Month: January 2014

#4 : Winter in Africa

#4 : Winter in Africa

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

arabwinter.13TOP4The great revolutions that toppled dictators and promised democracy that rang throughout Africa are all but dead. Winter has arrived.

The end of the “Arab Spring” is my #4 story for 2013 in Africa.

(Look sideways at the similar current outbreaks in Thailand and Cambodia and it seems their future is similarly doomed.)

What happened?

I’m more sure of the reasons that didn’t contribute to the failure, then completely understanding the failure itself. The reason the Arab Spring didn’t succeed is not as NPR’s continually inept Ofeibea Quist-Arcton reported Friday on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Quist-Arcton’s simplistic notion that a “lack of leadership” explains why the Arab Spring became Winter, or because institutions have been so poorly formed, is wrong.

It’s the same simplistic analysis proffered by such beacons of intellectualism as Fox News.

And this analysis concerns me greatly, because implicit is that the original movements towards democracy, as modeled after us, were undeniably correct and failed not because of some fundamental problem in theory, but in practice.

That’s simply not correct. The elections in Egypt, Tunisia and earlier, Kenya, were in most regards more transparent and fair than in many places in the U.S. The transitions that ceded power to those who had won were as smooth as our own.

Contrary to Quist-Arcton’s central point, the leadership that took over was decisive and bold. While it’s true there was a threat in Egypt of renewing an executive power dictatorship, it had not yet happened. During the short time Morsi ruled, there was more positive transformation in Egypt’s poorer areas than ever before albeit at the expense of the more vocal middle class.

And that’s problematic policy. But it is not a “failure of leadership” or of “institutions.”

I still believe in the ballot box and democracy, but clearly it didn’t work in Africa. In trying to explain Egypt’s remission into dictatorship at the time it happened, I published a favorite cartoon of mine where a student replies to a teacher’s question, “What is democracy?”

“Democracy,” the student quickly explains, “is the freedom to elect our own dictators.”

We need add that the implementation of those dictators’ policies came through powerful government institutions that were working very well.

Tunisia and Kenya are unique examples in the Egyptian mode, but both have slipped into old ways where like Egypt it seems only heavy-handed authority can achieve enough social stability to do anything. And then, if the authority is beneficent, good happens. If not, bad happens.

We’ve learned two very precious lessons over the last few years in Africa’s experiment with democracy:

1. Democracy can be used to end itself.
2. The start of democracy (the “revolutions”) is never democratic.

Morsi may indeed have been trying to dismantle Egyptian democracy completely, yet he was the most freely elected Egyptian leader ever. And the movement that gave rise to his ascension – the Tahrir Square uprising – was nevertheless a minority of Egyptians. They were notable for being only on the fringe of violent overthrow, but their toppling Mubarak was hardly democratic.

Hardly a few weeks after Egypt’s experiment in democracy failed, the remaining holdouts for hopeful change in places like Mali, Zimbabwe, Rwanda and Ethiopia crumpled away.

Africa is today less democratic, more autocratic; less transparent, more deceptive; and far less promising than five years ago. It has tried and failed with democracy.

Singularly important for ourselves and all functioning democracies was that we and our political brothers refused to sanction that undemocratic removal of democratic regimes.

Intellectuals throughout the western world condemned Obama and other leaders for failing to punish those who ended the experiments in democracy.

Because, I suspect, a leader knows when a leader isn’t. Our leader is just too afraid to level with us.

My eulogy for the Arab Spring was published last month. But my sense that the problem wasn’t democracy, but rather capitalism, I explained months before the military deposed Morsi.

It was in May or even earlier that things around the continent began to look shaky. And the tremors were economic at the time, not political.

The failure of any political system is generally measured by its economy. The economies of Africa under the new democracies were capitalist structured, many virtually built by America and its allies. They didn’t work.

Arguments that it was just bad timing, that these political revolutions came at the end of a world recession and would have succeeded in good economic times disregard the fact that places like Kenya were seeing 7 and 8% GDP growth. So this is not a true presumption.

I know no more than the simple fact that capitalism did not deliver the promise held in democracy. Economists will now have to explain.

Clearly, winter has arrived not because of simplistic notions about the poor implementation of a treasured form of government, but because of flaws either in that system to work capitalism, or in capitalism itself.

# 3 : The Death of Mandela

# 3 : The Death of Mandela

by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

mandela and the worldNelson Mandela’s death mostly marks the end of predictable politics in South Africa, where reverence of him was the only reason that vying political factions didn’t compete on the public stage.

But the period of his dying will be remembered mostly for the crazed man scamming being a signing interpreter at his eulogy and the shake of hands between President Obama and Cuba’s president, Castro.

Mandela’s dying and the end of an era is my #3 story for 2013 in Africa.

As an individual, Mandela exhibited the profound restraint and patience that is the hallmark of his generation – and the many before his – of being an African. It seems so unreal, today, that for so long Africans accepted slavery, then oppressive colonialism, then the strains and inherent oppression of being proxies for Cold War adversaries, even in light of the terrible power of their masters.

I say this not with the vengeance of youthful activists today, but with real fascination. The notion of “Live Free or Die” is hardly uniquely American. Revolutions around the world through all of time were fueled by this ultimate mantra.

But until recently, Africans turned over and gave up. This is a horrible generalization, I know, and there are countless examples throughout African history of heroic rebellions and Mahdi-like successes. But as a judgment over a long term of all of African history, I stand by it.

And Mandela was the epitome of one of its leaders. He steadfastly held to his principles. But he continually negotiated his oppression. When the tide turned in South Africa it was as much because of the world changing, and the super powers levying sanctions against the apartheid regime, as anything that Mandela and his cohorts were doing.

Mind you, the world may not have changed so fast, and sanctions certainly would not have been levied so quickly without the low level revolution and far more important widespread civil disobedience that Mandela and company had orchestrated.

But more similar to his earliest friend Gandhi than one of his later friends, Castro, Mandela believed justice was more inevitable than forced. Human rights were inalienable, and their achievement was only a matter of time.

I’m not sure, though, if Mandela had suddenly found himself in late 19th century Bolivia, or 18th century Paris, or 1950s China if he would have turned out to be the relatively passive revolutionary he was.

Most good leaders throughout time have been very special individuals with enormously deep and unfailing characters, staunch belief systems to which they remain steadfast, tremendous charisma and above all, very loyal and dedicated followers. Mandela fits this to a T.

But there must be many millions of people like that throughout history. Leaders come from this universe of good people, but they rise to power not because they have the potential to do so, but because by happenstance they are manifest by their societies. Power holders are products of widespread grass roots emotions. Rarely if ever has a powerful leader’s personal beliefs or actions alone created a successful social movement.

And that was what Mandela was, and it’s on the one hand heart warming and on the other, frustrating: Heart warming because of its intrinsic optimism and faith in the human condition; Frustrating because it takes so long; Exasperating if, like me, you’re an impatient person.

Patience vs. impatience. Another way of looking at this – a more African way perhaps – was discussed by Obama in his eulogy of Mandela when he invoked and tried to explain “Ubuntu.” Obama worked its derivation as “the tie that binds the human spirit.” Non-violence, shared understandings, a sort of political Zen.

Mandela was the placeholder when South Africa’s apartheid ended and so he will be historically credited with ending it.

But the fight against apartheid in South Africa had begun in the 1700s, and the list of crusaders probably exceeds the population of most South African towns, today. It is so right that we should so wonderfully honor Mandela, but his accomplishments in this age of impatience are not without flaws.

He is, above all, a man of the past.

#2 : Obama’s War in Africa

#2 : Obama’s War in Africa

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First Reaper aircraft maintenance unit deploys to BaladAmericans have grown so complacent about war and so uninterested in their own country’s military involvements that few have any idea how much fighting America has been doing in Africa.

This is my Number 2 story for 2013, America’s huge military involvement in Africa.

And that involvement was not by a Congressional declaration or even after labored consultations and hearings. It was because it is central to Obama’s anti-terrorist policy.

The intense involvement has been going on for 54 years, and this year seemed to reach a crescendo and possible end-game. As ironic as this may seem, the fact is that Africa warring was a policy created in 2004 under George Bush which has been wholly embraced by Obama.

Bush created AFRICOM, America’s Ninth “Unified Combatant Command.” Its ostensible mission is half protection for multinational developments, especially oil exploration, and half anti-terrorist.

Lately it’s been almost exclusively anti-terrorist, at least as defined by the Obama administration.

AFRICOM was responsible for the 2011 Kenyan invasion of Somalia and the continuing presence of Kenyan troops, there. It was responsible for the small special forces contingent that publicly deployed in Uganda in 2012 which routed the LRA and essentially has caused the chaos currently seen in the Central African Republic.

AFRICOM was instrumental in the massive last-minute UN fights in the DRC-Congo which have resulted in some stability for the moment.

And AFRICOM basically orchestrated the chase of organized terrorist forces and their weapons from Somalia, through Uganda and the CAR into Mali, where together with France, we now intend to exterminate them altogether.

Probably as significant as any of the above are the drone attacks and numerous Navy Seal missions throughout mostly East Africa that have killed so many alleged terrorist leaders.

None of these operations begins to achieve the size of anything like Iraq or Afghanistan. But taken as a whole, from 2004 to the present, they represent significant deployments of troops, weapons and other resources that have radically shifted the organized terrorist map and composition.

No year was as violent as last year.

The result of these actions is a definitely safer America… for the moment. Organized terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda and al-Shabaab among others are being systematically eliminated. So for the near frontier, AFRICOM has served America well and efficiently.

But that’s not necessarily true for the long term, and it certainly isn’t true for Africans, today.

“AFRICOM serves as the latest frontier in military expansionism, violating the human rights and civil liberties of Africans,” according to ResistAfricom, a U.S. citizens group that views the strategy very bad for the future.

The result of the Obama/Bush policy has seriously destabilized Kenya, the principle ally which began the long chase of terrorists through the continent with the war in Somalia. Kenya is dealing with increasing terrorist attacks, a legislature obsessed with security, and an economy that would collapse without American aid.

While the DRC-Congo has achieved some peace after several generations of war, the larger country has been very recently shaken by surprising terrorist attacks and political uprisings.

The presumption that Mali will be the end-game, with French mopping up what’s left of alleged organized terrorism, is threatened by new terrorist outbreaks in neighboring Nigeria.

It seems America just can’t learn. War against terrorism doesn’t work. The current bevy of terrorist arsenals and leaders may be almost eliminated, but we have fomented such anger in Africa, that the subsequent generation of terrorists will be even more committed.

The easiest way to understand this is to roll back history and ask what would have happened if all this military involvement hadn’t occurred:

Somalia would still be controlled by al-Shabaab (al-Qaeda in Africa), and the refugee problem in Kenya would have increased substantially… There would never have been a Mali war, because that conflict was created with the massive amounts of weapons leaked down from disintegrating Libya, which we would have better just left in the hands of Gaddafi.

Dictators would have prevailed… Refugees would have increased…

We, in America, would not be quite as safe at this very moment…

It would not have been a nice world. But it would be a world more effectively developed by strategic use of economic sanctions and national development aid. This would have cost much less than AFRICOM.

And while we might have sacrifice a bit of security for the moment, we would be laying the ground work for much longer peace and security for the future.

In Africa and in America.