Showing posts with label Turkey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Turkey. Show all posts

Monday, November 19, 2012

What? It’s not unlimited?!

Global dynamics in the light of water that’s getting scarcer

D o transboundary rivers trigger inter-state conflicts or encourage cooperation? Klaus Toepfer, former director-general of the United Nations Environment Programme had prophesied possibilities of distinct wars over water issues a decade ago. Tensions escalated between the US and Mexico when Mexico extracted water for irrigation from rivers in America’s land. One of the prime reasons for Israel’s invasion over Gaza strip was getting control over the river Jordon. Syria and Iraq kept on accusing Turkey for not giving enough accessibility to water of The Euphrates’s river basin and digging dams one after another. But the severities and gruesome ramifications of fights for water are more visible in the poorest continent Africa. Hundreds died in battles between Uganda, Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt. Tensions reaches to the peak when Ethiopia set up irrigation projects in the Nile which restricted water flow to Egypt.

Surprisingly, the issue has taken a new twist with a recent report revealed by Oregon State University stating that transboundary rivers have led to more cooperation than conflicts in history.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
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Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Taking stock

Are there lessons for all from assassination of Benazir?

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto has been perhaps one of the most tragic incident in recent history. This incident not only has weakened the cause of democracy but has also thrown Pakistan far into a zone of no return. While many have been trying to play down the entire incident as just the continuation of the Pakistani legacy of military coups and assassinations, this episode of the same has put the future of South Asia at a real crossroad. Now that the dust is settling down and things are relatively coming back to normalcy, are there important lessons and observations to be drawn from this tragic happening? Well, to start with, Benazir’s assassination once again brings forth an increasingly menacing trend of this era, i.e. nations are subject to more risk from within, than from outside.

For rest of the world, nothing could have been better than to see the gradual restoration of faith in democracy in hearts and minds of the average Pakistani and releasing him/her steadily from clutches of fundamentalism. It’s some elements within Pakistan, aided by global fundamentalism, which have given a death knell to restoration of democracy in Pakistan. In the same league, for an LTTE, it makes more sense to continue with mayhem than to find reasonable political solutions for the cause of Sri Lanka’s Tamil minorities and thereby putting Sri Lanka at risk more from within than outside.

The same is the case of Bangladesh which through its ascension as well as assertion of fundamentalism is increasingly proving that, once, it was rightly called East Pakistan. Today Bangladesh, and Nepal too has more threats from within than without. A wider scrutiny of Asia at large and even of Europe would vindicate that the same malaise is plaguing them too, be it IRA is UK, ETA in Spain or PKK in Turkey. For the whole of 20th century, nations put more resources to mitigate external threats. And in their quest to securing external boundaries, they literally undermined the problems germinating within. As a result internal security was always considered less of a priority than external security.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
 
IIPM : The B-School with a Human Face
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