets as possible.”

Under the Democrats and Republicans, another striker said, “The poor are getting poorer, the rich richer, and workingmen have no power. The political process is against you. It doesn’t matter which party it is, they’re both full of crooks. The only time the two parties work together is when it’s against us.”

Among the workers there was solid support for a national strike.

White House economic report calls for cutting corporate taxes

Andre Damon

On Thursday, the White House released its “2015 Economic Report of the President,” presenting it as an argument for “middle-class economics.”

The document seeks to justify Obama’s scheme, spelled out in his most recent budget proposal, to slash corporate taxes by up to ten percentage points. The report attempts to obscure the fact that such a windfall for the corporate-financial elite will dramatically increase social inequality, claiming instead that it will “increase productivity, output and living standards.”

The document falsifies both present economic reality and the development of the US economy in the post-World War II period in order to argue for further pro-corporate “reforms.”

It declares that, in the aftermath of the 2008 Wall Street crash, “a successful multifaceted policy response, including actions by the President, Congress, and the Federal Reserve, combined with the determination of the American people, has enabled the US economy to dig out of that deep hole, putting more people back to work, reducing the unemployment rate, and creating a virtuous cycle in which higher consumer purchasing power supports greater economic activity and job creation.”

In reality, the majority of new jobs have been low-wage, including a large percentage of part-time and temporary positions. Wages have stagnated or declined, and benefits have been slashed. Millions remain unemployed and millions more have dropped out of the labor market.

Combined with virtually unlimited cash handouts to the banks, the lowering of working class living standards has provided the basis for the so-called “recovery”—a recovery for the rich and the super-rich, not the working class.

In his introduction to the report, Obama declares, “Since the crisis, we’ve seen our deficits cut by two-thirds, our stock market double, and health care inflation at its lowest rate in 50 years.”

Here, Obama praises the fruits of his own right-wing policies, including the pumping of trillions of dollars into the banks, the slashing of funding for social programs, and the use of the Affordable Care Act to slash corporate and government health care costs.

The report includes damning acknowledgments of the decades-long redistribution of wealth in America from the bottom to the top, carried out by Democratic and Republican administrations alike. It notes, “In the United States, the top 1 percent has garnered a larger share of income than in any other G-7 country in each year since 1987,” a process that has accelerated under the Obama administration.

The report shows that, since 1973, the income share of the top 1 percent in the US has ballooned from 7.7 percent of the total to 17.5 percent, while the income share of the bottom 99 percent has fallen from 68.1 percent to 53.0. The document also notes that the labor force participation rate, particularly for males, has plunged in recent decades.

However, it presents the growth of social inequality as though it were an entirely impersonal process, the result of cosmic forces divorced from the struggle of social classes and the policies of governments and politicians.

This is deliberate. The aim is to grant the American ruling class and its two corporate-controlled parties a political amnesty for the ruthless offensive they have carried out against the vast majority of the American people. This, in turn, facilitates the attempt to dress up right-wing, pro-corporate proposals for future action in “progressive” and even “egalitarian” trappings.

The growth of social inequality is directly bound up with a decades-long assault on the American working class. The president’s report purports to review the economic history of the US since World War II, but fails to mention any of the key events in the escalating ruling class offensive.

There is no mention of the near-bankruptcy of New York City in 1975, which was used to impose a de facto banker’s dictatorship and sweeping cuts in municipal workers’ jobs and compensation. Similarly passed over in silence are the 1979–1980 bailout of Chrysler, which was used to begin the wave of wage and benefit concessions that have continued ever since, the 1981 smashing of the PATCO air controller’s strike and ensuing decade of strike-breaking and union-busting, and Obama’s forced bankruptcy of GM and Chrysler in 2009, which included the halving of the wages of all newly hired workers. Nor is there any mention of the relentless attack on social programs at the federal, state and local levels.

In a report whose main proposal is a drastic lowering of corporate taxes, there is no examination of the relationship of taxation to inequality—for example, the fact that inequality has soared in parallel with the repeated cutting of the top personal income tax rate from 90 percent in the early 1960s to the present level of 35 percent.

While the more than 400-page document is full of generalities and amorphous proposals, it gets right down to business when arguing that taxes for US corporations should be slashed. The report declares that “business tax reform offers the potential to boost productivity by improving the quantity and quality of investment in the United States.”

This is the standard free market pabulum that was once the province of the Republican Party. In Reagan’s day, it was known as “supply side” economics. It has since been fully embraced by the Democrats.

The basic conceit is the assumption that the corporate ruling elite will use its increased wealth from lower taxes to invest in new production, hire more workers, raise productivity and, with it, wages. But the White House Council on Economic Advisers, which drafted the report, acknowledges therein that productivity has been rising in the US since 1995 while wages have stagnated, and that the current “recovery” has seen a level of corporate investment far below that of previous recoveries.

The authors write, “Investment spending has grown more slowly than usual for a business‐cycle expansion.” They note that instead of investing, “corporations used a good part of those funds to buy back shares from their stockholders,” pushing up stock prices.

In other words, the ruling elite has used the windfalls provided from virtually free cash from the Federal Reserve, falling wages and benefits, and increased exploitation of workers—compliments of its political servants in Washington—to further enrich itself. It has taken advantage of the largesse of the Fed and the White House to expand its parasitic activities at the expense of the productive forces and the working class.

There is not the slightest reason to doubt it will continue to do so after its taxes have been reduced further, something of which the Obama administration is fully aware.

Meanwhile, the reduction in government revenues will be used as an argument for further cuts in social programs and workers’ wages and pensions.

Stock markets rise after Greece signs new austerity agreement

Robert Stevens

Europe’s stock markets rose Monday in response to the four-month extension of austerity agreed Friday between the Greek government and the euro group.

Stocks shot up in all the main markets save London, closing at their highest levels in seven years. Japanese equities hit a new 15-year peak. The FTSE Eurofirst 300 rose by 0.6 percent and Germany’s Dax by 0.7 percent. London’s FTSE 100 rose sharply and was due to reach a record level, before falling only due to a plunge in the shares of the crisis-ridden HSBC bank. Greece’s own stock markets were closed for a public holiday.

The financial aristocracy believes Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ deal will allow it to continue raking in billions of euros in profits by savaging workers’ living standards in Greece and across Europe. Commenting on the austerity deal, Erik Nielsen, global chief economist of UniCredit, said, “Europe has drawn the line in the sand—and markets had absolutely no problem with that.”

Summing up the results of less than a month of talks, in which Greece’s Syriza-led government did not win even minor concessions, Nielsen called it a “complete political surrender” on Syriza’s part.

The first condition of the agreement was for Syriza to submit further proposals by Monday evening to the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund “troika”, detailing how it would strictly adhere to the austerity programme agreed to by the previous New Democracy/PASOK regime.

Syriza complied totally with this humiliating demand. To ensure that its proposals would not be rejected, Syriza officials spent the entire weekend and Monday in talks with troika representatives, honing a suitable austerity agenda. One Greek government source told the Guardian, “It will be put over this evening although when exactly that will be we just don’t know. Right now they are drawing up and crossing out [proposals] … It is changing all the time.”

In the end, Syriza left nothing to chance. On Monday evening, Athens stated that it would instead submit its proposals on Tuesday morning.

This followed a warning in Monday’s Financial Times, which noted: “Euro zone officials have for weeks complained that [Greek Finance Minister] Mr Varoufakis’s reform proposals were not sufficiently detailed and had not come with estimates of how much they would affect the economy and government budgeting. Officials who have seen the weekend submission from Athens have indicated it is similarly vague.” [emphasis added]

Another official acknowledged Athens’ proposals amounted to “a list of actions to be taken” without a detailed breakdown of numbers.

Reuters reported Monday evening that a government official said Syriza’s list “will include reforms to fight tax evasion, corruption” and “measures to reform [the] public sector, [and] cut bureaucracy”. Also included are “reforms to regulate tax arrears and bad loans.”

Syriza uses these standard euphemisms (“reforming public sector, cut bureaucracy”) because, like the right-wing New Democracy government before it, it is a reactionary bourgeois party trying to cover up its plans to cut workers’ jobs and pay and increase productivity.

Syriza’s capitulation has only fueled demands for further concessions from the European Union.

The German government, which has insisted that Greece carry out the troika’s austerity directives to the letter, has responded to Syriza’s capitulation with even more vociferous demands. Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said, “The ball is in the Greek government’s court. If Athens wants to see changes in individual points, then that is okay. But if these changes lead to further spending, then they need to save elsewhere or look to gather more revenue.”

The statement issued by the euro group Friday stipulated, “The Greek authorities commit to refrain from any rollback of measures and unilateral changes to the policies and structural reforms that would negatively impact fiscal targets, economic recovery or financial stability, as assessed by the [EU, ECB and IMF] institutions.”

Among those who Syriza first turned to as a supposed counter to the austerity being demanded by Germany was European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. Not only did Juncker endorse the German position before the ink was barely dry on Friday’s deal, he was leading the chorus for Syriza to tear up any promise it had made to alleviate the social devastation visited on the Greek people over the past five years.

Speaking Monday to Wirtschaftswoche, Juncker said Syriza cannot raise the minimum wage because “It’s very difficult claiming privileges that other states don’t have.” He said Spain, Ireland and Portugal had already passed through a “vale of tears,” and that Greece could not be treated differently, “especially on raising the minimum wage.”

As Syriza desperately tried to make its proposals “sufficiently comprehensive to be a valid starting point” ahead of negotiations on a harsher austerity package in April, IMF head Christine Lagarde insisted that Syriza had to tackle “vested interests, protected professions, rigidity in some markets.”

She said, “I hope that the structural reforms that are so needed in the country can be implemented. ... There’s been a lot of talk about it, but now it’s time to get on with the work.”

In fact, there is every indication that Syriza’s capitulation to the EU austerity diktat will only fuel the collapse of the Greek economy and the drive for deeper attacks on the working class.

Greece’s banks remain in deep crisis, with their access to funds cut off by the ECB. Due to fear of a financial collapse as Greece’s previous credit agreement with the troika was due to expire, €1 billion were withdrawn from Greek bank accounts last Friday.

According to JP Morgan, outflows from Greek banks last week total €3 billion. In just under two months, €25 billion in deposits have been withdrawn from Greek banks. J.P. Morgan estimates that on this basis, the banks will run out of collateral to obtain new ECB loans in just eight weeks. This is down from the 14 weeks it estimated only last week.

Alan McQuaid, chief economist at Merrion Stockbrokers, described the latest deal as “kicking the can down the road,” adding that “it’s better than nothing and for the time being it will be seen as positive, assuming they can deliver these reform promises today.”

Peter Dixon, equity strategist at Commerzbank, cautioned, “We have cleared the first hurdle, but Greece has to come up with a serious set of measures now. Over the course of the next few months, we will be having more discussions and possibly a lot more market volatility.”

Gary Jenkins, chief credit strategist at LNG Capital said Syriza “now have four months to try and demonstrate that they have an action plan which is acceptable to their European partners and to their own people. It is not inconceivable that we are all back here in four month’s time with a heightened risk of either a Greek exit [from the eurozone] or default—or both.”

US slaughter in Afghanistan rages on

Bill Van Auken

Less than two months after President Barack Obama announced an end to US combat operations in Afghanistan, top Pentagon officials have made it clear that these murderous operations are not only continuing, they are escalating, while plans for the withdrawal of American troops are being reconsidered.

At the end of last year, the American president declared that “the longest war in American history is coming to a responsible conclusion.” He added that the drawdown of US forces marked “a milestone for our country.”

But the war in Afghanistan rages on, with mounting evidence that more than 13 years of US military occupation—dubbed “Operation Enduring Freedom”—have produced only a debacle for US foreign policy and a humanitarian catastrophe for the impoverished Afghan population.

The longest war in US history has claimed the lives of 2,356 American troops and left another 20,066 wounded, the vast majority of these casualties having taken place during the administration of Barack Obama. The current president promoted the intervention in Afghanistan as the “good war” and more than tripled the number of US soldiers and Marines fighting it. The cost to the US economy is estimated at somewhere between $750 billion and several trillion dollars.

In his speech last December, Obama claimed that 13 years of US war and occupation had succeeded in “devastating the core Al Qaeda leadership, delivering justice to Osama bin Laden, disrupting terrorist plots and saving countless American lives.” They had as well “helped the Afghan people reclaim their communities” and “take the lead for their own security.”

This glowing assessment was given a different spin last week when newly installed Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said that Washington wanted to make sure that “the Afghans themselves are able to preserve the environment which our forces have created over the last few years—one of relative security and stability.” As a result, he said, Washington was “rethinking” its “counterterrorism” operations, as well as its stated troop withdrawal timetable.

Carter’s talk of “relative security and stability” is hogwash. All indications are that the US puppet regime in Kabul is confronting a catastrophe, and that its patrons in Washington are convinced that only an escalation of the slaughter can reverse ever more threatening trends and prevent a Vietnam-style rout.

There are presently some 10,000 US troops in Afghanistan, along with an estimated 20,000 military contractors and several hundred CIA operatives. While Obama claims to have ended US combat operations in the country, his administration has ordered a sharp increase in night assassination raids by American special forces troops against Afghan villages, as well as stepped-up aerial bombardments of suspected insurgent targets.

Both tactics aroused intense popular hostility and were formally proscribed by former President Hamid Karzai. They have received support, however, from his successor, Ashraf Ghani, who is increasingly desperate in the face of a rising offensive by anti-regime forces.

The military escalation has exacted a brutal toll upon the Afghan civilian population. The United Nations agency for Afghanistan documented 10,548 civilian casualties last year (3,699 deaths and 6,849 injuries). This represents a 25 percent increase in the number of fatalities over the previous year and the highest number of civilian deaths and injuries since the UN began systematically recording casualties in 2009.

There are mounting signs that the US-armed and trained Afghan security forces are in a state of disintegration. The special inspector general for Afghan reconstruction (SIGAR) last month quoted Lt. Gen. Joseph Anderson, the then-commander of the US-led occupation forces, as stating that the level of casualties suffered by the Afghan forces (more than 5,000 Afghan soldiers and police were killed in 2014 alone) was “not sustainable,” nor, for that matter, was their desertion rate.

The clearest indication of the dire condition of the Afghan National Army and police was the recent decision by the Pentagon and NATO to classify all information on their combat capabilities as secret, after years of publicly releasing such data.

The economic and social situation confronting the country is, if anything, even more desperate. Afghanistan ranks 215th in the world in terms of per capita income, with close to half of the population living in dire poverty. The economy has begun to contract along with the decline in the US military presence and the level of foreign aid, the main sources of revenue.

Figures given out by US agencies boasting of dramatic strides in life expectancy, education and other indices have all been called into question by international agencies, with the numbers from Washington representing little more than war propaganda.

As opposed to the fraudulent claims of progress made by the White House and the Pentagon, polls have shown that a broad majority of the American public believes the Afghanistan war was not worth waging, while just 23 percent of the US soldiers who fought there believe their campaign was successful.

The turn by the Obama administration to an escalation of military operations in Afghanistan is driven by the same predatory geostrategic interests that led to the US invasion and occupation in the first place. These were based not on concerns about terrorism, but rather the desire to assert US hegemony over the energy-rich regions of the Caspian Basin and Central Asia and position the US military closer to the borders of both Russia and China.

Within the US ruling establishment, there are growing fears that a precipitous US withdrawal will create a vacuum that will be filled by Beijing and Moscow.

The “rethinking” of US combat operations in Afghanistan is taking place amid escalating US military interventions on a world scale. Washington has announced plans for a major US-led offensive against Mosul, an Iraqi city of 1.5 million, as it continues aerial bombardments in both Iraq and Syria. Almost simultaneously, it joined Turkey in announcing plans to train thousands of Syrian “rebels” to be unleashed nominally against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), but also in a war for regime change in Syria.

In Ukraine, Washington is escalating its provocations against Moscow. The new US defense secretary has signaled his support for arming the Ukrainian regime in a war that could bring the US into direct confrontation with a nuclear-armed Russia.

At the same time, the US Navy has unveiled plans to deploy four littoral combat ships—designed for combat in coastal areas—in northeast Asia as part of the “pivot to Asia,” which includes plans to shift 60 percent of US naval assets to the region in order to confront the rise of China.

As Leon Trotsky wrote in the run-up to the Second World War, while Nazi Germany was driven to “organize” Europe, US imperialism “must ‘organize’ the world.”

“History,” he warned, “is bringing humanity face to face with the volcanic eruption of American imperialism.”

This prognosis is being powerfully confirmed in the continuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the threat of military confrontation with Russia and China. The prospect of a third—nuclear—world war can be countered only by the international working class mobilizing itself as an independent revolutionary force against imperialist war and its source, the capitalist system.

The Rising Civilian Costs of the State-Vs-Extremists Conflict

Bibhu Prasad Routray

In 1956, the British authorities fighting the Communist insurgents in Malay granted a lump sum of M$12,000 to a former member of the Min Yuen, the supply organisation of the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA). The information provided by the renegade member cum police informer led to a successful ambush in which three insurgents were killed. The reward was a substantial sum, amounting to almost seven times the then average annual Malayan income. Disbursement of such generous rewards was part the psy war launched by the British against the Communists – that successfully helped cultivate large numbers of informants, ultimately leading to the decimation of the Communist insurgency.

In comparison, Korsa Jagaram alias Shivaji, who played a similar role of a facilitator in India's fight against left-wing extremism died in penury. On 1 January, Jagaram, a former cadre of the CPI-Maoist, who had risen to be a member of the outfit's West Bastar Division Committee, was attacked by a group of ten Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) cadres and killed in Kottapal, his native village in Chhattisgarh's Bijapur district. Jagaram had surrendered in May 2013. According to the prevailing surrender-cum-rehabilitation policy, Jagaram was entitled to a job and other benefits. Instead, he was recruited as a gopaniya sainik (covert operative) of the Chhattisgarh police's state auxiliary force. 

According to the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), the Maoists have killed 1169 alleged 'police informers' between 2008 and 2013, accounting for 41 per cent of the 2850 civilian fatalities during the period. While a number of these informers have acted as active agents of the police establishments, those killed also include civilians whose contribution to the security force operation is only incidental. 

Birsi Kumari's is a fitting example. Three days before India sought to exhibit its 'Nari shakti' by positioning women officers as marching contingent leaders of all the three military services during the Republic Day parade, 18-year-old Birsi Kumari was tied up and shot dead by the CPI-Maoist cadres in Jharkhand's Khunti district. By all means, Kumari's nexus with the state could not have gone beyond skeletal information regarding rebel presence or movement in her village, at the prodding of a security force contingent. However, in Maoist lexicon, any contact with the state is a cardinal mistake, often punishable by death. Death is not only punitive, but is also used as a deterrent to rein in potential state-agents.

Insurgency as well as the methods to contain it revolve around the strategy of dominating the space and seeking support among civilian populations that inhabit the space. On the flip side, this often amounts to targeting people who are believed to belong to the other camp. Cleansing an area of police informers is strategic, for it ensures an unhindered extremist domination over the area. 

As Maoist ideologue Charu Mazumdar wrote in his 1969 article, "The annihilation of the class enemy does not only mean liquidating individuals, but also means liquidating the political, economic and social authority of the class enemy." Class enemies included landlords, rich peasants, government employees, rival party members, and police informers. Lest this be construed as an act of calculated provocation, such killings are manifestations of domination by the extremists over geographical areas vis-à-vis the state's fleeting presence. At one level, informers are easy prey. On the other, killing them is crucial to drain the state of its authority.

Mazumdar, who has been accused of elevating "homicidal mania to a political principle" went on to prescribe how the communists must "spring" weapons such as "spears, javelins and sickles" at the enemy to kill him. "He who has not dipped his hand in the blood of class enemies can hardly be called a communist,” Mazumdar concluded. The CPI-Maoist continues to steadfastly adhere to the ideology of retribution and Mazumdar's prescriptions.   

It is unlikely that either Jagaram or Kumari's family members would receive any compensation from the state. State governments that have wilfully defaulted on rehabilitating the surrendered extremists on a number of instances are less likely to look after the deceased and peripheral entities in its counter-maoist campaign. Worse still, its own tactic of targeting civilians and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) believed to be on the side of the extremists would continue to make the plight of the civilians in the conflict theatres miserable. 

Among several examples of the state's highhandedness is the February 2015 incident where the police arrested and tortured a group of tribals in Chhattisgarh's Sukma district. Accusing them of playing a role in the killing of a police informer Anil Thakur, the police picked them up from their homes at night, detained them in a police station and subjected them to torture. The saying, ‘being caught between the fire and frying pan’ could not have assumed a more appropriate meaning.

Peru’s Eviction of Oil Company Could Set Precedent

Four days of violent conflict within a natural gas concession known as Block 108 in the Junin province of Peru led to the death of 25-year-old protestor Ever Perez Huaman. Huaman was allegedly killed by a gunshot wound to the abdomen, and many other protestors were injured and subject to tear gas fired at them by police. The area in conflict, whose ecosystems are threatened by Peru’s largest oil and gas producer Pluspetrol, is home to Indigenous Chanchamayo communities.

Argentinian company Pluspetrol had been conducting exploratory activities since last year under a concession from the Peruvian government. In response to the company’s myriad violations against local peoples’ rights, a mass of protestors began occupying Pluspetrol’s storage area and blocked a stretch of highway last Tuesday, February 10th. According to a leader of the local Indigenous federation ARPI, Lyndon Pishagua, over 800 protestors were involved in the action—though local Indigenous communities did not participate, due to a dispute with the protest’s organizers who are mainly from outside the Junin province. Though the protest was spurred due to contamination of the community’s rivers and soil due to natural gas exploitation on Indigenous lands. Pluspetrol has become infamous for causing environmental harm to Indigenous communities in the country’s northern Amazon due to the company’s careless oil extraction methods.  In keeping with their behavior in the north, the company has denied responsibility for environmental damage in Junin.

Despite the violence that ensued, the unwavering dedication of Indigenous communities finally convinced the state of Peru to ask Pluspetrol to vacate the concession. The government has also been called upon by Energy and Mines Minister Eleodoro Mayorga to evaluate the contract it made with Pluspetrol for natural gas exploration in 2005. In response to protests and proposed inquiries, the company still purports to have met all legal requirements including having obtained consent the Chanchamavo peoples in the affected town of Pichanaki, Junin. The Chanchamayo state that a proper consultation and dialogue did not take place.

Meanwhile, negotiations are underway between Pluspetrol, the Peruvian government, and Indigenous communities along four watersheds in Loreto regarding the expiration of Pluspetrol’s oil concession formerly known as Lot 1AB, in August of 2015.

After four decades of flagrant pollution, public health crises, and the routine devastation of their ancestral lands by oil projects, the Indigenous communities of the Peruvian Amazon, including the Quechua, Achuar, and Kichwa, among others, have demonstrated that they will not continue to tolerate corporate abuse without a fight.

Starting on January 24th, nearly 400 members of the Achuar and Kichwa communities interrupted production at 14 oil wells, preventing the output of over 3,000 barrels of oil a day. Kichwa men, women and children have been protesting along the River Tigre, using cables to impede oil boats from passing in hopes of preventing further operations in the Amazonian forest. Pluspetrol has lost over 2 million dollars to date since communities started mobilizing.

This type of protest, and the abuses that necessitated it, is not an isolated incident. Since the legacy of oil drilling in the Peruvian Amazon began in the 1970s, pioneered by US-based company Occidental Petroleum (Oxy), Indigenous lands have been destroyed by innumerable crude oil spills, gas flares, and 9 billion barrels of production waste waters containing highly toxic heavy metals such as barium, lead, chrome, cadmium and arsenic dumped directly into the community’s sources of fresh water. In Block 1-AB, which Pluspetrol acquired 15 years ago, a government study found that all but 2 out of 199 people making up the seven affected communities showed blood-cadmium levels dangerously above the standard. Various Achuar communities have been shown to experience tumors, skin ailments, miscarriages, chronic illnesses, and severely high levels of heavy metals in their blood streams. As the government and Pluspetrol still fail to remedy these issues, affected Indigenous peoples confront the daily dilemma of where to find clean food and drinking water. In addition to declining health, these communities face dwindling resources: they face the contamination of streams and rivers they relied on for fishing and the pollution of groundwater under agricultural fields which causes crops to wilt and fail. Hunting grounds and ecosystems once teeming with biodiversity are now scarce, as animals are threatened with the loss and contamination of their habitats.

Indigenous leaders have argued that the government and Pluspetrol have failed to appropriately consult or acquire consent for developments, neglected to install effective plans for the remediation and prevention of environmental contamination, and have not issued due compensation to impacted communities for use and ruination of their land which contradicts Article 28 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples requiring them to do so.

Unfortunately, despite the establishment of Indigenous land rights in Peru meant to prevent such confrontations, the ongoing battle against State and corporate collusion continues to emphasize that these rights are not being implemented effectively. Though the Peruvian State has acknowledged some Indigenous lands with “Native Community” titles, in the example of the Achuar, these titles only cover a third of their ancestral territories, leaving the landscape shared by 40 Achuar communities still subject to unregulated oil drilling. Though ILO Convention 169, ratified in 1994 by Peru, declares the right of Indigenous people to free, prior and informed consent over development projects, and Articles 89 and 149 of Peru’s own Political Constitution state the right of native and rural communities to self-determination, these statues have been chronically violated by oil concessions made without Indigenous consent.  

Still, Indigenous communities have developed successful strategies for resistance over the more than four decades of abuse they have been subjected to. In 2007, the Achuar filed a class-action lawsuit against Oxy, the concessions original owner, demanding compensation and remediation of the damage left by dumping 850,000 barrels of toxic produced waters every day for decades, and in 2010, won an appeal for the case to proceed in U.S. Federal Court. Along the Pastaza River, communities have trained themselves to become environmental monitors, observing and recording oil spills. 

Starting explorations in Peru in 2004, Canadian oil company Talisman Energy also began drilling wells in Block 64 on ancestral Achuar land in the Pastaza and Morona river basins in spite of fervent opposition. Though they never obtained free, prior and informed consent from the majority of communities living in Block 64, Talisman became its sole operator in 2007. In response, Achuar leaders traveled to Talisman’s annual General Shareholder Meeting at their headquarters in Calgary, Canada, to demand recognition of their rights. Their persistence was rewarded in September 2012, when Talisman became the fifth company to discontinue drilling in Block 64 and to withdraw from the country.

Despite these accomplishments, the Peruvian government has pledged to renew the concession in Block 1-AB, which is due to expire in August 2015. Even so, after decades of corporate pollution allowed for the sake of lower production costs, the Indigenous peoples of Peru continue to demonstrate their capacity and resilience in the hopes that their rights to traditional land, compensation, and survival will ultimately be recognized.

World Bank Admitted Link to Forced Evictions in Africa

The World Bank has failed to properly enforce its environmental and social guidelines regarding Indigenous Peoples in Africa. According to a leaked report obtained by  the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the Bank knew there was an “operational link’’  between its funding for an Ethiopian development initiative and the forced evictions of thousands of Indigenous Peoples. 

Over the last decade, the World Bank created a health and education initiative that galvanized about $2 billion in funds. Members of the Indigenous Anuak people in Ethiopia’s Gambella region declared that the Ethiopian government was using some of the World Bank’s money in a program that supported forced evictions and allowed soldiers to beat, rape and kill Anuak people who refused to leave their homes.

Cultural Survival’s 2012 campaign successfully urged the governments of the US and UK, donor nations to Ethiopia, to recognize this link and pull funding for the projects that lead to the removal of Indigenous Peoples from their lands.  The campaign highlighted the Anuak people’s forced removal to state-created villages, and how those who refused to leave their lands were met with violent attacks, rape, and torture. 

According to a leaked watchdog report, The World Bank’s internal Inspection Panel admitted that there was an “operational link” between the World Bank-funded program and Ethiopian authorities’ eviction actions. The Ethiopian government has argued that the forced removal of Indigenous Peoples and the creation of villages, known as the “villagization” program, was designed to provide access to basic socio-economic infrastructures like food, healthcare, and educational facilities to the people who are being relocated and to bring “socio-economic & cultural transformation of the people.” Under this program, the Ethiopian government forcibly relocated approximately 70,000 Indigenous People from the Gambella region to new villages that actually continue to lack basic necessities and minimum health standards. The Bank’s failure to publicly acknowledge this “operational link” and to ensure the protection of affected communities means the World Bank violated its own policies based on project appraisal, risk assessment, financial analysis and protection of Indigenous Peoples, concludes the report.

The Bank’s failure to regulate land-grabbing occurring with the aid of their funding has been an issue across Africa.  The Maasai people of the Rift Valley in Kenya were also evicted from their homelands due to the creation of the Hells Gate National Park, and then again for the development of geothermal energy extraction funded directly by the World Bank. At each phase of this project, the Maasai have been being forced out of their homelands without their Free, Prior and Informed Consent. A report on an initial visit by the Bank’s Inspection Panel to Kenya’s Rift Valley to address this issue is forthcoming.  

In an article written by the First Peoples Worldwide in review of the World Bank’s new Environmental and Social Framework, which was established in 2014,  they state, “‘Not only does the World Bank’s new Environment and Social Framework (ESF) draft incentivize governments to ignore Indigenous Peoples, it strategically neglects Indigenous and human rights of Free, Prior, Informed Consent and protection from forced evictions.” Although, the World Bank is expected to be “[aligned] with international human rights laws and standards,” the First Peoples Worldwide continues to mention that the new ESF draft prioritizes loan approvals for borrowing countries over the protection of human rights and allows those borrowing countries to ‘opt-out’ of FPIC requirements if they do not recognize Indigenous Peoples on or within the land.

While there are many people unsatisfied with the World Bank’s treatment of Indigenous Peoples across the world, the Bank is soliciting feedback through a “live chat’’ with interested stakeholders on how to improve the current draft of their environmental and social framework. On their website, they encourage stakeholders to “discuss with an expert panel and to make your suggestions directly to those working to protect people and the environment every day.”  Back in 2013, the Bank admitted efforts "Must made to build capacity and safeguards related to land rights—and to empower civil society to hold governments accountable.”  In 2015, many feel the Bank's attempt at establishing these safeguards is too little, too late.

Sub-Regional Cooperation in South Asia: A New Lease of Life?

Saurabh Kaushik

During the 18th SAARC Summit held in November 2014, Prime Minister Modi remarked that regional integration in South Asia would go ahead “through SAARC or outside it, among all of us or some of us.” It is evident that SAARC as a regional arrangement has been unable to act as a ‘consensus-building’ forum, largely due to the intractable nature of problems between India and Pakistan. With Modi indicating that an alternative could be forged by taking the initiative at the sub-regional level, it is imperative to analyse the reasons for the lack of progress in this regard. Also, what do the recent trends indicate? Is sub-regional cooperation gaining momentum in South Asia and does it hold promise?

It is obvious that bilateral relationships act both as the bedrock as well as a roadblock in achieving regional cooperation. The effort to engage simultaneously in addressing bilateral irritants and bringing about deeper economic cooperation has the potential to pave the way for sub-regional cooperation in South Asia. 

There are multiple sub-regional forums in the region such as the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), South Asia Sub-regional Economic Cooperation (SASEC) and India Bangladesh Myanmar Sub-Regional Cooperation (IBM-SRC). Their failure in achieving any meaningful outcome or significant progress stems from a combination of domestic political, foreign policy, and economic factors.

Being the fulcrum of the sub-region and its window to Southeast Asia, IBM countries, i.e. India, Bangladesh and Myanmar occupy primary importance in the efforts to integrate the region. Therefore, it is important to throw some light on India-Bangladesh and Bangladesh-Myanmar bilateral relations and their changing dynamics in order to understand which way sub-regional cooperation in South Asia is headed. 

The Myanmar-Bangladesh-India gas pipeline project proposed after the discovery of the Shwe gas fields in Myanmar’s Rakhine state failed to take off. This was because Bangladesh wanted India to reduce the huge bilateral trade deficit, allow transit to Nepal and Bhutan, and facilitate the sale of electricity from these countries to Bangladesh through Indian territory in exchange for providing transit for the pipeline. Domestic compulsions in both India and Bangladesh with regard to the settlement of the Teesta Water Sharing Agreement and Land Boundary Agreement (LBA) have further delayed their economic integration. 

However, with a strong leadership at the helm in India and its resolve to reenergise the ‘Look East’ policy, things are starting to look up. PM Modi assured his Bangladeshi counterpart of a speedy resolution to LBA and Teesta waters dispute on the sidelines of the SAARC Summit. In fact, the bill to give effect to the India-Bangladesh Land Boundary Agreement (LBA) was approved by a parliamentary panel in December 2014, not even a month after the Summit. Among other things, the positive reception of the India-Bangladesh Maritime Arbitration Award announced in July 2014 on both sides also signals a reinvigorated push in the right direction.

In the case of the Bangladesh-Myanmar bilateral relationship, the Rohingya issue has been a significant challenge in the context of assuaging domestic political sentiments and has a direct bearing on foreign policy decisions. Yet, it would not be unwise to suggest that given the growing importance of the Bay of Bengal and the Indo-Pacific, both countries are well poised to intensify their cooperation. In fact, delinking the Rohingya issue and IBM-SRC to allow progress to be made on the latter could act as an incentive to resolve the former.   

There are also several economic and technical factors that have impeded sub-regional economic integration. Apart from tariffs, non-tariff barriers to trade such as export subsidies, prohibitions, quotas, import licensing, and custom procedures act as obstacles to intra-regional trade. Intra-regional trade in South Asia is a mere 5 per cent as compared to 58 per cent in the EU, 52 per cent in the NAFTA region, and 26 per cent in the ASEAN zone. The silver lining, however, is that India is playing a proactive role in revising its tariff and non-tariff regime vis-à-visits neighbours, especially Bangladesh, which should inspire some optimism.

Inadequate infrastructure and lack of border trade facilities on the ground are other major impediments that affect all countries in the region. The importance of these can be gauged by the fact that if the existing border infrastructure between Bangladesh and India’s Northeast is upgraded, trade volume can potentially go up by five to six times the current level. 

Needless to say, there are serious roadblocks to enhanced cooperation, both political as well as economic. But it is worth considering some recent developments apart from those mentioned above. A total of 73 projects, including five in 2014, have been commissioned by the ADB, amounting to US$ 6.56 billion under SASEC.  There have already been meetings between Power and Transport Secretaries of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal (BBIN) on Hydropower and Regional Road Transport Connectivity this year. A series of similar dialogues will be set in motion through the course of the year. There is good reason to be hopeful. Sub-regional cooperation may finally have gotten a new lease of life, and we will be witness to its promise.