“Freedom is a Western word.” Thus said Michael Caine as Thomas Fowler in the remake of the film The Quiet American.
Based in Vietnam, the 1955 novel by Graham Greene explores the consequences of trying to impose alien views on other cultures. A bizarre conversation on political philosophy takes place in a tower amidst paddy fields, manned by two colonial Vietnamese soldiers.
“I said to Pyle, ‘Do you think they know they are fighting for democracy?’”
“’And as for liberty, I don’t know what it means. Ask them.’ I called across the floor in French to them. ‘La liberte—qu’est ce que c’est la liberte?’ They sucked in the rice and stared back and said nothing.”
And yet the Viet Minh were fighting for freedom. Therefore, freedom does have meaning in Asia—but not democracy. The Vietnam War was, as one historian put it, a war “fought to achieve a united, independent country.” Freedom in Asia and Africa, thanks to colonial experience, means collective freedom, not individual freedom.
Further proof comes from the fact that the orient never experienced slavery. The very meaning of freedom derived from its antithesis—slavery. Egypt had no concept of slavery and ‘slaves’ never appeared until the Egyptian Empire—and constituted a minuscule part of the labour force; household slaves were easily assimilated. In China, slaves comprised only 1% of the population and had a different status from that of Roman slaves! The corresponding ratio for Attica around 431 b.c. was between 25–33%. However, in Greece, too, Hellenistic despotism entailed the disappearance of slavery—and its re-emergence with the Roman Republic and, again, its disappearance with the Empire. Freedom has no meaning unless the possibility of losing it is real.
Even slaves—the word mamluk meant a male of slave origins—had been rulers in the Muslim world when they had had sufficient military power to do so. Qutb-ud-Din Aybak had been a slave ruler; the Delhi Dynasty had been a dynasty of slaves. How different from Greek and Roman Republican slavery, where a slave was regarded as hardly human. (Incredibly enough, Diodotus, a royal slave in the Seleucid household, seized power in the kingdom of Syria and was accepted—albeit temporarily–as a ruler! The episode highlights the level of tolerance under Hellenistic absolutism.)
There appears then a genuine relationship between absolutism and the absence of slavery. Since Asia has always been absolutist, no private loyalties were ever allowed to emerge. When we look around Asia today, and observe the dynastic and one-party rules that prevail, we are reminded of the absolutism that is part of our historical legacy. Republics and democracies have always drawn a sharp boundary between citizen and slave. We see the legacy at work in the treatment of Palestinians by Israel and of Iraqis by Americans: Palestinians and Iraqis are outsiders.
Our culture, too, leaves no room for individual privacy. The author knows a lady who wanted to emigrate from Bangladesh because she was driven to distraction by the constant inquiries of her friends, family, colleagues and neighbours as to whether she was pregnant or not! Only when she had her first baby did the incessant nagging stop. That’s our culture, and I do not judge it.
Rather sinister figures reinforce the view of collective authoritarianism in Asia—that here the family, not the individual, remains supreme, with the son as head. Consider South Korea: despite years of democratic practice, the ratio of male to female births increased with democratic progress! “Sex-selective abortion appears prevalent in families having only daughters” observes an expert. In 1987, the year of democratic transition in South Korea, the sex ratio at birth was 109; by 1992 it had soared to 114: there were 114 male births to 100 female births. Similar statistics can be adduced for India, Taiwan, and China. Sex-selective abortion in Asia needs to be kept in perspective, though: the rate of abortion per 1000 women in Asia (33) was on a par with that in Latin America and lower than that in Europe (48) in 1995; in Eastern Europe it was a staggering 90!
Aristotle’s observations regarding liberty are pertinent only to the West: “One principle of liberty is for all to rule and be ruled in turn . . . Another is that a man should live as he likes. This, they say, is the mark of liberty, since, on the other hand, not to live as a man likes is the mark of a slave.” Notice the opposition between slavery and liberty, the private life of the individual.
‘Freedom’ outside Western Europe then does not mean individual freedom. If so, how does one explain the spread of democracy to Africa and Asia (more later on North Africa) since the collapse of the Berlin Wall? In 1989, there were only 3 democracies in sub-Saharan Africa; in 1991, there were 30. Donors were quite happy to finance military rule in Bangladesh, too, until 1990.
In their book Africa Works: Disorder as Political Instrument, anthropologists Patrick Chabal and Jean-Pascal Daloz observe, “It cannot simply be a coincidence, that, now that the West ties aid to democratisation under the guise of multi-party elections, multi-party elections are taking place in Africa.”
Similarly, The Economist notes: “ . . . the cold war’s end prompted Western donors to stop propping up anti-communist dictators and to start insisting on democratic reforms (December 18th 2004, p. 69).”
Donors want democracy; they are willing to pump money and prestige into the idea. Therefore, a ‘freedom industry’ has developed: indeed, Chabal and Daloz devote many pages to articulating how ‘Africa works’—how Africans are systematically using the resources of their donors. Take civil society and NGOs.
“The political significance of such a massive proliferation of NGOs in Africa deserves closer attention. Our research suggests that this expansion is less the outcome of the increasing political weight of civil society than the consequence of the very pragmatic realisation that resources are now largely channelled through NGOs. It would thus be naive to think that the advent of NGOs necessarily reflects a transition from the ponderous world of state bureaucracy to that of more flexible ‘civic’ associations operating beyond the clutch of the state. In our view, it is rather the reflection of a successful adaptation to the conditions laid down by foreign donors on the part of political actors who seek in this way to gain access to new resources.”
They observe that “ . . . there is today an international ‘aid market’ which Africans know how to play with great skill. Indeed, there is very little doubt that NGOs spend an excessive proportion of their budget on furnishing their members with sophisticated and expensive equipment (from computers to four-wheel drives), leaving all too little for the development projects which justify the work of the NGOs in the first place.”
The existence of a freedom industry is further corroborated by the findings of a British organisation, the British Helsinki Human Rights Group. They have been described as “nosily defending a grim lot of east European politicians against the imperialism of Western do-gooders” (The Economist, December 4th 2004, p. 52). John Laughland, one of the trio who run the group, considers the funding of pro-Western causes in eastern Europe in the name of supporting democracy a “scandal.” Dubious methods used by pro-Western politicians are routinely overlooked, he avers; when pro-Russian parties use the same methods, there are screams of protest. Mark Almond, another member, has claimed that the internal politics of Ukraine has been influenced by money from both George Soros and George Bush. The group dislikes both liberal internationalism, of the European Union’s sort, as well as the more violent Anglo-American kind.
It is not surprising that a BBC survey found that every section of Bangladeshi society was suspicious of NGOs. Only three percent surveyed wanted to give them more power—and only two per cent admired social work, the ‘least admired’ of all kinds of work. It has been estimated that only 25% of donor money reach the poor in Bangladesh. According to The Economist: “There are about 20,000 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Bangladesh, probably more than in any other country (March 15th 2003, p. 29).”
Freedom has been reduced to cash.
Perhaps no other word in history has seen such an ignominious reduction. Freedom is not an idea: it is a commodity. Furthermore, instead of individual slavery, today we witness the spectacle of collective slavery. Entire societies, states and peoples are dominated by means of financial and military aid.
Lawrence of Arabia
Now we come to North Africa, or the Arab Spring. Here we will pause to note what T.E.Lawrence had to say in his Seven Pillars of Wisdom about Arabs: “Arabs could be swung on an idea as on a cord; for the unpledged allegiance of their minds made them obedient servants. None of them would escape the bond till success had come, and with it responsibility and duty and engagements. Then the idea was gone and the work ended—in ruins. Without a creed they could be taken to the four corners of the world (but not to heaven) by being shown the riches of earth and the pleasures of it; but if on the road, led in this fashion, they met the prophet of an idea, who had nowhere to lay his head and who depended for his food on charity or birds, then they would all leave their wealth for his inspiration. They were incorrigibly children of the idea, feckless and colour-blind, to whom body and spirit were for ever and inevitably opposed.” The idea—or wave, as Lawrence called it—was nationalism, a revolt against the Ottomans, and it was backed up heavily by British cash. “One such wave (and not the least) I raised and rolled before the breath of an idea, till it reached its crest, and toppled over and fell at Damascus. The wash of that wave, thrown back by the resistance of vested things, will provide the matter of the following wave, when in fullness of time the sea shall be raised once more.”
And the sea has been raised once more—this time again with Western cash and training. According to the Washington Post:” It’s estimated more than 10,000 Egyptians since 2005 have participated in USAID-financed democracy and governance programs, carried out by NDI, IRI and 28 other international and Egyptian organizations—not only political training, but also projects to prepare judges, build PTA-style school associations and otherwise deepen civic involvement.” Again, the Washington Post says: “ . . . the State Department’s Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) has funneled up to $6 million to Syrian opposition groups such as Barada TV since 2006. MEPI is supervised by Tamara Wittes, a longtime pro-Israel advocate of democratic reform in the Middle East. . . . :”
This is not the first time that America has succeeded in causing chaos and bringing people out onto the streets. The most egregious instance was the successful attempt by the CIA to create public disorder through propaganda, agents provocateur and money in Iran to overthrow Mohammed Mosaddeq. “The CIA, with help from British intelligence, planned, funded and implemented the operation. When the plot threatened to fall apart entirely at an early point, U.S. agents on the ground took the initiative to jump-start the operation, adapted the plans to fit the new circumstances, and pressed their Iranian collaborators to keep going. Moreover, a British-led oil boycott, supported by the United States, plus a wide range of ongoing political pressures by both governments against Mosaddeq, culminating in a massive covert propaganda campaign in the months leading up to the coup helped create the environment necessary for success. “
Again, we see that the Arabs, like those following T.E.Lawrence, had little to do with their revolution. Like Bangladeshis, Africans and other Asian countries, freedom as cash has appeared as liberty.
Iftekhar Sayeed was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where he currently resides. He teaches English as well as economics. His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in Postcolonial Text (on-line); Altar Magazine, Online Journal, Left Curve (2004,2005) and The Whirligig in the United States; in Britain: Mouseion, Erbacce, The Journal, Poetry Monthly, Envoi, Orbis, Acumen and Panurge; and in Asiaweek in Hong Kong; Chandrabhaga and the Journal OF Indian Writing in English in India; and Himal in Nepal. He is also a freelance journalist. He and his wife love to tour Bangladesh.
