15-11-2021

MONDAy, NOvEMbER 15, 2021
4
Iraq's moment of truth in wake of attempt on PM's life
Acting Editor & Publisher : Jobaer Alam
e-mail: editor@thebangladeshtoday.com
Monday, November 15, 2021
Taxation in a
difficult situation
T
here
is no need to explain why the country's taxation
efforts assumes much extra attention in the on going
fiscal year. In fact, the economy acquired the
unprecedented burden of the corona related shocks that
started bedeviling taxation efforts from March of the
immediate past fiscal year. However, it is noted with much
relief that notwithstanding the pandemic and its disastrous
effects on the economy, the final counts of revenue
collection were not far from the set targets.
While this may raise optimism, given the fact that the
pandemic is still raging with unabetted force and no one
knows when it will be conclusively gone from our lives, no
complacence should be there in going all out to reach the
current year's taxation targets.
This is so very important when government's
expenditures have shot up a great deal to meet the varied
medical sides to tackling the epidemic.
Furthermore, the needs to pay stimulus packages to
industries and for the social safety needs of the poor, have
been stressing the government's resources like never
before. Considering everything, giving very focused
attention to taxation issues assumes very great importance
in this unusually difficult time.
New approaches to taxation must be tried in the near
future and the main strategy in this connection must be
one of expanding the taxation base than trying the old way
of squeezing out more from existing taxpayers who, in
many cases, are facing hardships due to the pandemic and
their shrunk ability to pay more in taxes.
Thus, instead of pressing on this class of taxpayers, the
main strategy should be one of bringing under the taxation
net a large number of those who always possessed the
ability to pay taxes but evaded payment due to in built
weaknesses in the system.
It is expertly thought only from effectively widening the
tax base or ensuring compliance, the challenges to taxation
in this difficult time can be substantially met.
For example, latest statistics show that there are 5 million
taxpayers in the country with tax identification numbers
(TIN). But out of these 5 million TIN holders, only 2.2
million submit their annual tax returns. Why this leniency
? Our tax departments should swing into action -- keeping
the pandemic emergency in mind-- to ensure that the rest
3.8 million feel obliged to submit their tax returns well
before the end of the present fiscal year. And why should
the authorities be satisfied with only 10 million taxpayers in
a country of over 160 million with a booming economy
when the pandemic started about eighteen months ago.
Even conservatively, it may be said that there are at least
three times more or 40 million eligible taxpayers outside
the net. The taxation departments are not expected to bring
all 40 million under the net in one year. But a drive needs
to be started with vigour to bring at least 5 million under
the net by the next fiscal year with the goal of bringing
similar number under the net in subsequent years.
Tax departments could mop up a great deal of more taxes
if it had a network of offices, 'densely', all over the country.
Taxes offices are still few and far between in the outlying
areas away from the big cities. Therefore, a big initiative
should be taken to set up tax collection offices everywhere
in the country. The target for next year should be to
establish at least one such office in every upazilla.
Government in a developing country needs to garner
increasing amount of revenues and this task can be
achieved through fairly and equitably expanding the
taxation base by bringing tax evaders and eligible new tax
payers under taxation. The finance minister must be
credited for doing considerable praiseworthy work to this
end over the last couple of years. But these efforts are also
still below the potential. Therefore, one would only expect
that the government will truly embark on a major
programme in the next fiscal year to effectively net in those
who are presently fully able to pay taxes but have not been
doing so or have been paying taxes disproportionate to
their income .
However, it needs to be also considered that taxation in
circumstances like ours, needs to be a delicate exercise out
of necessity. While the policy of detecting unethical tax
dodgers and finding out new sources of taxation are fully
justified, there is also the other side to taxation policies
involving providing of stimulus to business or economic
growth. The latter objective calls for the fine tuning of fiscal
policies so that the goals of meeting both the revenue
needs of the government and that of providing incentives
to businesses for their higher level activities can be
simultaneously accomplished.
It is also highly desirable in a country like Bangladesh
with a major part of its population under the poverty line -
to employ taxation policies in a manner to safeguard poor
people from woes arising from higher rates of indirect
taxes on common consumption goods. While every effort
should be made to avoid such an outcome, every initiative
must be taken to include the resourceful persons as
taxpayers and they should be obliged to pay taxes correctly
in proportion to their income or wealth.
On the other hand lowering of the rates of taxes, tax
breaks, etc., can be provided to motivate businesses or
entrepreneurs to become more productive and step up
their activities. But the present state of affairs where a very
few in number pay any income tax at all in a population of
over 160 million, is totally unacceptable. The same needs to
change with the taxpayers growing in number and the
government justifying at every step that it has not taken
arbitrary actions but only fair ones in this respect.
There is no mystery about who
tried to kill Iraqi Prime Minister
Mustafa Al-Kadhimi. The target
himself declared: "We know them very
well and we will expose them." Security
sources confirmed that the perpetrators
were Iran-backed paramilitaries. Al-
Kadhimi should publicly name the
perpetrators so that there can be no
room for doubt that members of Al-
Hashd Al-Sha'abi tried to assassinate
their own commander-in-chief.
Prior to the attack, Asa'ib Ahl Al-Haq
leader Qais Al-Khazali issued threats
and accusations against Al-Kadhimi.
This warlord, who was responsible for
overseeing the killings of hundreds of
demonstrators in 2019 - and who is
culpable for innumerable
assassinations and sectarian killings -
shamelessly accused the prime minister
of cracking down on thuggish Hashd
agitators who were seeking to forcibly
overturn the election results by
throwing rocks at security forces. Al-
Khazali then risibly alleged that Iraqi
intelligence staged the attack against
Al-Kadhimi, who is the former chief of
the same intelligence apparatus.
A Kata'ib Hezbollah spokesman
quipped: "Nobody in Iraq has the desire
to lose a drone over the house of a
former prime minister."
And Kata'ib Sayyid Al-Shuhada
Secretary-General Abu Alaa Al-Wala'i
implied that Al-Kadhimi deserved to be
assassinated, taunting that he would
never again be prime minister.
The Hashd militias believe they can
collectively escape accountability; that,
whenever the state acts against them,
they can flood the capital with their
shock troops and assassinate whoever
speaks out. They want everybody to
know they were responsible - that is the
point. They may only be able to win a
few pitiful parliamentary seats, but they
crave to be perceived as the real power
in Iraq, willing to murder anybody who
stands in their way.
Sunday's attack demonstrates how
much militants fear Al-Kadhimi
obtaining a second term, as he is
perhaps the only politician in Iraq with
sufficient courage to act against
paramilitary dominance. However, as
one analyst pointed out, this "stupid
and short-sighted move" has already
backfired against the militias. It has
given Al-Kadhimi greater popular
legitimacy, while showing the Hashd up
as the murderous, cowardly criminals
they are.
Last month's elections represented a
moment of truth for the Iranian proxies
in Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere. Until
now, Hezbollah and the Hashd had
always been able to gerrymander
sufficient support in elections to build
parliamentary alliances and exert
control over the executive. However,
crises in both states have resulted in a
spectacular plunge in nationwide
popularity for these groups and their
allies.
Sunday's attack has given Al-Kadhimi
greater popular legitimacy, while
showing the Hashd up as the
murderous, cowardly criminals they
are.
In Iraq, this saw the Hashd's Fatah
list collapse from about 50
parliamentary seats in 2018 to a pitiful
14 out of 329 seats. Moreover, the
January 2020 killing of Quds Force
commander Qassem Soleimani means
there is no effective figure to bully rival
blocs and compel sectarian Shiite
factions to act together, although his
hapless replacement, Esmail Ghaani,
rushed to Baghdad immediately after
bARIA ALAMUDDIN
the Al-Kadhimi attack in an attempt to
manage the fallout from the crisis.
Iran has no intention of relinquishing
its billions of dollars of investment in its
transnational paramilitary proxies.
Thus, if Hezbollah and the Hashd are to
retain political dominance, they must
enforce this through naked military
muscle.
The Al-Kadhimi assassination
attempt is a tangible example of this
shift toward outright confrontation. In
parts of the country, Hashd forces are
the de facto powers. Many divisions of
the security forces are largely composed
of personnel originating from
paramilitary groups, particularly the
Badr Organization. They owe their
primary loyalties to figures like Hadi Al-
Amiri. In Lebanon, it is perhaps only a
matter of time before we see Hezbollah
resorting to assassinations and even
more aggressive street-level agitation.
These Iranian proxies are
demonstrating their readiness to
plunge their nations into full-blown
conflict as a means of neutralizing
democratic setbacks.
In the belief that they are the
strongest force on the field, some hardliners
apparently embrace the prospect
of war, believing they will emerge
supreme.
For the Iraqi state and the
international community, the Hashd's
electoral defeat represents an
unmissable opportunity to curtail its
dominance; through the reduction of its
budget, the sidelining of Iran-affiliated
hard-liners and by challenging the
HAMID DAbASHI
Hashd's ability to illegally seek
revenues from checkpoints, extortion
and crime. Arab states must play a
greater role in recalibrating Iraq's
lopsided relationship with its eastern
neighbor. The Hashd, Hezbollah and
other proxies flourished before the eyes
of the world as an instrument of Iran's
aggressive regional brinkmanship. The
world has failed to act for too long, and
US President Joe Biden cannot afford
any further foreign policy disasters after
Afghanistan.
The fact that Iraqi militants can try to
assassinate the prime minister, then
openly taunt him about the attack,
demonstrates - as if further proof was
needed - that no genuine democratic
process can exist in nations where
militias can outgun the state, exist
outside that state's laws, and plunge
this explosive region into renewed
conflict.
It is no longer enough for the
international community to applaud Al-
Kadhimi's efforts to restrain the Hashd
from afar.
Al-Kadhimi became the target and
needs muscular Arab and Western
backing if Iraq is not to permanently
become an ungoverned space,
dominated by paramilitaries who
believe that they are at war against the
civilized world.
The strike against the prime
minister's residence at the heart of
Baghdad was a moment of truth: It is
time for the people of Iraq and Lebanon
to confront their demons of destruction.
Recent events prove that they can either
prosper as sovereign nations or wither
as Iranian colonies.
Al-Kadhimi and his Lebanese
counterpart Najib Mikati would find
strong nationwide support - and they
must be given equally unstinting
international support - if they were to
seize the opportunity to salvage their
nations while they still can.
Source: Arab news
Hollywood Orientalism is not about the Arab world
The recent release of Dune: Part
One (2021), an American
science fiction film directed by
Denis Villeneuve, has once again
raised the vexing question of
Hollywood mis/representation of
Arabs, Muslims, and Islam. Film
critics particularly from the Arab and
Muslim world are up in arms and
back on their hobbyhorse of how
Hollywood misrepresents them.
It is time for a reality check and to
come to terms with the fact that
"Hollywood" as an abstraction is in
the business of misrepresenting
everyone. It has no commitment to
truth. It has made a lucrative business
of deluding the world. Native
Americans, African-Americans,
Arabs, Asians, Latinx, Muslims,
Africans - everyone on planet Earth is
misrepresented for the simple reason
that at the epicentre of Hollywood as
an industry stands a factual, virtual,
or fictive white narrator telling the
world he is the measure of truth and
wisdom, joy and entertainment.
Dune is now doing its bit of
mis/representation with the latest
visual panache and state-of-the-art
digital bravura and virtuosity. Set in
the distant future amid an interstellar
dystopia, it is based on the 1965
science fiction novel by American
author Frank Herbert. In 1984, David
Lynch made a film version of the
novel to critics' dismay. But the 2021
adaptation by Denis Villeneuve has
received much praise, from almost
everyone other than some Arab and
Muslim film critics who think it
misrepresents them and has a white
saviour fantasy at its core.
It does. It is a textbook white
saviour fantasy. But so what? What
does it have to do with us - Muslims,
Arabs, Iranians, Pakistanis, Turks,
Indians, "Orientals" as they call us? A
white American novelist, a white
Canadian filmmaker, and a mass
media company based in Burbank,
California - Legendary Entertainment
- think the whole universe needs a
white saviour who looks like actor
Timothée Chalamet. What is it to us?
All the power to them!
For Arabs and Muslims to chase
after these films and ask why did you
misrepresent us, or why did you
borrow from Islam without any
acknowledgement, or why did you
cast a white actor in the lead role
rather than a first generation Indian,
Pakistani, or Egyptian "Muhammad"
(as Ridley Scott once put it) is blowing
A Kata'ib Hezbollah spokesman quipped: "Nobody in Iraq has
the desire to lose a drone over the house of a former prime minister."
And Kata'ib Sayyid Al-Shuhada Secretary-General Abu
Alaa Al-Wala'i implied that Al-Kadhimi deserved to be assassinated,
taunting that he would never again be prime minister.
the horn from the wrong side, as we
say in Persian.
"Arabs" are not real people in these
works of fiction. Arrakis in Dune are
not Iraqis in their homeland. They are
figurative, metaphoric and
metonymic. They are a mere
synecdoche for a literary
historiography of American
Orientalism. They are tropes -
mockups that are there for the white
narrator to tell his triumphant story.
The world at large will fall into a
trap if we start arguing with these
fictive white interlocutors, and telling
them we are really not what they
think we are. It is not just a losing
battle. It is a wrong battle. This is not
where the real battle-line is.
You do not fight Hollywood with
critical argument. You fight
Hollywood with Akira Kurosawa,
Satyajit Ray, Abbas Kiarostami, Elia
Suleiman, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Moufida
Tlatli, Ousmane Sembène, Yasujir?
Ozu, Guillermo del Toro, Mai Masri,
ad gloriam. You do not battle
misrepresentation. You signal,
celebrate, and polish representations
that are works of art.
What difference would it make if
you were to cast Riz Ahmed or Dev
Patel or Rami Malek instead of
Timothée Chalamet as the lead in
Dune? Would that have resolved the
issue - in what way?
We are dealing with a massive
machinery in Hollywood that keeps
spinning around itself producing
stronger doses of fantasy to keep alive
the delusion that it is the epicentre of
the universe. If you throw Sydney
Poitier or Denzel Washington at it, it
will digest them and still spit out the
selfsame delusional fantasies. So if
you want to fight that machine, you
need to change the interlocutor - opt
for a different storyteller, farthest
removed from Hollywood. One single
shot of a Kiarostami or Ozu will melt
mountains of snowflakes in
Hollywood. You do not improve the
lie with cosmetic creampuffs. You
correct the lens with truth.
The late Jack Shahin spent his
precious lifetime documenting such
Hollywood abuses. He presented his
findings in his 2001 book, Reel Bad
Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a
People, which in 2006 was made into
a documentary. Other more detailed
criticism of such misrepresentations
has piled over the years. To what end?
It all started in 1921. In October that
year, the silent romantic drama, The
Sheik (pronounced like the French
word "Chic"), premiered in the US
and Europe. For the next 100 years,
from 1921 to 2021, from Sheik to
Dune, Hollywood has had a ball - it
produced and promoted one
delusional fantasy after another about
Arabs and the wider Muslim world.
But what does it have to do with us,
the real Arabs and Muslims?
The question that Arabs and
Muslims need to ask themselves is
precisely the question James Baldwin
It all started in 1921. In October that year, the silent romantic drama, The
Sheik (pronounced like the French word "Chic"), premiered in the US
and Europe. For the next 100 years, from 1921 to 2021, from Sheik to
Dune, Hollywood has had a ball - it produced and promoted one delusional
fantasy after another about Arabs and the wider Muslim world.
asked some half a century ago -
exposing white peoples' dark
subconscious:
Today Arabs and Muslims need to
reverse that question and ask
themselves why does it matter to
them what an irredeemably racist
culture thinks of them. Why this
preoccupation with the Hollywood
depiction of Arabs and Muslims or
anyone else for that matter? The more
Arabs and Muslims delay asking that
same question by just replacing Negro
with Arab the longer they
paradoxically prolong white
supremacist Hollywood's ability to
torment them, perpetrate upon them
epistemic violence, put them on the
defensive, and make them question
whether they are what Hollywood
thinks them to be.
"Is Dune a white saviour narrative?"
mostly Arab or Muslim film critics are
asking themselves. Of course, it is. So
what? Of course, Hollywood opted to
cast a dashing Rudolf Valentino of his
time in Dune to go and save "the
Arabs" from themselves. What else is
new?
"Frank Herbert's novel drew from
Islam," they also say. Frank Herbert
did no such thing. He could not tell
"Islam" from a hole in the wall. He
drew from the Orientalists' fantasies
of Islam, not Islam. No two Muslims
can even agree what Islam is - let
alone two Orientalists of the
Hollywood vintage.
I watched most of Hollywood's
fantasies about the Muslim world and
I found nothing in them that is
remotely about me as a Muslim or an
Iranian.
These films are like English
"translations" of Rumi I occasionally
come by. Looking at those
"translations", I can never tell what
the original poem is and I have spent
a lifetime reading and teaching Rumi
forward and backward.
Because the English "translations"
of Rumi are really acts of piety by
well-meaning Americans trying to
find a decent "spiritual" way
attributed to Rumi and I find nothing
wrong with it, for Americans. It,
however, has nothing to do with me -
or with anyone else who reads Rumi's
work in its original.
Years ago, in my 2009 book Post-
Orientalism Knowledge and Power in
a Time of Terror, I wrote that
throughout his magnificent life,
Edward Said had a fictive white
interlocutor sitting in his mind who
he was trying to convince that
Palestinians had been wronged -
unless and until that fictional
character was totally convinced that
indeed Palestinians were wronged
then Palestinians were not wronged.
But we are done with that fictional
character sitting inside the best of our
critical thinkers. Perhaps the most
eloquent spokesperson of the
Palestinian cause died unconvinced
he had convinced that figment of his
own imagination of the most brutal
fact of his history. We have long since
changed that interlocutor. We are not
talking to him anymore. He is
fictional. He is not real.
The frontier fictions separating East
and West, Hollywood and Bollywood,
have dissolved into cyberspace. They
are meaningless in a reality in which
how a white saviour's fantasy may
tickle the fancies of its white audience
is of little relevance to the rest of
humanity at large. They need their
white saviours. It is a psychotic
disposition. We can only wish them a
speedy recovery.
Source: Al Jazeera