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14 WEDNESDAY, MAY 3, 2017 DT Opinion The old neighbourhood is gone What is the true cost of urbanisation? Do kids still play with other kids from the area? DHAKA TRIBUNE • Rabiul Islam My father, being a government employee, had to move frequently from town to town. Once, he found himself settled in one specific area, where he then bought a piece of land. The man who sold the land also sold all his parental property in a rush. Our neighbours, along with my father, also bought lands from him. None of them cared that over hundreds of kids in that town used to play in those lands. They cleared the little bit of shrubbery and vegetation, cut down all the trees, filled the cultivable lands with sand. Literally stripping the area. What happened to all those kids? No one ever asked. When there were trees, fields, ponds, the kids used to run around and play. The pond helped us learn how to swim and catch fish. We knew each other, and each other’s families. We used to quarrel with each other to the point when our families had to get involved in the matter. But there was life in that neighbourhood. Hardly any Ramadan went by without sharing iftar with our neighbours. It is saddening that I am writing this in the past tense now. It was considered indecent to return those iftar plates empty. So, we used to return them with more food in our own plates. And, therefore, the transaction never ended. These exchanges happened every time any family in the neighbourhood cooked something they recently harvested, or something they thought was good enough to share. I mean, if you could smell it in the air, you would know that something is coming to your house. Be it khichuri, polao, or payesh, you wouldn’t miss it if it was being cooked on the hearth of your neighbours. Some of us kids would often invite ourselves to our neighbours’ house and stayed there waiting for some aunt to say: Don’t leave without eating.” It always sounded like a privilege. The age of reason Then the age of reason came and our aunts started comparing whose kid was in which position in the classroom. They started sending their kids off to nicer schools in cities, started living as disparately as possible. To get more detached from each other, they particularly focused on the height of their walls. The kids who were left could no Urbanisation has resulted in the psychosis of our neighbours. The dwellers no longer feel it necessary to communicate. They do not even know the names of the people living next door longer climb a tree to see what’s happening on their neighbour’s house, because there were none. They did not feel motivated to meet other kids as there were no simple roads leading to each others’ houses anymore. Remember the land seller? He didn’t keep any roads in his map nor the people who bought them from him. And so the kids stopped playing because there were no fields to play on. Urban pyschosis Urbanisation has resulted in the psychosis of our neighbours. The dwellers no longer feel it necessary to communicate. They do not even know the names of the people living next door. We have made ourselves so smart and sophisticated today that we don’t bother going to funerals. The bond between unknown families has broken, the new micro families with their micro hearts can barely feed themselves. Does our next generation deserve this neighbourhood? Should we crowd their lives with plastic toys, electronic gadgets, schools, and artificial reality? When was the last time you shared a meal with your neighbour? The last time you asked how they were doing? Or have you already figured that they are bad influences? • Rabiul Islam is a freelance contributor.
Mood swing diplomacy Trump’s foreign policy goes every which way Opinion 15 DT WEDNESDAY, MAY 3, 2017 • John Lloyd Donald Trump doesn’t practice traditional diplomacy. As in domestic policy, but with a thicker fog of ignorance, Trump treats each issue of foreign policy or engagement as a separate event, and reacts to it according to his mood. This behaviour is unlikely to change. If it does not and Trump’s presidency continues, the world, including the important parts of it he governs, will become more dangerous. The considerable good that Americans do abroad will shrink. And the rule-based systems which the United States seeks to police will decay and be replaced with more regional and national confrontations and more failed states. The double switch Trump’s shifting moods have produced several notable flipflops. Most prominent has been that on Russia, in part because he praised President Vladimir Putin again and again from mid-2013 to February this year. That stopped after the Syrian government’s chemical weapons attack in early April, at which point Trump promised retaliation and switched from admiration to distrust of Russia, Syria’s main ally. It was a double switch -- on Russia, but also on intervention. Trump ordered a missile strike on the base from which the Syrian planes staged their attack. He had vowed not to intervene in foreign quarrels, and had appeared indifferent about Assad remaining in power. After criticising China for manipulating its currency and destroying US industry with cheap imports for much of his campaign, Trump changed his tone after an apparently friendly weekend with Chinese President Xi Jinping at Trump’s Florida resort. He had grumbled before meeting Xi that relations between the two countries had to be radically adjusted. After the meeting, and after receiving some encouragement for his view that China would put pressure on a North Korea threatening nuclear war, Trump shifted once more, asking rhetorically why he would be rude to China on currency manipulation when it was assisting him on North Korea. For some in the foreign policy The flip-flopping president establishment, hostility toward Russia and cautious overtures to China was a return to the natural order of things, underpinned by the president’s discovery that NATO was not obsolete after all. There’s something in that view: Russia was never going to remain a favoured nation of America for long, and as early as his January meeting with British Prime Minister Theresa May, Trump had appeared to agree when she told journalists that he was “100%” behind NATO. But to say he’s become a “normal” foreign policy president is a stretch. The basis of mainstream US diplomacy has historically been a warm attitude toward traditional close allies, cool-to-aggressive toward opponents, and sometimes critical of authoritarian states with which business can or must be done. These postures are full of moral gulches and vast hypocrisies -- many were exposed in Wikipedia’s publication of US State Department cables -- but everyone knows how the game is played. Baseless accusations Trump isn’t like that. He makes no secret of his dislike of some close allies and appears to admire, rather than tolerate, authoritarian leaders. In their first White House meeting, Trump pressed German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the US’s most important European ally, to meet NATO’s military spending target, and in an awkward quip repeated his claim that he had been wiretapped by the Obama administration. He abruptly terminated his call with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull after Turnbull asked Trump to honour the Obama era commitment to take over 1,000 migrants from an Australian detention camp. Trump received Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau more politely, but a few weeks later blamed Canada for trade violations. He held Theresa May’s hand as they walked through the White House Colonnade, but soon after criticised her secret services for spying on him, with no proof on which to base such a colossal charge. With friends like these By contrast, the president appeared to relish the first round success of French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, This is not mainstream diplomacy. It is, to adapt the president’s customary designation of the press, ‘lamestream’ diplomacy whose political lineage is racist, anti- Semitic, contemptuous of Muslims, and intent on isolating France from both the European Union and the global economy. He congratulated Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the narrow and possibly manipulated victory in a referendum on increasing his power -- which will likely lead to the newly empowered Erdogan arresting and detaining more government officials, military officers, journalists, and academics. Trump treated Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, much more brutal with internal enemies than his predecessor Hosni Mubarak, whom he helped remove, like a long lost friend. Trump’s attitude to his southern neighbour, Mexico, has alienated the country’s political class. President Enrique Pena Nieto cancelled a visit to REUTERS Washington as Trump repeated his campaign promise to build a wall between the two countries and deport millions of Mexicans deemed to be illegal immigrants. This is not mainstream diplomacy. It is, to adapt the president’s customary designation of the press, “lamestream” diplomacy: Lamed by lack of strategy, experience, and often, common politeness, his preferences proceeding from a world-view which prizes displays of strength and is contemptuous of liberal allies. Will this change? Of course -- and in every which way. Flip-flops, switches, and change make up the one unchanging theme of Trump’s diplomacy. • John Lloyd co-founded the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, where he is senior research fellow. This article first appeared on Reuters.
Page 1 and 2: SECOND EDITION WEDNESDAY, MAY 3, 20
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Page 23 and 24: Showtime 23 WEDNESDAY, MAY 3, 2017

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