On Tuesday, the Cambodian police with riot gears thwarted a week-long strike sparked off by the suspension of a union official at a Malaysian-owned garment factory, which produced goods for international brands including Gap, Benetton, Adidas and Puma. It has been reported that the clashes between more than 100 armed police force and 3,000 garment workers in Phnom Penh had resulted in nine women being hurt, though authorities maintain the operations did not hurt anyone.

The BBC’s Guy De Launey in Phnom Penh says the unrest could be a symptom of a wider social malaise owing to dwindling orders in Cambodia’s crucial garment industry which resulted in tens of thousands of job losses. Early this month, government increased the minimum wage from about $50 to $60, but the double-digit inflation and the trade unions demands of above $80 seemed to be bogging down the effect.

Albeit the unions retracted from a three-day general strike in protest against the meagre rise, the union official’s suspension is believed to have aggravated the situation. But last week’s Huffington Post report interpreted these strikes as a knee-jerk reaction to irrational calibration of wages by the outsourcing firms or associated agencies.

Interestingly, in last week’s blog by Auret van Heerden, President and CEO of the Fair Labour Association visualizes firms that build strong Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programmes into their operations and culture would have the edge in many markets. Nevertheless, evidences show such practices by firms are beyond procurement principles as it solely reckons pricing and related aspects devoid of labour rights – especially post-meltdown.

Cambodia’s textile industry accounts for around 85 percent of exports, and is the country’s third-largest source of income after tourism and agriculture. The Southeast Asian state continues to be in the grip of labour problems particularly after the global economic crisis that bombed exports severely to create an economic landscape of joblessness – and desertion of production units by the employers.

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Interestingly, an internal Pentagon memo, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and mobile phones. It also reports that the country is home to previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and large deposits of niobium, a soft metal used in producing superconducting steel, besides lithium.

The memo compels to probe, what is Pentagon’s task in Afghanistan? Is it mining, peace-keeping or capturing the elusive terrorists? The timing of the announcement also induces the misgivings on the veracity of the study as well as the US interest in the country. Is the US trying to stay longer in Afghanistan on this pretext to thwart the increasing presence of the regional powers, China and India, by providing business options to the county?

In November, a 30-year lease, to start mining copper in the Aynak valley, southwest of Kabul, which holds one of the world’s biggest untapped copper deposits, was sold to the China Metallurgical Group for $3bn, making it the biggest foreign investment and private business venture in Afghanistan’s history. Likewise, post-Taliban, India is also heavily involved in the re-construction and development of Afghanistan’s infrastructure.

The retrospective chronicling of the events on the recent discovery compel to call for more queries. Why Russia did not show much interest in Afghanistan despite having the cognizance of country’s rare mineral wealth?

According to the study, while leaving Afghanistan in 1989 after nearly a decade-old occupation the Soviets left behind a horde of old charts and data hinting on the massive mineral deposits in the country. Incidentally, it says, it was with these data, the US Geological Survey began a series of aerial surveys of Afghanistan’s mineral resources in 2006.

Consequently, it establishes a fact that the US entered Afghanistan with prior knowledge of potential mineral wealth in the country. If there is truth in the find, then the Afghanistan’s new found fortune fuels the perception that any ‘offensive’ war includes an exploration agenda for natural resources or knowledge treasure trove behind it whenever any country initiates a war in a foreign land, especially a far-off one.

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The new plan, which would be supplanting the bombed “Vision 2025″ has been largely blamed for its timing as elections less than a year away neither allows to check the efficacy of the program nor could be implemented to any degree. The NDP is expected to transform Uganda from a peasant to a prosperous country within the next 30 years with emphasis on agriculture, infrastructural development and food security.

The failure for “Vision 2025″, launched in 1999, is cited as lack of funds and absence of constitutionally mandated body, such as National Planning Authority (NPA) who drafted the NDP, to coordinate it. Though repeated failures of several plans haunt the Ugandan psyche, experts believe that this one would materialize particularly as the Ugandan economy is better placed than it was 10 years ago, and since the economic growth would be further boosted by oil profits.

The NDP fundamentally departs from the failed Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs) which was initiated in the late 1980′s with the recommendation from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Under SAPs, the government sold most of the state-owned enterprises to the private sector including co-operative banks which supported agriculture sector that employed 73 percent.

SAPs literally brought the Ugandan economy to a standstill with no progress in infrastructure and other spheres those required constant care. Nonetheless, the NDP that advises a conversion from market economy to a quasi- market economy will be more of public-private partnership than government becoming a namesake watchdog of the economy.

During the recent launch of the new plan, the President of Uganda Yoweri Museveni presented evidence as to how these milestones would be achieved. He observed the projected oil earnings and tax revenues would suffice for tiding over fiscal deficits and developmental plan implementation.

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